Privacy Policy

Who we are

TalkSignal is operated by Pradeep Dadi, an individual developer in India. In this policy, “TalkSignal”, “we” and “us” mean the TalkSignal app and service and its operator. For anything about your privacy or your data, write to privacy@talksignal.org. For general help, write to support@talksignal.org.

Who can use TalkSignal

You must be 18 or older to use TalkSignal. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If you believe someone under 18 has an account, write to privacy@talksignal.org and we will delete it.

Your account

You sign in with your phone number. Google’s Firebase Authentication sends the sign-in code by SMS and checks it, so Google processes your phone number for that purpose. We store your phone number with your account, and the name you choose, which your TalkSignal contacts see. To deliver notifications, we store a notification token for each phone you use. If you link TalkSignal on the web, we keep that link for up to 30 days, and you can unlink it from the app at any time.

Call requests, statuses and groups

When you ask a contact whether they can talk, we store the request: who asked whom, when, the short message you chose or typed (up to 60 characters) or that it carries a voice message, and the answer. Both of you can see your recent requests. We keep the 10 most recent requests between the two of you; older ones are deleted as new ones are sent and answered, and all of them are deleted when either of you deletes your account. The statuses you set (for example, available until 6 PM) and who may see them are stored so your contacts see the right status at the right time. Groups you create or join, their members and their “is now a good time?” rounds are stored until the group is deleted or you leave it, and are removed when you delete your account.

Contacts: finding people you know

If you allow it, TalkSignal reads the phone numbers in your address book and sends them to our server to find which of them already use TalkSignal. The numbers reach us as they are, over an encrypted connection; our server converts each one into a protected form to look it up, and keeps nothing about the ones that match nobody. We keep a protected form of your own number so that others can find you. For each person you match with, we store their name, phone number and profile photo in your contact list on our server, so that your list works on a new phone. We do not upload the names or any other details of people who are not on TalkSignal. Contacts permission is optional: without it, TalkSignal works but finds nobody for you. Everything we hold about your contacts is deleted when you delete your account.

Contacts: invitations

When you invite someone, TalkSignal stores a protected form of that person’s phone number together with your account ID, used only to recognise them if they sign up. This is pseudonymised personal data, not anonymous. The record is deleted as soon as they join, and in any case within 30 days. If they do join, their phone number is then held in your contact list in the same way as any other contact you have matched with. You can invite up to 20 people a day, and all of your invitation records are deleted when you delete your account.

Your profile picture

If you choose a profile photo, it is uploaded to our server and shown to the TalkSignal contacts you have matched with. You can set it to be visible to your contacts or to no one, and you can remove it at any time. Choosing a photo uses the Android photo picker and does not give TalkSignal access to the rest of your gallery. Your photo is deleted when you delete your account.

Voice messages

A voice message you record is uploaded to our server so the person you sent it to can play it. They can play it twice, after which it is deleted; any clip is deleted within 30 days whether or not it was played. Recording uses the microphone only while you hold the record button. If someone reports a voice message they received, a copy of that recording is kept for up to 30 days so we can review it, along with who sent it, who reported it and why. If we act on a report, for example by warning or disabling the account that sent it, we keep a record of that action and a protected form of the account it concerned, and why. This record does not include the recording, is kept to show how reports were handled, and is not deleted when an account is deleted. Your recordings are deleted when you delete your account.

App activity and crash logs: optional, off by default

If you turn on Anonymous diagnostics in Settings, TalkSignal sends crash reports, performance measurements and a small number of fixed events — which tab you opened, that a status was scheduled or cleared, that a request was sent or answered. No message text, contact names, phone numbers, status wording or profile details are included, and the events carry no parameters. You can turn it off at any time, which also clears the analytics data held for your installation. Nothing is used for advertising. This setting covers only these diagnostics from your phone; it does not cover the service usage records our server always keeps, which carry no user ID.

Service usage records: always kept, no user ID

Unlike Anonymous diagnostics, these are part of running the service: they are always kept and the diagnostics setting does not turn them off. Our server records that something happened — a request was sent, answered, taken back or refused, a voice message was played, someone signed up, an invitation was sent, an invited person joined, or the app checked your contacts for people already on TalkSignal (with only the number of new matches found) — with the time and, where it applies, how long an answer took or why a request was refused. These records carry no user ID: they do not say who you are or who you asked, and they never contain message text, recordings, names or phone numbers. Separately, we note which days your account was active, under a protected form of your account ID. We use both only to count how the service is used and to keep it running, and delete them within 36 days.

Security: sign-in protection

To stop abuse of sign-in codes, we count how many codes are requested for each phone number each day, under a protected form of the number, and refuse more than a small daily number. The count is deleted within 3 days. When a code is requested, when you sign in, and when an administrator acts on an account, we record the IP address it came from, with the time and the account or protected number it belongs to. We work out which country each IP address belongs to, never a city or anything more precise, using a database kept on our own servers; the address is not sent to anyone else to do this. IP addresses and their countries are used only to investigate abuse, and are deleted within 8 days.

This product includes GeoLite Data created by MaxMind, available from https://www.maxmind.com.

Who processes your data for us

We do not sell your data, share it with advertisers, or use it for advertising. We use these services to run TalkSignal:

• Google (Firebase and Google Cloud): sign-in and SMS codes, our database, storage for profile photos and voice messages, the server code that runs the service, and notifications. Crash reports and usage statistics go to Google only if you switch on Anonymous diagnostics.
• Cloudflare: runs the domain talksignal.org and forwards email sent to our addresses to our mailbox.
• Google (Gmail): the mailbox where we read and answer email sent to support@ and privacy@.

Where your data is stored

Our database is in India (Google Cloud, Mumbai). Profile photos and voice messages are stored in the United States (Google Cloud, us-east1). Sign-in codes are sent through Google’s systems, which may process your phone number outside India.

How long we keep things

• Your account, name, contacts, statuses and groups: until you delete your account.
• Call requests: the 10 most recent between two people, and none after either account is deleted.
• Voice messages: until played twice, and at most 30 days.
• A reported voice message’s copy, with who sent it, who reported it and why: up to 30 days.
• Invitations: until the person joins, and at most 30 days.
• Linked web sessions: up to 30 days, or until you unlink.
• Sign-in code counts: deleted within 3 days. IP addresses and their countries: deleted within 8 days.
• Service usage records and active-day markers: deleted within 36 days.
• Records of actions taken on reports: kept, with the account only in a protected form, even after the account is deleted.

Deleting your account

Delete your account in the app under Settings → Delete account. It is deleted at once, together with your profile, photo, contacts, statuses, groups, call requests, voice messages, invitations, notification tokens and linked sessions; the timed records listed above then expire on their own schedule. If you can no longer sign in, see Delete your account.

Your choices and rights

You can change your name and photo, choose who sees your status and photo, block or mute contacts, turn contacts access and diagnostics on or off, unlink web sessions, and delete your account, all in the app. You can also ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, or to delete it, by writing to privacy@talksignal.org. We usually reply within 7 days, and within 30 days at most. You have the rights given by India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and privacy@talksignal.org is also our contact for grievances.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page, and announce significant changes on this site before they take effect.