Privacy notice

Orbit is a private app for you and your friends. This notice says what personal data Orbit collects, why, how long it is kept, and how you can see, correct or erase it, or withdraw your consent. It is written to India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and its Rules.

Who is responsible

Orbit is run by Novarque, the data fiduciary for your personal data. Questions about how your data is handled go to our Grievance Officer at grievance@novarque.com.

What we collect, and why

• Your email address, to sign you in with a one-time code and to reach you about your account. It is never shown to your friends.
• Your first and last name, a photo and a short bio if you add them, so your friends know it is you.
• Your date of birth, to confirm you are 18 or older. It is never shown to anyone.
• Your gender (male or female), only to count, in total, who joins Orbit. It is never shown to anyone and never decides what you see.
• What you post: picks, photos and videos, songs, moods, plans, comments, reactions, questions and answers, so the friends you share them with can see them. Location data is stripped from every photo and video when it is uploaded.
• Saved places you import from Google Maps or Instagram, if you choose to: they stay drafts until you give each one a verdict, and drafts you leave undecided are deleted after 30 days.
• Your friends, and who invited you. Only you can see your friends list. Who invited whom is kept so every account can be traced to the person who let it in.
• Places you check in at: the place, never your coordinates. Your friends see it for 24 hours; after that only the place and the month are kept, to tell a friend who is going there that you have been.
• Your location and battery level, only while you share them. They are sent only while a live share is on, shown only to the friends you chose, and deleted when the share ends. There is no location history.
• Your device: its name and a notification token, to send you notifications and to show you where you are signed in.
• A one-way scrambled form of your network address while you sign in, to limit how many sign-in codes can be requested.

We do not collect your contacts, and Orbit never asks for an ID document.

Who can see it

What you post is visible only to the friends you share it with. Other Orbit members can search for you by name or Orbit ID. You can switch this off in Privacy. Nobody outside Orbit can see anything. There are no ads, and nothing you share is sold. One exception is yours to choose each time: a question you send to your friends' friends travels one ring further, and their answers come back unnamed unless they choose otherwise.

Our team looks at content only when someone reports it or when the law requires it. Companies that run parts of Orbit for us process data only to do that: Amazon Web Services hosts Orbit; Resend sends the sign-in code emails; Apple and Expo deliver notifications; Google provides places and maps; Tenor serves the GIFs you pick, and it sees your device's network address when a GIF loads.

Where it is kept

In India, on Amazon Web Services in Mumbai. The email that carries your sign-in code passes through Resend's servers, which are outside India.

When you use dish suggestions while writing a pick, the sentence you wrote is sent to Amazon's AI service, run for us under contract by Amazon Web Services, which does not keep it or train on it; it is processed in the Asia-Pacific region (India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia).

How long it is kept

• Your account and what you post: until you delete them, or delete your account.
• Stories: 24 hours. Sign-in codes: 10 minutes. Records of emails and notifications sent: 30 days.
• Live location and battery level: only while the share is on.
• Backups: copies expire within 30 days, so a deletion reaches the backups within 30 days.
• After you delete your account, we erase your profile, everything you posted, your friendships, your sign-ins and your email address, date of birth and gender. What remains is the account's internal number and the date it was deleted.

Indian law may require some records to be kept for a set time after an account is closed. Counsel is confirming which records and for how long; this notice will say so before Orbit opens beyond testing.

Your rights, and how to use them

• See a summary of the personal data we hold about you and who we have shared it with.
• Correct or update it. Your name, photo and bio you can change in the app.
• Erase it. Delete your account in the app, or ask us to delete it if you no longer have the phone.
• Withdraw your consent, as easily as you gave it. Orbit cannot work without the data above, so withdrawing consent means deleting your account.
• Name someone to use these rights for you if you die or cannot use them yourself.
• Complain to our Grievance Officer, and then, if you are not satisfied, to the Data Protection Board of India.

To use any of these, write to grievance@novarque.com from the email address on your account; that address is how we know the request is yours. We answer as soon as we can, and within 90 days at the most, the limit the Rules set.

Under 18

Orbit is only for people who are 18 or older. Sign-up is refused for a date of birth under 18, and an account we learn belongs to someone younger is deleted.

The waitlist

While Orbit is full, this website takes your first name, last name and email for the waitlist, for one purpose: to write to you once, when a spot opens for you. We first email you a link, and you are on the list only after you tap it. The website shows how many people are waiting as a number, never a name. If a friend's invite reaches you while Orbit is full, the app keeps your email and their code on the same list. The emails go through Resend, and a one-way scrambled form of your network address is kept with your entry, to limit how many can be sent from one place.

Your entry is deleted the day you join Orbit, a day after our last link if you never tap it, three days after we write to you about a spot if you do not join, and 180 days after you tap it if no spot has opened for you by then. To come off the list sooner, send us a deletion request from the address you gave us.

This website

orbit.novarque.com sets no cookies and runs no analytics or third-party scripts. Its fonts and photographs are served from the site itself.

Changes

If this notice changes, the app shows you the new version, and asks for your consent again where the law requires it.