The Public Views

Privacy

Last updated 14 August 2026

This describes what The Public Views stores about you, why, and who can see it. It was written by reading our own database rather than by adapting a template, so it describes what the product actually does today - including the parts that are not flattering.

The Public Views is operated by Arcston Global Private Limited, and “we” on this page means that company.

Why we ask for a phone number and a date of birth

Your profile has four optional questions: your phone number, your date of birth, the state you live in, and what you do. They exist for one reason - to break a poll result down by who answered it.

That is the product. One percentage for the whole country is a much smaller thing to know than that students and people over 45 answered differently, and without something to group by, every poll is a single number and nothing else.

To be specific about what we do not do with them:

  • We do not call you or send you a text message. There is no SMS in this product at all - no provider is connected to it.
  • Your phone number does not sign you in. Signing in is by a code emailed to you, or with Google. Your number is not a login and not a password reset route.
  • Your date of birth becomes an age band in a breakdown. It is not used to send you anything.
  • None of the four is required. Nothing is locked, limited or changed if you leave all of them blank. Every reader gets the same app.
  • We do not sell them, rent them, share them for advertising, or pass them to anyone else.
The profile card itself no longer repeats this, so this page is where it lives. If you gave us any of the four before reading it, you can clear any field at any time from the same card, and clearing it stores nothing in its place.

What we store

  • An account, created before you do anything

    Opening the app creates an account straight away so that a vote is durable from the first tap. To begin with it is anonymous: a random identifier and nothing else - no name, no email, no device information. Most accounts on the product are this and never become anything more.

  • An email address, only if you sign in

    Signing in attaches your email address to that account. If you use Google, we receive the address and basic profile information Google returns. There is never a password. This product has no password login, so there is nothing to guess, leak or reuse, and no reset flow to hijack.

  • Your profile

    A display name, an avatar colour, the categories and topics you follow, whether you have finished onboarding, whether the weekly email is on, and - if you fill them in - your phone number, date of birth, state and profession.

  • What you do here

    Your votes, your bookmarks, your comments and the comments you like, which stories you have read and when, which stories were shown to you on Explore and Search, and which stories you shared.

  • How you read

    The reading record includes which screen you came to a story from, how far down the feed it was, and how long it was on screen. That is what tells us whether a story held anyone’s attention, which is the main thing we look at.

  • What broke, when something breaks

    If a screen fails, we record the error, the page it happened on, and - when there is a signed-in session at the time - which account was affected, so we can tell whether a fault hit one person or everybody.No part of what you were reading, typing or looking at is included.

  • Whether our email reached you

    If we send you the weekly digest we record that it was sent, and whether it was delivered or bounced. That record stores your account id and never your address.

What we never collect

  • No password, because there is no password login.
  • Our database holds no IP address, no browser or device information, and no location. Nothing in the product records what you are reading on. Our hosting provider processes IP addresses in order to serve and protect the site, as every web host must - we do not store them or use them for anything.
  • No location beyond the state you choose yourself. We do not ask your device where it is.
  • No advertising or analytics trackers of any kind. There is no Google Analytics, no Meta pixel, no session recorder and no third-party tag anywhere in this app. We have not put one in and are not planning to.
  • No access to your contacts, photos, camera, microphone or files.
  • We do not buy data about you from anybody.

What sits on your own device

Two things, both in your browser:

  • A session cookie that keeps you signed in.
  • A local copy of your own data, so the app answers instantly instead of waiting for the network every time you tap. It holds your votes, bookmarks, read history, recent searches, your own comments, the comments you liked, your interests and your name - and, if you have given them, your phone number, date of birth, state and profession.

Clearing this site’s stored data in your browser removes that local copy. It does not delete your account or the record on our servers; for that, see below.

Who can see it

  • You

    Every personal row is locked to your account inside the database itself. It is not a matter of our code remembering to filter - the database refuses to return another reader’s rows to you, and refuses to return yours to them.

  • A small number of administrators

    The people who run the product can read profile records, including a phone number and a date of birth. We do not disclose personal information to any other person, company or organisation. It is not sold, not rented, not shared for advertising and not handed to anyone for their own purposes. Access is limited to the few people who need it to operate the service, and is treated strictly.

  • Nobody, through the dashboards

    The screens that show how the product is doing are built on functions that can only return counts and averages. There is no screen anywhere that lists what a named reader voted for, and none can be narrowed to one person.

  • Nobody, through a data export

    Exporting raw rows is restricted to administrators and every export is recorded - who, what, how much, when. Profiles and comments cannot be exported at all, so an export can never contain a name, an email address, a phone number or a date of birth.

  • If the law requires it

    We would disclose information where we are legally obliged to. Nothing else.

The companies that help run this

We are a small product and we do not run our own machines. Four companies handle data on our behalf, each for one job:

  • Supabase - the database, sign-in and file storage

    Everything described above is stored here. Our database is in Mumbai, chosen so that the product is fast for readers in India.

  • Vercel - hosting and delivery

    Serves the pages to your browser.

  • Resend - email

    Sends your sign-in code and, if you have asked for it, the weekly digest. It receives your email address in order to deliver mail to you.

  • Google - only if you choose it

    Used only when you sign in with Google, and only for that.

The database is in India. The other three operate internationally, so some information - your email address in transit, for example - is handled outside India in the course of running the service.

How long we keep it

We would rather describe what actually happens than print a retention schedule we do not run.

  • An anonymous account that never did anything is deleted after seven days. This runs automatically, once a day. “Never did anything” means exactly that: no read, no vote, no bookmark, no comment, no share, nothing at all.
  • If you have read, voted, bookmarked, shared or commented, we keep the record. There is no automatic deletion for those accounts today. When there is, this page will say so.
  • The detailed reading log is not currently trimmed either.

Your choices

  • The weekly email is on, and one click stops it

    If you have an account with a confirmed address, the weekly digest is on by default. Turn it off in Settings, and every digest carries an unsubscribe link that works from your inbox without signing in and without a confirmation step. We also stop sending on our own if your address bounces permanently or you mark a digest as spam. Turning it off never affects your sign-in emails - you will always be able to get into your account.

  • Clear any profile field, at any time

    Phone, date of birth, state and profession can each be emptied from the profile card. Cleared means stored as nothing, not hidden.

  • Ask what we hold, correct it, or have it deleted

    Email contact@thepublicviews.com and we will action it. There is no delete button in the app yet, and we would rather say that than pretend otherwise. There used to be a control labelled as though it erased everything; it erased almost nothing, so it was removed rather than left to mislead. Until a real one exists, email is the route.

Changes to this page

If we change it, the date at the top changes with it. Anything material will be said in the app rather than left for you to notice.

Getting in touch

Questions, corrections, complaints, or a request to see or delete what we hold - contact@thepublicviews.com. The Public Views is operated by Arcston Global Private Limited.