Shri Sai Samsthana
Privacy Policy
Last updated 1 September 2026
This page is kept in English so that nothing in it changes in translation. If English is difficult, write to privacy@saisamsthana.org in your own language — we answer in it.
Sai Vani is published by Shri Sai Samsthana. This policy explains what the app records about you, why, who else can see it, and how to have it erased. It covers the mobile app and the web version alike.
Who is responsible for your information
Shri Sai Samsthana ("we", "us") is the data fiduciary under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and the data controller under the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation, for everything described here.
Postal address
Shri Sai Samsthana, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Privacy enquiries
privacy@saisamsthana.org
Grievance Officer
Grievance Officer, Shri Sai Samsthana — privacy@saisamsthana.org
We answer every privacy request within 30 days.
What the app records, and why
Nothing here is inferred from your behaviour. Each item is either something you typed, something you tapped, or something the app needs in order to work at all.
When you create an account, the sign-up form asks for six things and nothing else:
Name
So the app can greet you, and so a family circle can tell its members apart.
Mobile number
This is your account. A one-time code sent to it proves the number is yours; no password is ever stored.
Email address
A second way to reach you if you lose the number, and where account notices are sent.
Gender
Used to address you correctly in the languages where the verb form changes with it.
Date of birth
To confirm you are old enough to hold an account, and to know when a devotee is a minor.
Occupation
Recorded once, so the samsthana understands who its devotees are. You may write anything, including that you would rather not say.
As you use the app, it keeps what you make in it:
Prayers and sankalpas you save, and the status you give each one.
Journal entries and the mood you attach to them.
Messages you send the companion on the Talk to Sai and Share My Sorrow screens, and the replies it gives.
Seva you log, chapters you have read, your reading progress, bookmarks and streaks.
Your family circle: its name and invite code, the members you add with the names, relations and numbers you give them, and messages posted in it.
Your referral code, whoever joined using it, and your remaining conversation credits. If somebody signed up using a code you shared, our records link their account to yours — that link is what a reward is counted from. They see nothing of your account, and you see only their first name, the last three digits of their number and the date they joined.
A postal address, but only if you reach a referral milestone and choose to claim the parcel. It is asked for at that moment, kept against that one reward, used to post it and to answer you if you ask where it is, and it is not added to your profile or used for anything else.
Your settings: chosen language, large-text mode, read-aloud mode, and your plan.
A prayer, a journal entry or a message to the companion can say a great deal about your faith, your health or your state of mind. Indian and European law both treat that as sensitive, and so do we: it is never used for advertising, never sold, never shown to another devotee unless you deliberately share it with your family circle, and it is erased the moment you delete your account.
Two further things are handled by the servers rather than typed by you:
Your IP address
Held in memory for a few minutes only, to count requests and stop a script hammering sign-in or burning through credits. It is not written to the database and is not used to identify you.
One-time codes
Stored as a cryptographic hash, never in readable form, and expiring within minutes of being sent.
The app carries no advertising, no analytics or attribution SDK, no tracking pixels and no third-party cookies. It does not build a profile of you, does not follow you across other apps or websites, and does not read your photos, calendar, messages or call logs. Your contacts are read in one place only, on the Refer & Earn screen when you ask for it, and never leave your phone — see section 3.
The app asks for two permissions, each only at the moment it is needed, and works without either.
Location, while using the app
Requested only when you tap "Use my location" on the Temples screen. Your coordinates are sent once, used to sort the temple list by distance from you, and are not written to the database, not logged and not shared. Decline, and you can still search temples by name, city or state.
Contacts
Requested only when you tap "Invite from contacts" on the Refer & Earn screen, and only after a screen explaining what will happen. Your contacts are read into the app on your phone so you can pick who to invite, and they stay there: they are never uploaded to our server, never written to our database, never logged, and never shared with anyone. Nothing is kept once you close the picker, and no message is sent by the app — choosing someone opens WhatsApp with the invitation written out, and you press send yourself. Decline, and you can still share your referral code by any other means.
The app does not request the microphone, camera, photo library, calendar, background location, or permission to track you. It never asks to write or change your contacts, only to read them. On Android the microphone and storage permissions are blocked in the build itself, so no library can add them quietly. On the web version, dictation on the Talk screen uses your browser’s own speech recognition and runs only while you hold the microphone button; what it hears becomes text in the message box, which goes nowhere until you press send.
Read-aloud uses the text-to-speech voice already installed on your device. Nothing is recorded, and nothing leaves the device to make it speak.
The companion, and what it sends onward
The companion inside this app is software. It is not Sai Baba, it does not carry messages from him, and it does not predict the future. It is there to sit with you in the spirit of Baba’s teachings — shraddha, saburi, sincere effort and acceptance.
When you send it a message, this is the order things happen in:
A safety check runs first, on our own servers, before any model is involved. If your message suggests you may be in danger, you are given a helpline and no model is called at all.
Otherwise your message, the recent turns of that conversation, and passages from the app’s own library are sent to Anthropic’s Claude API, which writes the reply.
Your name, mobile number, email address, date of birth and occupation are not sent. What is sent is the text of the conversation and your chosen language.
The conversation is stored on our servers against your account, so the screen still shows it tomorrow.
Anthropic processes those messages on our behalf under its commercial terms, which do not permit training its models on API inputs or outputs. If the model is unavailable, the app answers from a curated set of replies written by hand — you always get an answer.
The companion is not a doctor, a counsellor, a lawyer or an astrologer, and nothing it says is medical, legal, financial or professional advice. If you are in distress, please reach a human being — in India, Tele-MANAS is 14416 and KIRAN is 1800-599-0019, both free and open at every hour.
Who else your information reaches
We do not sell your personal data and we do not share it for anyone’s advertising. It reaches four kinds of recipient and no others:
Devotees you choose
Members of a family circle you create or join see that circle’s messages and the prayers you have marked as shared. Nothing else of yours is visible to them, and a prayer stays private until you mark it.
Service providers acting for us
Anthropic (writes the companion’s replies), Meta Platforms (delivers the one-time code over WhatsApp), our email provider (account and reset emails), our hosting and database provider, and Cloudflare R2 (holds the audio and book files the app plays). Each may process the data only on our instructions.
Nobody, for advertising
There is no advertising network, data broker, attribution partner or analytics vendor in this app.
Authorities, only when compelled
Where a valid legal order requires it, or where disclosure is needed to protect someone’s life or safety. We tell you unless the law forbids it.
Where your information is held
Our servers and database are hosted in India. Two of the providers above process data outside it: Anthropic, in the United States, and Meta’s WhatsApp Cloud API, in the United States and Ireland. Those transfers are made under the providers’ standard contractual clauses and equivalent safeguards, and carry only what sections 4 and 5 describe.
What is kept on your own device
So that the app opens and reads with no signal, it keeps a copy on the device of the screens you last saw — the day’s blessing, chapters, aartis, temples, your prayers and your progress. It also keeps your sign-in token, your chosen language, and a note that you have seen the welcome screens.
All of it lives in the app’s own private storage. Signing out or uninstalling the app removes it from the device.
Your account and everything in it
Until you delete the account. Then it goes — see section 10.
One-time codes
Minutes. They expire on use or on timeout.
Rate-limiting counters
Minutes, in memory only, cleared when the server restarts.
Emails we have sent you
Kept by our email provider in its own delivery logs, typically no more than 30 days.
Backups
Database backups are kept for 30 days and then overwritten, so a deleted account leaves the backups within 30 days as well.
All traffic between the app and our servers travels over HTTPS.
One-time codes are stored only as bcrypt hashes, and are locked out after repeated wrong attempts.
Sessions are signed tokens that expire. There is no password to be stolen or reused.
Access to the database and the admin tools is limited to the samsthana staff who need it.
No system is perfect. If a breach ever affects your personal data, we will notify you and the Data Protection Board of India as the DPDP Act requires.
Your rights, and how to use them
See what we hold
Settings → Privacy & Data → Email me my data sends a machine-readable copy of your account and everything in it to the email address on the account.
Correct it
Your name, language and preferences are editable in the app. Write to us for anything else.
Delete it
Settings → Delete my account. It is immediate and permanent: profile, prayers, journal, conversations, seva, progress, bookmarks, family membership, credits, and every referral reward with the postal address on it are erased from the live database. Devotees who joined through your referral code keep their accounts — only the link back to you is removed. A parcel already posted cannot be recalled.
Withdraw consent
Stop using a feature, or delete the account. Withdrawing does not undo what was lawfully done beforehand.
Complain
Write to the Grievance Officer, Shri Sai Samsthana at privacy@saisamsthana.org. If we have not put it right, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India, or to your own supervisory authority if you are in the EU or the UK.
If you cannot open the app, write to privacy@saisamsthana.org from the email address on the account, or give us the mobile number it was created with, and we will do it for you within 30 days.
This app is meant for adults, and for families using it together. It is not directed at children.
An account needs a date of birth of 13 or over, and the app refuses to create one below that age. A devotee between 13 and 18 may hold an account only with the consent and supervision of a parent or guardian. We do not profile children and we do not serve them advertising — we serve nobody advertising.
If you are a parent and find that a child has given us information without your consent, write to privacy@saisamsthana.org and we will erase the account.
Why we are allowed to do this (EU and UK)
Your account
Performance of the contract you enter into by creating it — Art. 6(1)(b).
Prayers, journal, conversations
Your explicit consent, given by writing them — Art. 6(1)(a) and Art. 9(2)(a), since they may reveal religious or health information.
Security and rate limiting
Our legitimate interest in keeping the service available and unabused — Art. 6(1)(f).
Legal orders
Compliance with a legal obligation — Art. 6(1)(c).
When this policy changes, the date at the top of the page changes with it, and the new version appears here and on the store listing. Where a change materially affects how your information is used, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.
Shri Sai Samsthana · privacy@saisamsthana.org