Privacy policy
- Version
- 2026-11-01
- Published
The short version
- The Starly is run by the business named on our Contact page. We decide what personal data is collected and why.
- We keep what you give us so Starly can give you readings: your account, what you write to Starly, your journal, your moods and the people you save. Some of it may be sensitive, such as your health, feelings, relationships, beliefs or sexuality.
- Starly is an AI. To write your readings, what you write is sent to OpenAI, outside India. OpenAI doesn't use it to train its models.
- The words of your conversations and full readings are cleared after 30 days. Your journal, its pictures and your saved people stay until you delete them.
- We never sell your data and there are no ads.
- You can download your data, free, at any time, and delete your account in the app.
- For a question or complaint, use our Contact page.
1. What we collect and why
| What | Why we need it |
|---|---|
| How you sign in: your email address through Google, or your phone number if you sign in with WhatsApp | To create your account and sign you in |
| Your name, a nickname if you add one, your time zone, your settings, and a profile photo if you add one | So Starly knows what to call you and when your day starts |
| That you confirmed you are 18 or older, which version of this policy and the terms you agreed to, and when | To show you agreed, and to keep the service for adults |
| Your date of birth, birth place and birth time, if you add them | Your age and star sign help personalise readings. Birth place and time are not used yet. If we start using them we will tell you first. You can remove them at any time |
| Your answers when you start, and your mood check-ins | To shape your first conversation and your home screen |
| What you write to Starly and what Starly writes back | To give you readings and replies, and to write your journal |
| Your readings: the question, the cards, a short summary and the full reading | So you can look back at them |
| Your daily readings: the card and who it was about, and Starly's message for that day | For your history |
| Your journal, and the short passages and note Starly makes from it | It is yours to keep, and it is how Starly remembers you (section 4) |
| Pictures you add to your own journal entries, at most two on each. We keep the picture itself, not where or when it was taken | They are yours to keep with your entry. They are private to you: nobody else sees them in the app, and they are never sent to OpenAI or used by Starly. Section 8 says when the people who run the service can reach stored files |
| People you save in My People: a name, how you know them, and anything else you choose to add, such as a birthday, their work, a note or a photo | So readings can be about someone in your life (section 5) |
| A safety record: that a safety step happened or that Starly declined a topic, with its kind and time, and that you reported a reply and why. Never your words | To keep you safe and to check that our safety features work |
| Your plan, your questions used, your payments (amount, date, kind of payment and Razorpay's reference numbers), your invoices and credit notes | To run your plan and to meet GST law. We never see or keep your card, bank or UPI details |
| Your state, which you give at checkout | GST law needs it on your invoice |
| Where you first came to us from: a campaign's name or the website that linked to us | To understand which ways of finding us work |
| Counts of what is used in the app, such as "a reading was opened", and what each AI request cost. Never your words | To improve the app and keep costs in check |
| Complaints you send us: the words, the topic and, if you aren't signed in, the email or number you give | To answer you |
| Technical records: when you signed in, and our server's logs, which hold your internet address, your browser's details, the page asked for and the time | To keep the service secure and working. Our logs never hold what you write to Starly |
Sensitive information. Conversations and journal entries may include your physical or mental health, your relationships, your beliefs or your sexuality. You decide what to share. We use it only to give you readings and to keep you safe, and we protect it as section 8 describes. By agreeing to this policy you agree that we may hold and use it for that purpose, including sending it to the services in section 3.
What you don't have to give us. Only your sign-in, your name and the two confirmations at the start are needed. Everything else is optional. If you leave it out, some features won't be personal to you.
2. The landing page, before you have an account
Our landing page lets anyone take one free card a day and join a waitlist for an invitation. It can also offer two free questions to Starly.
| What | Why we need it |
|---|---|
| The free card: the card, whether it was upright or reversed, the topic you chose and the India date, filed under a random code in a cookie on your device, never under your name or contact | So you get one card a day and can see your recent cards |
| The waitlist: the email address or WhatsApp number you give. It is stored encrypted, with a one-way code to spot the same contact joining twice and a partly hidden copy to show you which contact you used | To invite you in the order people joined, and to tell you about the launch. Nothing else |
| When you joined, the words you agreed to, whether you had turned a free card first, and which campaign or website brought you | To show you agreed, and to learn how people find The Starly |
| Your free questions and Starly's readings, the language and the area of life they were about. They may touch your health, mental health, relationships, beliefs or sexuality | To write your reading |
| The cards drawn for them, filed under a random code in a cookie on your device | To show your cards again if you come back |
| That this device agreed, how many free questions it has used, and a pause after a crisis | To keep the offer at two free questions per device |
| If something you write sounds like you may be in danger: Starly's replies to you in the box under the helplines, and what you write there | To keep talking with you |
| That a safety step happened, with its kind and time, without your words or any code for your device | To check that Starly's safety steps work |
The free questions. You tick two boxes first: that you are 18 or older, and that you agree we send what you ask to OpenAI to write your reading. Your internet address is used, only as a one-way code, to limit how often free questions can be asked from one connection, and that code is deleted within a day. Our server's logs are separate (section 6). Cloudflare Turnstile checks that you are a person and not a bot. It runs in your browser and sees technical details of your device and connection, never your question.
Invitations. We send invitations ourselves, using the contact you gave. Each one carries a link to leave the list.
Sending invitations. To send them we make a short working list on our own computer, which we delete once they have gone out.
Leaving. Use "Leave the waitlist" on the page, the link in your invitation, or the Contact page. Leaving deletes your entry at once, and an invitation you haven't used goes with it.
3. Who we share it with
We share only what each service needs to do its job for us. These companies act for us, under their service terms with us. What goes outside India goes there so we can give you the service you agreed to. We never sell your data and there is no advertising.
| Who | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | Writes Starly's replies and readings, checks messages for safety, and helps Starly find the relevant parts of your journal. It receives what you write, your recent conversation, relevant passages from your journal, a short note of your story, your name or nickname, your age and star sign (not your birth date, place or time), your answers when you start, today's mood, how long you like replies, and the details of any saved person a reading is about (not their photo, birth date or birth time). It never receives your journal pictures. It also receives whole conversations and journal text, to write your journal entries and the short notes Starly keeps, and free questions from the landing page | Outside India |
| Supabase | Stores your account, your data and your photos | Mumbai, India |
| Hostinger | Runs our server, which makes, tests and keeps encrypted backups | Mumbai, India |
| Razorpay | Takes your payments. What you type into its payment window goes to Razorpay. We keep only its reference numbers | India |
| Signs you in, only if you choose Google | May be outside India | |
| Meta (WhatsApp) | Sends your sign-in code, only if you sign in with your number | May be outside India |
| Cloudflare | Checks that a free question comes from a person, not a bot. Never sees your question | Worldwide |
OpenAI. OpenAI's terms say it does not use what we send to train its models. We ask it not to store our requests, but it may keep them for up to 30 days to check for misuse, and longer only where the law requires. Deleting something here doesn't delete a copy OpenAI is holding for that time.
When the law requires it. We may share information with a government agency or court when the law requires us to, and we share only what is asked for.
If the business changes hands. If The Starly moves to a new owner, your data moves with it under this policy, and we will tell you before anything changes.
4. How Starly remembers you
Starly's memory comes from your journal and My People. It uses short passages of your journal and a short note of your story drawn from it. When you change or delete anything, those passages and the note are deleted or rebuilt. Your profile, your answers when you start and today's mood also shape a reply, as section 3 says.
You can turn off "Remember my conversations" in your profile, and "Forget everything" clears what Starly has learned.
If a conversation shows you might be at risk, nothing more from it is written in your journal, and Starly doesn't use any of it in replies. Anything written before stays in your journal for you, marked.
Rules, not the AI, decide your card draws, your plan, your payments and what you can open. The AI's safety check decides whether a message gets the safety path, and a clear danger phrase always does.
5. Information about other people
When you ask about someone, or save them in My People, you give us information about a person who has not signed up. Please add only what a reading needs, only about people you know, and nothing that could harm them. Don't add details of anyone under 18 beyond a name and how they're related to you. We use it only for your own readings: we never contact them, never show it to other users and never use it for anything else. It reaches the services in section 3 only as that section says, so a saved person's details go to OpenAI when a reading is about them. Saved people stay until you delete them. Anyone you asked about but did not save is deleted after 30 days. A name stays in the questions and journal entries you wrote it into.
When you paste a reply from another AI app to add people, the pasted text is read on your device and is not sent to us. We keep only what you choose to add, and phone numbers, email addresses, account and ID numbers and addresses are left out before you see the result.
If you think we hold information about you because someone else added it, write to us through the Contact page. You can ask to see, correct or delete it, and we answer within the times in section 10.
6. How long we keep it
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| The words of your conversations and full readings | Cleared after 30 days |
| The questions you asked, the cards and the summary of a reading | Until you delete your account |
| Starly's daily message | That day only |
| People you asked about but did not save | 30 days |
| Your account, profile, journal and its pictures, saved people, moods and safety records | Until you delete them or your account |
| After a plan ends | Everything stays free for 60 days. After that, nothing is deleted without telling you first |
| Payments, invoices, credit notes and your state | Kept without your name after your account is deleted, until 72 months after the due date of that year's GST annual return, as GST law requires |
| Payment events from Razorpay | 90 days |
| Your free card | 31 days |
| Your free questions and readings | Usually about two hours, and deleted within a day. The cards drawn for them, 30 days |
| Your device's free-question record | 180 days after your last visit |
| Your waitlist entry | Until you leave, or 60 days after your invitation is sent |
| Safety steps on the landing page | 180 days, with no link to you |
7. Your choices and rights
- See and download your data. "Download my data" in Your data and account gives you your account, conversations, readings, journal, saved people, plan and payments in one file, free, at any time, whatever your plan. For a copy of anything else we hold, such as a complaint, write to us.
- Correct it. You can change your profile, journal and saved people in the app, or write to us.
- Delete it. Delete single entries or people in the app, or delete your account in Your data and account. Deleting your account first stops any renewal, then removes everything except what section 6 says we keep or the law requires us to keep.
- Withdraw your consent. You can withdraw at any time by deleting your account in the app or by writing to us. We can't run your account without the consent you gave at the start, so withdrawing it ends the account. To stop Starly remembering, you don't need to go that far: use the switch in section 4. What we did before stays lawful.
- Name someone to act for you. You can write to us to name a person who can use these rights if you die or can't act yourself.
- Complain. Write to our grievance officer (section 10). From about May 2027, when those parts of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 start, you can also complain to the Data Protection Board of India if you aren't satisfied with our answer.
8. How we protect it
- Your main database is in Mumbai, India, and only our server and the few people who run the service can reach it. What you write goes to OpenAI to write your readings, as section 3 says. Your browser never talks to the database directly, and every person's data is walled off from everyone else's, with tests that check it.
- Connections are encrypted, and backups are encrypted when they are stored.
- Our staff panel shows account and billing records, with your phone and email partly hidden, and each time a record is opened it is logged. It doesn't show your conversations, journal, saved people or birth details.
- The few people who run the service have technical access to the server, the database and stored files, such as photos and pictures. They use it only to keep the service running, to fix a fault you or we find, to answer a complaint you send, or when the law requires it. The words of a complaint are read by the person handling it.
- Our logs never contain what you write to Starly.
If a security incident affects your data, we will tell you and report it as the law requires.
9. Cookies and your browser
We use a few small cookies, all set by us. None is for advertising.
| Cookie | What it does | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Sign-in cookies, named sb-(project)-auth-token | Keep you signed in. Set only after you sign in | Up to 400 days |
| starly-auth-next | Returns you to the right page after signing in with Google | 10 minutes |
| starly-first-visit | Remembers where you first came from until you sign up. Set on your first visit | 30 days |
| starly-channel | Notes whether you use the website or the installed app, for our counts | 1 year |
| starly-theme | Remembers light or dark | 1 year |
| starly-card | A random code that files your free card | 35 days |
| starly-waitlist | Remembers that this device joined the waitlist, so you can see the contact you used and leave | 1 year, or until you leave |
| starly-free | A random code that files your free questions. Set only once you tick the two boxes | 180 days |
| starly-admin, starly-admin-browser, also with the prefix __Secure- | Staff only, never set for customers | The session; 90 days |
Two more exist only on pages the public can't open: starly-palette, a colour choice on our internal design page (30 days), and starly_probe, a one-minute test cookie for checking the server.
Other companies. Razorpay's payment window and Cloudflare's check load from those companies' own sites, only on the pages that need them, and may use their own cookies or storage under their own policies.
Your browser. The app also saves a few things on your device only. Words you have typed but not yet sent are held for that browser session, so nothing is lost if your connection drops, and are cleared when you sign out. It also saves small settings, and a copy of the app's files so it can open offline.
10. Questions and complaints
Our grievance officer and how to reach them are on our Contact page, or you can send a complaint from the complaint page, signed in or not. You get a ticket number and a copy of your complaint as we recorded it on screen straight away, and, if you're signed in, you can see where it stands under Your complaints.
We reply within 48 hours. We work to resolve every complaint within 7 days, and never later than one month.
11. Who can use The Starly
The Starly is only for people aged 18 or older. If you tell us, or we learn in another way, that an account belongs to someone younger, we close it and delete its data, except payment records the law makes us keep. We don't knowingly collect children's data, and we don't track or advertise to children.
12. Changes to this policy
When we change this policy we publish a new version here with its date. If the change affects you, we ask you to agree the next time you open the app. Until you do, you can still download your data or delete your account, which first stops any renewal.