Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 2026

1. What We Collect

This is written against what the Platform actually stores.

• Account — phone number, email address, how you signed in (Google, Facebook or phone), and the address of the website you registered on.
• Profile — name, alias, photograph, city, state, country, postcode, biography, collecting interests, themes, countries and formats collected, social links, and your visibility preference.
• Contact details — phone, email and postal address, held privately and released only on a request you are eligible to receive.
• Club membership — which clubs you belong to, your status and tier, when you joined, fees recorded, appeals, and past memberships.
• Payments — records of payments made and their reference numbers. Card and banking details are held by the payment provider, never by us.
• Your content — albums and their images, stamp identification submissions and results, exhibition entries, publications, testimonials, event registrations, votes, quiz attempts and course progress.
• Activity — follows, likes, bookmarks, profile views, notifications, searches performed, and a record of actions taken on your account or by you as a club administrator.
• Technical — your internet address, sign-in codes and their delivery status, and cookies needed for the site to work.

2. Why We Hold It

• To provide the service and your account.
• To let clubs manage their memberships and events.
• To let collectors find and contact one another, under your own visibility settings.
• To process payments and keep financial records.
• To keep the Platform safe, prevent abuse, and investigate problems.
• To improve the service, using aggregate rather than individual information.
• To meet legal and accounting obligations.

3. Sign-in Providers

Where you sign in with Google or Facebook we receive your name, email address and profile picture. We use these only to create and identify your account. We do not post anything on your behalf, and do not access your contacts, files or anything beyond basic profile information.

Where you sign in by phone, we send a one-time code and keep a record that it was sent, for security and troubleshooting.

Where a club runs its own website with its own sign-in setup, the sign-in happens through that club's arrangement with the provider. We receive the same basic information and hold it in the same way.

4. What We Share — and What We Never Do

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it for advertising.

We share only what is necessary:

• With clubs you belong to — your membership details and the profile information your settings allow. A club sees its own members, never another club's.
• With other members — only what your visibility setting permits, and contact details only on an eligible request.
• With service providers — our hosting, payment and stamp identification providers, to the extent needed to run those functions.
• Where the law requires it.

5. Stamp Identification and Images

Images you submit for identification are sent to a third-party automated service and are stored on the Platform along with the result. Where a gallery of identified stamps is shown publicly, your submission may appear in it. If you would prefer a submission not to appear, you may ask us to remove it.

6. Security

Access is restricted, passwords are never stored in readable form, and sensitive settings such as club sign-in credentials are stored encrypted with the key held separately from the database. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

7. Retention

• Account and profile — while your account is open, and until deletion is completed after that.
• Club membership history — retained by the club for its own records, including past memberships.
• Payment records — retained as long as accounting and tax law requires.
• Sign-in codes and security logs — a short period, for security and troubleshooting.
• Aggregate and anonymous information — may be kept indefinitely, as it no longer identifies you.

8. Cookies

We use only what the site needs to work: keeping you signed in, remembering your theme, and recording that you have seen the cookie notice. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

9. Children

The Platform is not intended for anyone under 18. If we learn that an account belongs to a child, we will remove it.

10. Changes and Contact

We may update this Policy and will note material changes on the Platform. For any question about your information, or to make a request, please use the Contact page on Philatelist.co.in.