Privacy Policy

PSCNET publishes free study material for Indian competitive exams. This policy covers both places we publish it:

• the website at pscnet.in, and
• the PSCNET Android app (package com.csadeeb.pscnet) on Google Play.

In this document, “PSCNET”, “we” and “us” mean the people who run that website and that app, and “you” means anyone who reads or uses either of them. Where something is true of only one of the two, it says so.

You do not need an account to use PSCNET. Every notification, syllabus, question paper and mock test opens straight from the page, signed in or not. Registering is optional and unlocks nothing — it only changes the order material appears in. See What we collect for what an account stores.

Everything PSCNET collects, and the only reasons it is collected:

The information above is used to:

• show you the website and the app, and keep them working;
• publish your comment and reply to you about it;
• keep you signed in, and show your exams first, if you registered an account;
• send you a one-time code, by email or text message, when you choose to sign in that way;
• send the alerts you asked for, if you allowed notifications;
• understand which material is being used, so we know what to write next;
• show advertising, which is what pays for the material being free;
• find and fix faults, and keep out spam and abuse; and
• meet a legal obligation where one applies.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not trade or rent it to anybody.

Advertising is what keeps every paper, syllabus and mock test on PSCNET free to read. The website carries Google AdSense; the app carries Google AdMob.

Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or to other websites. Google’s use of advertising cookies lets it and its partners serve ads to you based on your visits to PSCNET and elsewhere on the internet. In the app, the same job is done by your device’s Advertising ID rather than by a cookie.

You can turn personalised advertising off. Doing so does not remove the ads; it makes them less relevant to you.

• On the web, at Google Ads Settings, and for other vendors at aboutads.info.
• On Android, in Settings → Privacy → Ads, where you can also delete or reset your Advertising ID.
• Cookies can be blocked or cleared in your browser’s own settings. Parts of the site may stop working if you block all of them.

Some advertising is filled by partners other than Google, who are listed publicly in our ads.txt file. They are bound by the same terms we are.

We measure which pages are read, so we can tell what is worth writing more of. Two things do this:

• Google Analytics, on the website and in the app. It records pages and screens opened, roughly where in the world the request came from, and what kind of device it came from. Read how Google uses data from sites that use its services, or install Google’s browser opt-out add-on.
• Our own analytics, running on this server rather than at a third party. It records the date, the page, the IP address and the browser user agent, and nothing leaves our hosting.

Neither one is used to build a profile of you as a person, and neither is joined to the name, email address or number you give when you comment.

PSCNET can send you an alert when a notification, result or new paper goes up. This only happens if you were asked and said yes.

In a browser, no other company is involved. Your browser gives us an address for itself and two encryption keys; we store those on our own servers and use them to send you alerts directly. We do not use a third-party notification service for this, and no analytics or advertising company receives the address. Which boards you get alerts about is worked out from the categories you read, or from the preferences you set yourself on your account page — and setting them yourself stops the automatic part.

In the Android app, alerts are delivered through Google Firebase Cloud Messaging, which holds a token identifying your app installation. Google’s notice is at firebase.google.com/support/privacy.

You can stop them at any time, and stopping them deletes what we hold:

• In a browser: through the site settings for pscnet.in, usually reached from the padlock in the address bar, or from the Alerts section of your account page.
• On Android: in Settings → Apps → PSCNET → Notifications.

We also delete the record ourselves, without being asked, the first time an alert cannot be delivered — which is what happens once you have turned them off, cleared your browser data or uninstalled the app.

This section is about the PSCNET app specifically, and is the part the Google Play listing points at.

Permissions. The app asks for network access, so it can fetch material; for permission to post notifications, if you want alerts; and for storage access on the versions of Android that still require it, so papers you download can be saved and read offline. It does not ask for your contacts, your camera, your microphone, your precise location, your call log or your SMS.

Software libraries. The app is built with third-party components that collect data of their own. Each one is bound by its own privacy notice:

• Google Play Services — the Google framework the app runs on.
• Google AdMob — the in-app advertising.
• Firebase Analytics and Crashlytics — usage measurement and crash reporting.
• Firebase Cloud Messaging — push notifications.
• Meta (Facebook) SDK — used for sharing and measurement.

Offline use. Papers and notes you download are stored on your own device. They are not copied back to us, and deleting the app deletes them.

Premium subscriptions. The app offers optional paid practice tools. Payment is taken by our payment processor, who handles the card, bank or UPI details directly. PSCNET never receives or stores them. All the material on the website stays free whether you subscribe or not.

We do not sell your personal information. It is shared only with the service providers that make PSCNET work, and only so far as each one needs to do its job: Google (Analytics, AdSense, AdMob and — if you use it — Google Sign-In), Firebase, Meta, ZeptoMail, which delivers our email, Fast2SMS, which delivers our text messages, our payment processor and our web host. Browser alerts are not on this list, because no other company is involved in delivering them.

Beyond those, we would disclose information only where the law requires it — a valid order from a court or a government authority — or where it is necessary to protect someone’s safety or our own rights. If PSCNET ever changes hands, this policy travels with it, and you would be told here before anything about it changed.

• Comments, and the email address and number attached to them, stay while the comment is published. Ask us and they go.
• Analytics is kept for the retention period set on our Google Analytics property, and by our own install for as long as the statistics are useful.
• Crash reports are held by Firebase Crashlytics for up to 90 days.
• Alert subscriptions — the browser address and keys, or the app token — are deleted as soon as you turn notifications off, clear your browser data or uninstall the app. We do not wait to be asked: the first alert that cannot be delivered removes the record.
• Account details — your name, email address, mobile and WhatsApp numbers, any linked Google account identifier, and the boards you follow — are kept while the account exists. Ask us to close it and they go with it.
• Sign-in codes sent by email or text message are held for ten minutes and then deleted, whether or not they were used.

Under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — and under the GDPR, if you are reading this from the EU or the UK — you can ask us to:

• tell you what we hold about you;
• correct it, if it is wrong;
• delete it, including a comment and the details attached to it;
• withdraw a consent you gave, such as notifications; and
• complain, if you think we have handled it badly.

Write to pscnet.in@gmail.com from the address you commented or registered with, or send us the link to the comment, and we will act on it within 30 days. There is no form to fill in.

If you registered an account: your WhatsApp number and the boards you follow can be changed or cleared yourself, at any time, from your account. Write to us to close the account altogether.

PSCNET is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from one.

Some of what we publish — the Kerala LSS and USS scholarship material — is written for pupils in Class 4 and Class 7, who will usually be under 13. That material is meant to be used with a parent or a teacher. It can be read and downloaded without giving us anything at all, which is how a child should use it. Commenting asks for an email address and a phone number, and registering asks for an email address, so both should be done by an adult.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe a child has given us personal information, write to pscnet.in@gmail.com and we will delete it.

The whole site is served over HTTPS, so what passes between your device and PSCNET is encrypted in transit. Access to the database and to comment details is limited to the people who run the site.

We use commercially reasonable means to protect what you give us. No method of transmitting or storing data is completely secure, though, and we cannot promise absolute security — nobody honestly can.

PSCNET links out constantly — to the Commission or board that issued a notification, to official result pages, and to the Google Play listing. Those sites are not run by us, and this policy does not cover them. When you follow a link away from PSCNET, read the policy of wherever you land.

This policy will be updated when what we do changes. The new version is posted on this page with a new date at the top, and it takes effect when it is posted. If a change is a significant one, we will say so on our WhatsApp and Telegram channels as well.

Because the Google Play listing points here, the version on this page is always the current one for the app too.

Questions about this policy, or a request to see, correct or delete what we hold, go to the same place everything else does. This is also the address for a grievance under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.