Privacy Policy

Pados is a billing and ordering app for shops in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. This page describes what the app collects, why it needs it, who else sees it, and how to have it removed. It covers the Pados Android app (business.pados.app) and this website.

The data fiduciary — the party that decides what is collected and why, in the language of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — is Anita Mridha, sole proprietor, trading as Pados, Harinagar, Billiground, North & Middle Andaman, Andaman & Nicobar Islands 744201. This page is also the notice that Act requires us to give you.

The short version: Pados collects what it needs to put a shop on a map and get an order from a customer to that shop. There is no advertising in Pados, no advertising identifier is collected, and no personal information is sold or handed to data brokers.

What is collected

Everyone with an account

• Email address and password. The password is stored only as a cryptographic hash, and cannot be read back by us or by anyone else.
• If you sign in with Googleinstead: the name, email address and profile photo on your Google account, supplied to us by Google when you approve the sign-in. We never see your Google password. This is only ever used to create and sign in to your Pados account — see “Google Sign-In” under service providers below.
• Name and phone number, so a shopkeeper can call you when your order is ready or a delivery cannot find the door.

If you shop on Pados

• Delivery addressesyou save, including a map pin if you choose to drop one. The pin is what answers “is this address inside the shop’s delivery range”; no address line can answer that.
• Your orders — what you bought, from which shop, for how much, and whether it was picked up or delivered.

If you run a shop on Pados

• Business details: shop name, type, phone, email, address, area and PIN code; and, if you enter them, GSTIN and a trade licence or registration number.
• Your shop’s locationas a map pin. This is the whole basis of “shops near me” and is shown publicly.
• Photos of your shop and your products, your logo, and any document you attach to a stock adjustment.
• Your UPI ID,so customers can pay you directly. See “Payments” below.
• Your business records: catalogue, stock movements, bills, invoices, expenses, and your own address book of customers.

From your device

• Location,when you allow it — once during shop setup to drop your shop’s pin, and while the app is open to list shops near you. Pados does not track location in the background and does not build a history of where you have been. If you refuse, the app asks which area you are in instead.
• Camera and photos,when you use them. Barcodes are decoded on the phone and the camera image is never uploaded. Photos you choose are uploaded, resized, and stored as your shop’s product images.
• A notification token,plus your phone’s model name and platform, so an order can ring the right phone. Removed when you sign out.
• A random device identifier generated by the app to keep two tills in one shop from clashing. It never leaves your phone.

Pados does not collect contacts, call logs, SMS, files outside those you pick, health data, or an advertising ID. There is no third-party analytics or advertising SDK in the app.

Why it is collected

Who else sees it

The shop you order from sees your name, your phone number, the delivery address you chose, and what you ordered. It cannot be otherwise — somebody has to pack the bag and find the door. A shop cannot see your account, your other addresses, or anything you ordered from any other shop.

A shop’s own data stays its own.One merchant cannot read another merchant’s catalogue, stock, customers or takings. This is enforced by the database itself rather than by the app, so a modified or rebuilt app cannot get around it. The single exception is the shared product catalogue described next, which the merchant controls and which carries no prices.

The shared product catalogue

So that a new shopkeeper can stock their shelf by tapping instead of typing several hundred items, Pados keeps one catalogue of products that every shop picks from. When a merchant adds a product, four things about it join that catalogue: the product name, the brand, the pack size, and the photograph if there is one.

Those are facts about a manufacturer’s packet, the same in every shop. Five things are never shared, with anybody, for any reason: what the shop paid for it, what it sells it for, the MRP it recorded, how many it has, and which shop the product came from. A contributed photograph is copied to a neutral location before it is shared, so its web address cannot identify the shop either — nobody can read the catalogue to work out what a particular shop stocks.

This is enforced by the database rather than by policy: the shared catalogue has no column capable of holding a cost or selling price. Merchants can switch their contributions off at any time under Settings → The shared catalogue, and keep full use of the catalogue either way.

None of this is personal information about a shopper. It concerns packets on a shelf, and no customer’s data forms any part of it.

Pados uses these service providers, and no others:

• Supabase — hosts the database, file storage and sign-in. Everything is stored on servers in Mumbai, India. Your data does not leave the country.
• Expo, together with Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging on Android and Apple’s Push Notification service on iOS — deliver notifications. A notification’s title and text pass through them.
• Google Sign-In — an optional way to sign in. If you use it, Google shares your name, email address and profile photo with us, as described above. We do not use it for anything else, and it is not used to track you outside Pados.
• Google Play — distributes the app.

Personal information is not sold, rented, or shared for advertising. It may be disclosed if a law or a valid legal order requires it.

Payments

Pados does not process payments and takes no commission. A customer pays the shop directly — cash, or UPI to the shop’s own ID. Pados never sees a card number, a UPI PIN, or a bank credential, because none of them are ever entered into it. Merchant subscription payments are made by UPI transfer and recorded as a reference number you supply.

Security

• Everything between the app and the servers travels over HTTPS.
• Data is encrypted at rest by the hosting provider.
• Who may read which row is decided by the database on every single query, not by the app. Sign in as one shop and the rows belonging to another shop are not merely hidden — they are never returned.
• A shopper’s view of a catalogue is served by a view listing only the columns a shopper may see. A shop’s cost price and stock count are not among them.

How long it is kept

Your account details are kept while your account exists. A shop’s bills, invoices and stock history are kept for as long as Indian law requires a business to keep its books, which is longer than any one customer relationship — see the next section.

Deleting your account

You can delete your Pados account at any time, from inside the app or from a browser:

• In the app: Account (or More, if you run a shop) → Delete my account.
• From a browser: padosandaman.in/delete-account, which works whether or not you still have the app installed.

Deleting removes your name, phone, email, saved addresses, notification devices, and your name from past online bills that do not legally require it.

Two things deliberately survive, and it is fairer to say so than to imply otherwise. A shop keeps its own record of a sale it made, the way it would keep a paper bill — a business is required to. And if you run a shop, deleting your account takes the shop off the map immediately, but its accounts stay in its books; Pados will not put holes in last year’s turnover.

Your rights

Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 you can ask us to:

• Tell you what we hold about you, and who we have shared it with.
• Correct or complete it if it is wrong — a misspelt name, an old phone number.
• Erase it, where we no longer need it for the purpose you gave it for and no law requires us to keep it. The section above says what that leaves behind, and why.
• Nominate somebody to exercise these rights for you if you die or become incapable of exercising them yourself.
• Complain, and get an answer within the timetable on the grievance page.

Write to pados.andaman@gmail.com from the address on your account. We answer within 15 days.

You gave consent for each of these purposes when you signed up or when you first turned a feature on, and you can withdraw it — by turning the permission off in your phone’s settings, or by deleting your account. Withdrawing consent does not undo what was lawfully done before you withdrew it.

If something goes wrong with your data

If personal data is exposed by a breach, we will tell the people affected and the Data Protection Board of India, as the DPDP Act requires, describing what happened, what it means for you, and what we have done about it.

Complaints

Our Grievance Officer answers privacy complaints as well as everything else: see Grievance Redressal for the name, phone number and timetable. If we do not resolve it, you can take it to the Data Protection Board of India.

Children

Pados is a tool for running and shopping at a business. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected or who sees it, the date at the top changes and the app will say so before the change takes effect.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or a request to see what is held about you: pados.andaman@gmail.com.

Anita Mridha, sole proprietor, trading as Pados
Harinagar, Billiground, North & Middle Andaman, Andaman & Nicobar Islands 744201