Aroh · Privacy policy

What we keep, who sees it, and why.

Last updated 31 October 2026. Applies to thearoh.com and the app installed from it.

Who is responsible

Aroh is operated by ACT FOR IAS, run by Vikram Veer, Jal Vayu Towers, Lower Tank Bund, Hyderabad 500080, India. For anything about your data, message email hellothearoh@gmail.com.

What Aroh stores about you

• Who you are: your name, email address and phone number, as you gave them when you asked for access, and an optional payment reference if you typed one.
• Your account: a password (stored only in a scrambled form that no one can read back), an optional PIN of four to six digits (also stored scrambled), the display name, avatar and theme you choose, and your target date.
• Your study record: the tasks you tick, break days, topics and their revision dates, tests you log (attempted, correct and the error tags), focus sittings, plan items, journal and answer-writing entries, recall cards and your reviews of them, points awarded, badges and your leaderboard rank; for the UPSC profile, the dates on which achievements were earned and your decisions on linking an old revision topic to a syllabus topic.
• Cards you offer to the shelf: the text of any recall card you choose to share with other students, and any reports made on a shared card.
• If you buy a plan: the plan, the amount, the payment reference, and your name, email address and (where the payment gateway asks for it) your mobile number. Your card or bank details go to the payment gateway (Razorpay, Cashfree or Instamojo), never to us.
• A guardian's details, only if you or your mentor add them: a name and an email address for the weekly note described below.
• Technical records: the time of each sign-in attempt and the network address it came from (kept one day, to stop password guessing), remembered-device tokens for phones you chose to stay signed in on (60 days), a hash of your browser type while you are signed in, and a log of changes to your account such as a password change, which records that it happened and when but never the password itself.

Aroh stores a profile photo only if you add one. It does not store voice, video or any other file. It does not read your contacts, location or anything else on your phone.

The guardian email

If a guardian is on file and the weekly note is switched on, they receive one email a week about your effort: the days you logged, your consistency and whether you turned up. It never contains a test score, a reflection, a journal line, a recall card or a weak subject. That line is a rule of the product, not a setting, and it is written down here so that it cannot quietly change.

Who can see what

• You see everything of yours.
• Your mentor and Aroh admins see your study record, including reflections, answers and test notes, because mentoring happens on the back of them. They also see your name, contact details and sign-in history.
• Other students see only what the leaderboard and the pace partner feature show: a short form of your name, your avatar or the profile photo you added, your points, your streak and how many days you turned up. For the UPSC profile, every UPSC student on Aroh is on one weekly table, which also shows your study days, minutes studied, topics covered and questions answered, for the week and in all; the switch under Account decides only whether you see the table, not whether you are on it. They never see your notes, marks, weak subjects or contact details. A recall card you offer to the shelf becomes visible to them only after it has been approved by an admin.
• A guardian sees the weekly effort note and nothing else.
• In the Study Hall, other UPSC students see your name and picture, the subject you are studying, your time studied and, when they tap your seat, the syllabus topic and your time today. Your habits, tasks, goals and your own notes are never shown; you can use a nickname as your name. There is no chat between students: it was switched off on 28 October 2026. Notes sent before then are kept, and your mentor and Aroh admins can read them, so that the hall stays a safe place. Nothing in a video room is recorded by Aroh.
• The admissions team can see which days you logged, because the admissions records and Aroh share one database. They do not see what you wrote.

Cookies and similar things

Three cookies, all set by this site and none by anyone else: a session cookie that keeps you signed in for up to 60 days, a device cookie if you chose to stay signed in on a phone, and a cookie that remembers your look and whether you prefer light or dark. If you arrive on a public page from a link or another website, a fourth, aroh_src, keeps for 30 days only that site's name or the campaign words in the link (nothing about you), so that if you sign up we can count which link worked. It is never sent to anyone else. Visits to the public pages are counted as plain numbers per page and day, with no cookie and nothing about the visitor. A fifth, aroh_consent, remembers for 180 days whether you allowed the measurement tools described below. There is no advertising on Aroh. Inside the app, after you sign in, there is no analytics service or advertising pixel; on the public pages, the tools below load only if you allow them. The page fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which means your browser requests them from Google's servers; Google's own privacy policy applies to that request.

Measurement tools on the public pages

Aroh uses Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to measure which of our promotions on Google and Meta bring students here. No ads are shown on Aroh and nothing is used to personalise ads. These tools run only on the public pages (the home page, the sign-up and request pages, this page and the terms, and the public syllabus and past-question pages), only for visitors who are not signed in, and only after you press Allow on the bar at the bottom of the page. Until then, and if you press No thanks, nothing from them loads and nothing is sent to them. They never run once you are signed in, on the plans and payment pages, or in the admin and admissions pages. Allowing them lets Google and Meta measure our promotions (Google calls this ad storage and ad user data); ad personalisation stays off.

• Google Analytics (Google): the public pages you open, how you arrived (the link or the website), your device, browser and screen size, and your rough location from your internet address, with a random ID kept in its cookies (_ga, up to two years). Google's privacy policy applies.
• Google Tag Manager (Google): a container that loads the measurement set up in it by ACT FOR IAS on these pages. It records nothing about you itself; what it loads follows the same rule: only after Allow, only on these pages.

To change your mind: press Cookie choices at the foot of any public page and choose No thanks. The tools stop at once, and the cookies they set on this site are removed. Clearing this site's cookies in your browser does the same, and the bar will ask again.

Where it is kept and for how long

On a server operated by Hostinger, in a database only Aroh and the admissions app can reach. Daily backups are kept for 90 days and monthly backups for 24 months, so that a mistake can be undone. Your study record is kept for as long as your account exists. If your account is closed, your record is removed from the live database within 30 days and ages out of the backups on the schedule above. Sign-in attempt records are kept for one day.

Under 18

Some aspirants are under 18. If you are, a parent or guardian must have agreed to your using Aroh when you enrolled, and may ask us at any time to see or remove your record. We do not knowingly keep a record on anyone under 18 without that consent.

Your rights

You may ask to see everything we hold about you, have anything corrected, have the guardian note switched off, or have your account and record removed. Message us at the contacts above and we will do it within 30 days, usually much sooner. Nothing you wrote is ever deleted without your asking. If you believe we have not handled your data properly you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

Deleting your Aroh account

You can delete your Aroh account yourself, on the website or in the Android app, or ask us to do it:

1. Sign in to Aroh and open Account › Your data › Delete my account. Want a copy first? Tap Download my data on the same screen.
2. Or write to hellothearoh@gmail.com from the email address on your account, with the subject “Delete my Aroh account”. We do it within 30 days, usually the same day.

The account closes straight away and you are signed out on every device. Thirty days later everything is removed for good: your name, email address, phone number and photo, and your whole study record (study sessions, topics, timetable, habits, tests, PYQ answers, notes and revision). Changed your mind within those thirty days? Write to us and we put it back. Payment records (the payment reference, plan, amount, name and email address) are kept, because tax law requires us to keep records of payments; they are not used for anything else. Backups age out on their own: daily backups after 90 days, monthly backups after 24 months.

Changes to this page

If Aroh starts storing something new, or sharing it with someone new, this page changes first and a What's New note goes to every student. The date at the top is the date of the last such change.

Questions? hellothearoh@gmail.com