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Privacy Policy

Last updated 24 October 2026.

Who we are

Gaushala (gaushala.app) is a national census of India's cows and buffaloes and of the gaushalas, farms and households that keep them. It is operated by Mayash Foundation, which is the data fiduciary for the personal data described here: it decides what is collected and why. For a question, a correction or a complaint, write to the Grievance Officer.

What we collect

Your account

• Your phone number. It is how you sign in: there are no passwords. Firebase Authentication sends the SMS code and checks it; Gaushala then keeps the number, marked as verified.
• Your name, as you enter it.
• A placeholder email address that Gaushala makes up, because its sign-in system requires one. It is not yours and is never used to contact you.
• What you add to your profile, if anything: a photo (cropped and resized in your browser, then stored in Gaushala's database), a short bio, a location you describe in your own words, a website, and X, LinkedIn and GitHub usernames.
• Your sessions. Each signed-in session records the IP address and browser description (user agent) of the request that created it, and when it expires.
• When you were last active, used to count active users on the operators' dashboard.

Gaushala does not ask for your email address, date of birth, Aadhaar or any identity document.

Gaushalas you add or help run

• Details: name, description, year founded, trust or society registration number, contact phone, email and website, and area in acres.
• Location: street address, city, PIN code, district and state, and an exact map pin. You place the pin by hand, or — only if you tap “use my current location” and your browser allows it — from your device's location at that moment.
• The herd: how many cows and buffaloes, by breed (or a breed name you type), sex, calf or adult, and milking or dry, with the average milk per milking animal per day.
• Named animals, if you add them: name, tag number, date of birth and notes.
• History: every change to a herd count is recorded with who made it, when, and the gaushala's district and review status at that moment. Every change of review status is recorded the same way, with the reviewer's reason.
• Photos you upload, with their size, type and dimensions, and who uploaded them. Photos are kept as uploaded, at full resolution, because later census tools will need them. A photo can carry information your camera adds, such as when and where it was taken.
• Proposed changes to an approved gaushala's name, registration number or address, and the reviewer's decision.

Rosters and invitations

Each gaushala has a roster: who is on it, and with which role. To invite someone, a gaushala's admin enters that person's phone number. Gaushala therefore holds the phone number of someone who has been invited but may never have signed up, along with who invited them and whether the invitation was accepted, declined or cancelled. Gaushala sends no SMS for invitations: the person who invites you tells you, and the invitation appears when you sign in with that number. If you were invited and do not want to be, write to the Grievance Officer.

Operators

For people who run Gaushala, it records which platform permissions each holds and who granted them.

Who can see what

Anyone, without signing in

Only gaushalas that have been reviewed and approved, and that are not marked private, appear publicly. For those, the public sees the gaushala's details, its district and state, an approximate location rounded to about a kilometre, its herd totals by species and breed, and its photos. Contact details entered for a gaushala may be shown on its public page, so enter ones meant to be found. The name and profile photo of the person who added a gaushala may be shown as “Added by”.

The public never sees a gaushala's exact map pin, its street address, its named animals or its herd history.

A gaushala's own roster

People on a gaushala's roster see its full record: exact pin and address, herd and named animals, history and every photo. They see each other's names, profile photos and roles, but not each other's phone numbers. Admins of a gaushala see the phone numbers of the people they have invited.

Gaushala's reviewers and operators

Operators of Gaushala see a gaushala's full record, including its exact pin and photos, so that they can review it, spot duplicates and keep the census accurate. They see users' phone numbers where their work needs them, for example to grant an operator permission.

Private gaushalas

A gaushala marked private is left out of the public listing and map. Once approved, its herd still counts towards national totals.

Census statistics

Gaushala may publish census statistics: totals and averages by species, breed, state and district, counting only approved gaushalas. Statistics are published only in aggregate and never name a gaushala or a person.

Your own profile

Your bio, location, website and social usernames are shown back to you in Settings. Gaushala does not show them to other people today.

Photos of a gaushala that is not public are served only through short-lived signed links, to the people allowed to see them.

What is kept in your browser

Gaushala sets one cookie, the one that keeps you signed in. Everything else it keeps in your browser is a preference or the offline page:

better-auth.session_token · Cookie

Your signed-in session. Set by Gaushala's API, not readable by page scripts, and sent only to Gaushala. Over HTTPS its name starts with __Secure-.

Lasts: 7 days, renewed while you use Gaushala; removed when you sign out

gaushala.locale · Local storage

The interface language you chose.

Lasts: Until you clear your browser's site data

theme · Local storage

Whether you chose the light, dark or system appearance.

Lasts: Until you clear your browser's site data

gaushala-offline-v1 · Cache storage

A copy of the offline page, shown when you lose your connection. No pages you visit and nothing about you.

Lasts: Replaced when the offline page changes

firebaseLocalStorageDb · IndexedDB

Firebase's record of the phone sign-in in progress. Gaushala signs out of Firebase as soon as your code is checked, which clears it.

Lasts: The few seconds of sign-in

All of it is first-party and strictly functional. There is no advertising or analytics cookie, which is why Gaushala shows no cookie-consent banner. The fonts are served from Gaushala's own site, not from Google.

Other services involved

These services handle data for Gaushala. Your browser contacts each of them directly, so each sees your IP address, as any website you connect to does, and keeps it in its own logs under its own policies.

Vercel

Hosts this website: your browser loads every page from it.

Receives: Your IP address and the pages you request, in ordinary web server logs.

Railway

Hosts Gaushala's API and its database, where everything described under “What we collect” is stored.

Receives: Your IP address and every request the app makes for you, and the data held in the database.

Firebase Authentication (Google)

Sends the SMS code and checks it when you sign in, including an invisible reCAPTCHA check against abuse.

Receives: Your phone number, IP address, browser and abuse-prevention signals, and the sign-in attempt. Google may keep the number for spam and abuse prevention under its own policies.

Cloudflare R2

Stores gaushala photos. Your browser uploads them to it directly and loads them from it.

Receives: Your IP address, the photo files you upload, and which photos you load. File names are chosen by Gaushala's server and carry no personal details.

WhatsApp (Meta)

Only if you press the WhatsApp button: it opens a chat with Mayash Foundation in WhatsApp.

Receives: Your WhatsApp number and whatever you choose to send, under WhatsApp's own terms and privacy policy. Gaushala adds only the greeting you see before you send it.

OpenStreetMap (tile.openstreetmap.org)

Draws the map when you place or look at a gaushala's pin.

Receives: Your IP address and which map tiles you load — roughly, the area you are looking at.

Gaushala uses no product analytics, advertising network, tag manager or other tracker. Nothing about you is sold, or shared for advertising.

Why we use it

• To give you an account and keep you signed in.
• To run the census: to count India's cows and buffaloes by breed, and the people who keep them.
• To review gaushalas before they count, spot duplicates and keep the totals honest.
• To let a gaushala's roster work on its record together.
• To keep the service secure and investigate abuse.

How long we keep it

• Your account and profile stay until you ask for them to be deleted.
• Sessions expire after 7 days without use, and signing out ends one straight away.
• Herd history and review history are the census record and are never rewritten. They stay when a count drops to zero or a herd group is removed. If your account is deleted, the history stays, without your name attached.
• Rosters: when someone leaves or is removed, the roster entry is kept, marked with the date, so a gaushala's history stays complete.
• Named animals and photos that are removed are marked removed and no longer shown. How soon a removed photo's file is erased from storage is not yet settled; if you need one erased, ask.
• Invitations lapse 30 days after they are sent; the record of the invitation is kept.

There is no self-service screen for deleting an account or a gaushala yet. Write to the Grievance Officer: requests are acknowledged within 24 hours and resolved within 15 days.

Your rights

Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, you may ask to access your data, correct it, or have it erased; you may raise a grievance about how it has been handled; and you may nominate someone to act for you if you are unable to.

You can correct your name and profile yourself in Settings, and a gaushala's admins can correct its record. Every other request goes to the Grievance Officer, and is acknowledged within 24 hours and resolved within 15 days. Erasing herd history is the one request that may be refused in part: it is the census record, so it can be kept without your name instead.

Children

Gaushala is for people aged 18 and over. It does not knowingly collect data about anyone younger, and will delete such data when told. Gaushala does not check anyone's age.

How we protect it

There are no passwords to steal: you sign in with a code sent to your phone. The session cookie cannot be read by page scripts. Every request is checked against your permissions on the server, which is where the rules above about who sees what are enforced. Photo files are named by the server and carry no personal details in their names.

Gaushala has not undergone any third-party security certification, audit or penetration test.

Changes to this policy

The date at the top of this page changes whenever this document does. If a change is material, Gaushala will say so in the app, not only here.