Chapter 23: Privacy, Safety and How KuhuChat Works

Yes. Type a name in English letters and KuhuChat also finds it when it is saved in your own language, and the other way round. For example, typing "Paresh" in English letters can find the same name written in Gujarati, Hindi or another Indian script. This is helpful when contacts, members and relatives were saved in different scripts.

Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Gujarati, Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Bengali (also used for Assamese), Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, along with English letters.

Not yet. Urdu names are matched only as they are typed.

• Contact search (Chapter 10, item 10.3) and the Contacts list order.
• Samaj search and Pehchan (Chapter 4).
• Group search (Chapter 13, item 13.8).
• Chat search, for messages written in your language (Chapter 10, item 10.11).
• Business search, for shops, products and services (Chapter 14, item 14.7).
• Diary search (Chapter 18).
• The order of names in the Family Tree (Chapter 5).

No. Names always appear exactly as they were written. The matching is used only to search and to sort.

The Contacts list and the Family Tree sort names by how they sound, so "Paresh" and its Gujarati spelling land together in A to Z order, instead of being split into one group per script.

Spelling varies a lot when a name is written in another script, so the search is forgiving and also shows close matches. Tap the person to check the full name.

No. It works automatically wherever you search.

Block them. Long-press the person in your Contacts list or your Samaj members list and tap Block. After that you cannot message each other, and you stop seeing each other's wall, family tree, business, status and radar pins. They are not told that you blocked them. See Chapter 3, item 3.6.

Yes. Once either of you blocks the other, the two of you are treated as blocked everywhere in the app. You can unblock from Blocked Users in the menu.

No. To join a Samaj you register with your caste and native village. From the 4th member of a village, a village admin must approve you first. Admins can also ask you to verify your identity, and two admins must agree before a request is rejected. See Chapter 1, item 1.5.

People who create a group can add the contacts they pick to it. Later additions come as an invitation that you can accept or reject. If you do not want to be in a group, you can leave it at any time. See Chapter 13.

Yes. New posts on your own wall wait for your approval and appear to others only after you approve them. See Chapter 9, item 9.3.

Posts can wait for approval by a village admin, admins can delete posts from their own origin village, and members can vote to remove a post. See Chapter 7.

Interests are sent and answered inside the app, contact details are shared only after both people accept, and you can block or report a profile. You can also delete your profile whenever you want. See Chapter 6.

After you reject an interest, the sender has to wait before sending another. See Chapter 6, item 6.6.

Each person can give one rating to a business, can change it but not stack it, and cannot rate their own business. See Chapter 14, item 14.12.

A person can send at most 3 group hotel requests a day. The login OTP also has limits: too many tries in a row shows "Too many attempts. Please wait a few minutes before retrying," and the daily SMS limit can show "SMS quota exceeded for today." See Chapter 1, item 1.1.

It can be banned. A banned account sees a screen with the reason and a Logout button and cannot use the app. If you think it is a mistake, contact us from the Contact page on kuhuchat.com.

Businesses are verified with government credentials, and a business appears in the verified Business Circle only with at least 2 verified credentials, including PAN. Unverified shops are shown separately and are marked Unverified. See Chapter 14.

For a matrimony profile, use Report. For anything else, contact us from the Contact page on kuhuchat.com with the person's name, the place it happened in and what you saw.

At the moment reporting is available for matrimony profiles. For messages and other content, block the person and contact us.

It depends on where you posted. Some things are deleted automatically to keep storage small and your feeds fresh. Save anything you want to keep before it expires.

• Chat photos, videos, voice messages and documents: about 30 days after they were sent. The file is deleted from our storage.
• Samaj Gallery posts: about 90 days after upload.
• Wall posts: about 15 days after they were approved, along with their photo, video, voice note or music.
• Doors on a wall: 5 days.
• Voice status: about 12 hours after you record it.
• Voice messages left for someone (the inbox): 2 days.
• Reminders: they are removed a few minutes after they go off.

Radar pins stay until you delete them. Your Diary threads, your family tree, your matrimony biodata (until it expires, see Chapter 6), your business, your khata and notes stay until you delete them.

No. Deleting is done by scheduled clean-ups that run every hour or once a night, so something can stay a little longer than the time above.

The photo, video, voice message or document is deleted from our storage. You can still see that the message existed in the chat, but the file cannot be opened any more.

Save it to your phone before it expires, or tag it to your Diary (Chapter 18).

Save the photo or video to your phone, or tag the post to your Diary before it expires.

Yes. Deleting a post also deletes its photo, video or voice file from our storage, not only the entry in the app. If the first attempt fails, the app retries it later so the file does not stay behind.

A gallery post still waiting for approval after about an hour is published automatically. See Chapter 7.

Counts for wall posts and pins are re-checked every hour, and posts that have expired are removed from them. See Chapter 2, item 2.3.

It is your login and your account ID. You can use KuhuChat only with your mobile number and a one-time code, and there is no password.

It turns the last 10 digits of each number into a scrambled code (a SHA-256 hash) and compares the codes. Your account also holds a scrambled code of your own number, so friends can be matched without KuhuChat showing a plain list of numbers.

After you log in, KuhuChat may sync your contacts automatically. It does this at most about once every 12 hours, never on every app launch. You can also sync by hand with the Sync button in the Contacts search.

The sync is skipped and your chats and groups still work. You can allow it later in your phone settings.

No. A browser cannot read your phone's contacts. It shows the contacts that your phone has already synced.

Messages and media links are encrypted with AES-256 and protected in transit. They are not end-to-end encrypted, because the keys are managed by KuhuChat so chats can be restored on a new phone. Do not share bank PINs or passwords in any chat. See Chapter 10, item 10.14.

Only what you choose to share. In your Samaj, admins of your village can contact members for verification, and the admin screen shows admins' phone numbers to members who are waiting for verification (Chapter 1, item 1.5). In Matrimony, contact details are shared only after both people accept an interest.

The Noise meter in the Toolbox uses the microphone only after you tap Start, and records nothing. Location is used only for features you open, such as radar pins, nearby business alerts, trips, the speed meter and location sharing, and live location stops when its timer ends or you stop it. Nearby business alerts need background location, which you must turn on yourself.

Payment happens on a secure form run by our hotel and payment partner. KuhuChat does not see or store your card details. See Chapter 21, item 21.5.

Photos, videos and voice notes are stored with our media storage partner, and your account data and messages are stored in our cloud database. Deleting a post also deletes its file (see 23.3).

Follow the steps in Chapter 2, item 2.8, or read Chapter 24 for the full details of what is deleted and what is kept.

On kuhuchat.com, in the Privacy page linked from the footer.

Partly. Chats you already loaded stay on your phone, so you can open and read them. Sending, receiving new messages, maps, hotel booking and most live features need internet.

KuhuChat keeps a copy of your recent chat messages on your phone, like most chat apps, so a chat opens straight away and does not go blank when your signal drops. When you are back online it catches up.

It waits in an outbox on your phone and is sent automatically when the connection returns. See Chapter 10, item 10.13.

They are kept in a quick-start copy on your phone, so they open at once even before the internet answers, and then refresh when it does.

It shows the saved copy first so it feels fast, then replaces it with fresh data. Pull down to refresh if a list looks old.

At login the app clears the chat and contacts copies saved on that phone and loads them again from your account. This keeps one person's data from showing up in another person's account on a shared phone. See Chapter 1, item 1.2.

All 20. Only opening a link from the QR scanner needs internet. Toolbox data stays on your phone (Chapter 22).

A saved trip opens without being built again, but its photos and map still load from the internet. See Chapter 20.

Clear old chats and media you no longer need, or clear the app's storage in your phone settings. Clearing the app's data signs you out and removes anything kept only on the phone, such as your khata and notes.

When you share a message, photo, gallery post or wall post out of KuhuChat to another app, the text ends with "Shared via KuhuChat" and the link https://kuhuchat.com. It helps people you share with find the app.

When you share from a chat, from the Samaj Gallery, from a wall post, and from the full-screen media viewer.

No. Results shared from a Toolbox tool, such as a bill or a quote, are shared as you made them, without the footer.

It is added automatically to what you share, but you can delete the last lines in the share box of the app you are sharing to before you send.

No. It has only the app name and our website, not your name, number or Samaj.