Privacy notice
Version 2026-08-24, last updated 2026-08-24. This is the notice required under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. The version changes when what we do with your data changes; the date changes when we correct or clarify the wording.
Your number plate is the only thing a stranger ever sees. We do not show them your name, phone number or email. Conversations delete themselves 24 hours after the last message. We can read message content if someone reports abuse — this app is not end-to-end encrypted, and we will not pretend otherwise.
Who we are
VehiCall is operated as a Data Fiduciary under the DPDP Act. Contact: developers_a@evenforce.com.
What we collect, and why
When you create an account
- Your email address and name from Google. The email is how we reach you about your own account — including, if it ever happened, a data breach. We are required to be able to contact you, so we cannot store only an anonymous identifier.
- A one-way hash of your Google account ID. This is how we recognise you on your next sign-in. We do not store the raw identifier.
When you add a vehicle
- Registration number, make, model, colour, and an optional private nickname only you see.
- A keyed hash of the plate, which is what we actually search on. The readable plate is stored so we can show you your own vehicle, and is never shown to anyone contacting you.
Photos of your vehicle
- You can add up to five photographs of the vehicle. These are optional. If you add none, nothing in this section applies to you.
- Anyone who scans your sticker can see these photos, from the moment they land on the scan page — before they message you, and whether or not they ever do. That is what they are for: they let the person standing next to a car confirm it is the right one.
- So treat them as visible to any stranger at your vehicle. Do not add a photo you would not show to someone already standing next to the car — and check what else is in the frame, such as a house number, a doorway, or another person.
- Reaching them requires the sticker’s code, or a live conversation started from it. They are not published and not indexed. Note that anyone who photographs your sticker holds that code too, and can see the photos without being at the vehicle.
- They stop being reachable when the sticker does. Generating a replacement sticker, or removing the vehicle, cuts off the old code and the photos with it. Inside a conversation, access also ends when the conversation does — 24 hours after the last message.
- You can delete any of them at any time, from the app. Deleting removes the file, not just the listing. Deleting the vehicle deletes its photos with it.
- These are not the same as a verification photo, and they are never used to decide whether a vehicle is yours.
When you verify ownership
- The photo you upload — a registration certificate, or a photo of the vehicle with a code we gave you. We keep this image until we delete it ourselves. We do that once it is no longer needed to settle who owns the vehicle — and immediately, always, if you close your account. After that we keep only a hash of it (so the same document cannot be reused for a different claim) and the decision itself.
- If you delete the vehicle before we have decided, we delete the image then too — you do not have to wait for a decision that is no longer coming. Anything left undecided for 30 days is deleted regardless.
- Where we keep a document rather than deleting it on a timer, the reason is ownership: if somebody later claims the same vehicle with a transferred registration, the earlier proof is what the decision rests on. You can ask us to delete it, and closing your account deletes it without asking.
- These images are stored outside our website’s public folder and are only ever opened by a reviewer acting on your submission. Every such opening is logged against that reviewer.
When someone contacts you
- The reason they chose and their message. The person contacting you does not need an account and we do not know who they are.
- Which sticker was scanned, and when.
- A hash of their IP address, used only to rate-limit abuse. We do not store the address itself.
Your profile
- Your name, if you enter one. Only you ever see it — the person who contacts you sees a pseudonym that lasts one conversation.
- Your email address, from your Google account. It is how we would tell you if something went wrong with your data, which is why it cannot be edited here.
- A mobile number, only if you choose to add one. It is optional, it is never shown to anyone who contacts you, and nothing about the product stops working without it.
If you ask for updates
There is one unticked box in your profile: “Send me occasional updates about VehiCall”. Tick it and we may email or text you about the product; leave it and we will not.
- It is a separate consent, not part of creating an account. We record what you chose, when, and which version of this notice was in force at the time.
- You can withdraw it in the same place, at any time, and nothing else changes when you do.
- We do not use your details for this unless you have ticked that box. If you have not, the only reasons we would contact you are the ones above: something about your vehicle, or something about your data.
If you allow calls or video calls
Calls do not work like messages, and the difference matters enough to spell out. A message travels through our server. A call does not: once it connects, audio and video flow directly between the two devices.
- Neither of you sees the other’s IP address. Calls are relayed through our own server, so each device connects to us and never to the other. Your address is not sent to the person you are speaking to, and theirs is not sent to you.
- We do not record calls, and we cannot: the audio never reaches our servers. Our signalling server passes only the messages that set a call up, and it does not read them.
- That a call happened — which sticker, when, how long — is kept like any other contact, and deleted on the same schedule.
This changed on 28 July 2026. Before that date calls connected the two devices directly and each side could see the other’s IP address; we said so here at the time. They are now relayed, and the addresses are not exchanged.
If you turn on notifications
- A push subscription from your browser. Notifications contain only “new message about your vehicle” and the reason code — never the message text, because notifications travel through Google’s or Apple’s servers.
Document expiry dates
- Entirely optional, and off unless you switch it on in Settings. If you never do, nothing in this section applies to you.
- The dates — when your insurance, pollution certificate, registration, fitness certificate or road tax runs out, and any note you choose to add about it.
- A scan, if you choose to add one. You can photograph a document in the app and we keep that copy in your account, so it is still there if you lose your phone. This is optional: the reminder works from the date alone, and you can remove a scan at any time and keep the date.
- How a scan is protected, stated plainly. It is held on our server, outside anything the web serves, and can only be fetched by your signed-in account — there is no public link to it, and guessing an address will not reach it. It is not encrypted in a way that stops us reading it. That is a deliberate choice: encryption tied to your handset would mean a lost phone lost your papers permanently, and being able to sign in somewhere new and find them still there is the point of keeping them here. If that trade is not one you want, use the dates without adding scans.
- We use them for one thing: reminding you before something lapses. They are never shown to anyone contacting you, and a household driver you have added to a vehicle cannot see them either — they are the owner’s.
- Turning this off deletes every date you have saved. Withdrawing consent means the data goes, not that it is hidden.
Looking a number plate up
- Entirely optional, and off unless you ask for it. If you never do, nothing in this section applies to you.
- What leaves VehiCall. The number plate, and nothing else. Not your name, not your email, not your phone number, and not any of your other vehicles. It goes to a vehicle registration lookup service so we can fill in details you would otherwise type.
- What comes back, before the vehicle is verified. What anybody could see standing next to it — make, model, colour, year, fuel and body type. We do not ask for anything more than that until you have proved the vehicle is yours.
- What comes back once it is verified as yours. When your insurance, pollution certificate, fitness certificate and road tax run out, the name of your insurer, and whether a lender has an interest in the vehicle. These are used to fill in your document reminders so you do not have to type them, and they are shown to you alone.
- It is a copy of a record, not proof of one. These dates come from a third party and can be out of date or missing altogether. Treat them as a prompt to check your own papers, not as confirmation that you are covered. If you correct a date yourself, we stop overwriting it — your version wins from then on.
- Turning it off deletes what came back — the looked-up details and every expiry date the lookup filled in. Dates you have corrected yourself are yours and stay.
Being reachable by your number plate
Once you verify a vehicle, another verified owner who types its full number plate can see that vehicle and message you. This is on unless you switch it off.
What they see: the number plate they already typed, and your vehicle’s make, model and colour, plus a photograph of the vehicle if you added one. They never see your name, your phone number or your email address — in either direction, at any point.
It is deliberately narrow, and the limits are part of the design rather than settings we happened to choose:
- Both sides must be verified. An unverified vehicle cannot be reached this way and cannot search.
- The whole plate, exactly. There is no partial match, no browsing and no list of vehicles — so somebody has to have seen the vehicle to reach it.
- It is mutual. You can only search from a vehicle that is itself reachable. Nobody can look you up from behind a curtain while staying hidden themselves.
- A block is one tap and works in both directions.
- The conversation still ends 24 hours after the last message, like every other one.
To turn it off: open the vehicle, then Settings, and switch off “findable”. It is per vehicle, so you can leave one car reachable and another not. Switching it off stops the disclosure immediately; it does not delete past conversations, which expire on their own.
What we do not collect
We do not ask for your phone number, address, gender, date of birth, or a photograph of you. We do not store your precise location. We do not track you across other websites, and there is no advertising here.
Encryption: what is and is not true
This app is not end-to-end encrypted.
Your messages are encrypted while travelling to and from our server, and the server itself is protected — but we hold the keys. That means our staff are technically able to read message content, and will do so when investigating a report of abuse or when legally compelled.
We are telling you this because other messaging apps do offer end-to-end encryption, and you may reasonably assume this one does. It does not.
How long we keep things
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Messages in an active conversation | Until it ends |
| A conversation | Ends 24 hours after the last message, then deleted |
| Verification photo | Kept while it is needed to settle who owns the vehicle, then deleted by us. Deleted at once if you close your account. An undecided submission is deleted after 30 days. |
| Photos of your vehicle | Until you delete them, or until you delete the vehicle |
| Record that a decision was made | Kept, so ownership disputes can be resolved |
| Contact records (who, when, which reason) | 90 days |
| Abuse reports | 1 year, or until the case is closed plus 90 days |
| Document expiry dates | Until you delete them, until you delete the vehicle, or immediately when you switch document reminders off |
| Scanned copies of documents | Deleted with their date, when you remove the scan, when you delete the vehicle, or immediately when you switch document reminders off |
| Details we looked up about a plate you own | Refreshed every 90 days; deleted when you delete the vehicle, or immediately when you switch the registry lookup off |
| Your account | Until you delete it |
Deletion is carried out by an automated job, not by someone remembering.
Backups, and the delay they add. We take a backup every night so that a disk failure cannot lose the documents you asked us to keep. That backup contains whatever was in the system at the time, so something you delete today can survive in a backup for up to 30 days before it is rotated out and destroyed. Backups are encrypted at rest, are never used to serve the app, and are only ever opened to recover from a failure.
Who else sees your data
- Google — because you sign in with a Google account. Google knows you signed in to VehiCall.
- Google or Apple push services — they deliver notifications. They see that a notification was sent, not its content beyond “new message about your vehicle”.
- A vehicle registration lookup service — only if you ask us to look a plate up. We send the number plate. Nothing else about you goes with it: not your name, not your email, not your phone number, and not any of your other vehicles. This is off unless you turn it on, and turning it off again deletes what came back.
- Other verified owners — one who types your vehicle’s full number plate sees that vehicle and can message you, unless you have switched findability off. Never your name, number or email. See being reachable by your number plate above.
We do not sell your data. We do not share it with advertisers or data brokers. We will disclose data if legally compelled, and will tell you unless we are barred from doing so.
Where your data lives
On servers in India.
Your rights
- See what we hold about you. Do it yourself, instantly: Your data and rights, or in the app under Settings → Your data and rights. It is assembled the moment you ask and you can download the whole thing.
- Correct anything wrong. Your profile, your vehicles and your consents are editable in the app.
- Withdraw consent for anything optional, as easily as you gave it — every optional purpose has a switch in Settings, and turning it off deletes what it covered.
- Nominate someone to act for you if you die or become incapacitated. In the app, under Settings → Your data and rights.
- Delete your account and its data, yourself, in the app under Settings → Your data and rights. You are signed out immediately and everything we hold is deleted from our systems within minutes; it rolls out of our backups within 30 days. Two things are kept: reports filed against you, while a case is open — you cannot delete your way out of an abuse investigation — and the fact that your plate was verified, as a one-way hash with no name attached, so nobody else can claim it as theirs.
- Complain to us, and then to the Data Protection Board of India.
For the ones that are not self-serve, or if anything above does not work, email developers_a@evenforce.com.
Children
You must be 18 or over to hold an account. Someone contacting you by scanning a sticker does not need an account, and we do not knowingly build a profile of them.
Grievance Officer
If something here is wrong, or we have not done what this notice says, this is the person responsible for putting it right.
Srinath Rao
developers_a@evenforce.com
#325, 2nd Floor, Rudrappa Complex, 8th Main Road, 3rd Stage, 4th Block, Basaveshwar Nagar, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560079, India
We acknowledge within 48 hours and aim to resolve within 30 days.
Changes
If we materially change what we collect or why, we will ask for your consent again rather than quietly updating this page.