ap7am

Privacy Policy

Effective Date: July 11, 2025
Last Updated: November 13, 2026

ap7am.com ("AP7AM", "we", "us", or "our") respects your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, process, and safeguard information when you visit https://www.ap7am.com and use our related websites and services (collectively, the "Services").

By using our Services, you acknowledge the practices described in this Privacy Policy. Where applicable law requires consent for particular cookies, analytics technologies, audience measurement tools, advertising technologies, or other processing activities, we seek that consent separately through our Consent Management Platform ("CMP") or another appropriate mechanism.

1. Information We Collect

1.1 Automatically Collected Information

When you visit or interact with our Services, we and our authorised service providers may automatically collect certain information through cookies, tags, pixels, device storage, server logs, scripts, and similar technologies.

This information may include:

  • Browser type and version
  • Operating system
  • Device type and device characteristics
  • Referring and exit URLs
  • Pages viewed and articles accessed
  • Date and time of visits
  • Time spent on pages
  • Website interactions and browsing activity
  • IP address
  • Device or browser identifiers
  • Approximate geographic location derived from IP address
  • Advertising and measurement identifiers
  • Information relating to how advertisements are displayed or interacted with

This information is generally used in aggregated, pseudonymised, or otherwise non-directly identifying form for purposes such as website operation, analytics, audience measurement, advertising, security, fraud prevention, traffic quality analysis, and improving our Services.

1.2 Information You Voluntarily Provide

You generally do not need to provide personal information to read or access our news content.

However, you may voluntarily provide information when using features such as:

  • Contact forms
  • Feedback forms
  • Newsletter subscriptions
  • Business or advertising enquiries
  • Other communication forms made available through our Services

Depending on the form or communication, the information may include:

  • Name
  • Email address
  • Phone number, where requested
  • Company or organisation name, where applicable
  • Message content
  • Other information you choose to provide

We use this information for purposes such as responding to enquiries, providing requested information, handling feedback, managing business communications, and providing services you have requested.

We do not sell information submitted through these forms for advertising purposes.

Form submissions reach us by email through our email delivery provider and are kept as business correspondence. With each submission we record the time and the IP address it came from, to deal with abuse and spam; the IP address is also used, in the server's memory only, to limit how many submissions one address can make. Feedback sent from a story carries that story's reference. Our forms are protected by Google reCAPTCHA, which collects device and browser information to tell people from automated programs; the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply to it.

1.3 Telugu Typing Tool and Other Browser Tools

Our Telugu typing tool works in your browser. What you type there is not sent to us, with one exception that you can turn off: when you tap a suggestion to correct a word, the English letters of that word, the Telugu word you chose and the word the tool had suggested are sent to us.

We store these corrections without your IP address, without any identifier and without any other text you typed, so they cannot be linked to you. (The request itself passes through our hosting and content-delivery providers like any visit to our Services, as described in section 1.1.) Our editors review the corrections that many readers make, and approved corrections are used to improve the tool's suggestions for everyone.

You can stop sending corrections with the checkbox on the tool's page. Your text, the typing mode you chose, your own selections and that setting are kept only in your browser.

Voice typing is off unless you tap the microphone on the tool's page and agree to start it. It then uses your browser's own speech-recognition service, not ours: Google Chrome sends your speech to Google, and Safari to Apple, to turn it into text, under their own privacy policies. We do not receive, record or store your voice. The text it produces goes into the tool's box, which stays in your browser as above. Your browser asks for permission to use the microphone, and you can withdraw it in your browser's settings at any time.

Our other tools, such as the PDF and image tools, the calculators and the calendar, also work entirely in your browser: the files, pictures and numbers you choose or enter are processed on your device and are not uploaded to us. Some tools download their software or a machine-learning model from our content servers or from Google's when you first use them; that download is an ordinary web request as described in section 1.1. Sharing a calculator result creates a short link that stores the numbers you entered (section 2.2).

1.4 Personalised Story Recommendations ("More for you" and "For you")

Under Telugu stories we show "మీ కోసం మరిన్ని" (More for you), and the home page's "తాజా వార్తలు" box has a "మీ కోసం" (For you) tab. These pick stories for you from what readers of the same story went on to read, what is being read most at the moment, stories on the same subject, and your own reading on this device. During a trial period they are shown to half of our readers, chosen at random by a number stored in your browser; the other half see the pages as before, so that we can compare the two.

What stays on your device. The following is stored only in your browser (local storage, ap7am_reco) and is never sent to us:

  • the ids of the stories you opened in the last 7 days (at most 100), and whether you read each one, so that they are not recommended to you again;
  • a weight for each news category, and for each political party that the stories you open are about, which fades by half every 14 days; it ranks stories by your interests. Opening a story counts a third; the rest is added only once you have read most of it or stayed on it a while, so a headline you open and leave weighs little;
  • the stories you marked "not interested" with the ✕ on a card, for 30 days;
  • the categories and parties you chose to follow with the ☆ "show more of these" buttons, until you unfollow them;
  • when you were last here, so that stories published since then can rank higher;
  • the stories shown to you in these lists that you did not open, for 7 days, so that they are shown less and, after a few passes, not at all, and the topics you passed over on the home page;
  • your random trial number, which decides whether you see the recommendations.

The ranking itself happens in your browser; we do not receive this profile and cannot see it. The home page also keeps the tab you last chose and when you last left it (ap7am_home_tab, ap7am_home_seen), and the layout variant of the current browser session. Clearing your browser's site data for ap7am.com deletes all of this, and the feature starts afresh.

Your controls. The ✕ on a card marks a story "not interested": it is not shown to you again and its topic counts a little less. The "మీ కోసం" tick, in the chip row under any Telugu story and in the home page's "మీ కోసం" tab, is green while personalisation is on, which is the default; tapping it turns it grey, deletes this profile at once and stops it being built: nothing more is remembered on your device or sent to us, and the lists are then the same as for a new reader until you turn it on again. Your random trial number is kept so that the pages you see do not change.

What is sent to us.

  • Stories read together. When you open a Telugu story within three hours of other Telugu stories on this device, and personalisation is on, your browser sends us the ids of those stories (at most three) and of the one you opened. We add one to a count of how often those stories are read together on that day. The message carries no identifier, cookie or account; the IP address of the request is used only in the server's memory to limit abuse and is never stored with the counts. The counts are kept per day for 14 days and then deleted.
  • Home page counts. When you leave the home page, your browser tells us whether the box was seen, on which tab, whether you opened a story from it, and which layout variant you had. We add one to daily counters per trial group and variant; nothing about you or your device is included.
  • Analytics. Our analytics (section 3) record which trial group a visit belongs to, and views of and clicks on these lists, as they do for the other lists on the site.

On AMP pages (opened from Google search results) the same cards are shown to every reader, from the read-together counts alone; nothing about you is stored or sent for them. These recommendations involve no decision with legal or similarly significant effects on you: they only change the order of news stories offered to you.

2. Cookies, Local Storage and Similar Technologies

We and our authorised service providers may use cookies, browser storage, tags, pixels, scripts, device identifiers, and similar technologies.

These technologies may be used for:

  • Remembering preferences
  • Maintaining website functionality
  • Measuring website performance
  • Measuring audience reach, traffic, and engagement
  • Understanding how visitors use our Services
  • Providing content recommendations
  • Detecting fraud, abuse, bots, or invalid traffic
  • Measuring advertising performance
  • Displaying contextual or interest-based advertisements
  • Limiting how frequently particular advertisements are displayed

Some technologies are necessary for the operation and security of our Services. Other cookies and technologies, including certain analytics, audience measurement, and advertising technologies, may require consent depending on your jurisdiction.

Where required by applicable law, you can manage your choices through our cookie consent banner or Consent Management Platform.

You may also control or delete cookies through your browser settings. Disabling some technologies may affect certain website functions or the relevance of content and advertisements displayed to you.

2.1 Our Own Cookies and Browser Storage

Besides the third-party technologies described in sections 3 to 5, ap7am.com itself keeps the following in your browser. None of it is sent to us unless a section of this policy says so, and clearing your browser's site data for ap7am.com removes all of it.

  • Display settings (ap7am_theme, ap7am_text_size): the light or dark theme and the story text size you chose in the "Aa" menu. Kept until you change them.
  • Recently opened stories (visitedArticleIds): the ids of stories you opened in the last 3 days, so related-story lists do not repeat them.
  • Politics page order (partyVisitCounts): how many stories about each political party you have opened, so the Politics page lists the parties you read most first. Stays on your device.
  • List click relay (ap7am_rec, session storage): when you open a story from a list, the list's name is kept for up to 30 seconds so that the story page can report the click to our analytics (section 3).
  • Install prompt (ap7am_install_dismissed_at, ap7am_app_installed): whether you dismissed or accepted the prompt to install ap7am as an app, so that we do not ask again.
  • Full-screen advertisement (cookie ap7am_rb_seen): set when a full-screen advertisement has been shown, so that it is not shown again for 10 minutes. Expires after 10 minutes.
  • Calculator share links (ap7am_sl): the short links made for calculator results you shared (section 2.2).
  • Tools: the settings of our browser tools, such as the Telugu typing mode and your choice about sending corrections (section 1); and, only if you tick "Remember my signature on this device" in Sign PDF, the picture of your signature and initials (ap7am-sign-pdf), kept until you tap Forget there or clear this site's data. It is never sent to us. OCR PDF keeps the Telugu and English reading models it downloads from us (ap7am-ocr, browser storage), so they download only once; they hold nothing about you or your documents, and "Forget the downloaded models" on that page removes them. Image to Text and Telugu PDF to Unicode use the same models, and remember the words you corrected there (ap7am:telugu-ocr:fixes: each word as it was read and the word you chose, the newest 500) so the same misreading is fixed for you next time; they stay in this browser, are never sent to us, and "Forget my fixes" in either tool removes them. With "Better Telugu reading" on (ap7am:telugu-ocr:better keeps that choice), your browser downloads a second Telugu reading model (about 22 MB) from ap7am once and keeps it with the other reading models until you choose "Forget the downloaded models"; your pictures and PDFs are still read on your device and never uploaded.
  • Personalised recommendations: the reading profile, chosen tab and layout variant described under "Personalised story recommendations" in section 1, where that feature is on.
  • Consent choices: the consent management platform records the choices you make in the cookie banner, under its provider's policy (section 5).

2.2 Share Links for Calculators

When you share a calculator result, we create a short link (ap7am.com/sl/…) that stands for the calculator and the numbers you entered. Those numbers are stored with the link on our servers so that the link can be opened, and anyone who has the link can see them. They are not linked to you: no name, address, identifier or IP address is stored with them. Please do not use the share buttons for numbers you consider confidential. Share links for stories contain only the story's id and store nothing.

3. Analytics and Audience Measurement

3.1 Google Analytics

We use third-party analytics services, including Google Analytics, to understand how visitors interact with our Services.

Google Analytics and related technologies may collect information such as:

  • Pages visited
  • Session duration
  • Referral sources
  • Browser and device information
  • Approximate geographic information
  • User interactions with our Services

Where permitted, we may use Google Analytics advertising-related functionality, including:

  • Demographics and Interest Reporting
  • Google Display Network Impression Reporting
  • Advertising reporting features
  • Remarketing-related functionality

These services may use first-party cookies, Google advertising cookies, device identifiers, or similar technologies.

We do not intentionally combine personally identifiable information submitted directly to AP7AM with Google Analytics information in a manner prohibited by Google's policies or applicable law.

Where consent is required, advertising features, personalised advertising, Google Signals, or other non-essential measurement technologies may be restricted until the appropriate consent has been obtained.

3.2 comScore / ScorecardResearch Audience Measurement

We use or may use comScore audience measurement services, including technologies operated through ScorecardResearch, to measure and better understand the reach and usage of our Services.

comScore or ScorecardResearch may receive measurement information when users visit our Services through website tags, network requests, cookies where enabled, or other identifiers and measurement technologies.

This information may include data relating to:

  • Website visits
  • Pages viewed
  • Browser and device characteristics
  • Traffic and usage patterns
  • Audience measurement
  • Technical information relating to visits to our Services

Information collected through comScore measurement technologies may be combined with other audience measurement information by comScore for purposes such as producing aggregated audience statistics, syndicated audience reports, market research, digital measurement reports, and reports concerning Internet usage and industry trends.

We do not use comScore's measurement services to intentionally collect personally identifiable information through comScore tags or to associate information collected through those tags with a particular identifiable visitor.

Depending on our technical configuration, applicable law, and user consent choices, comScore or ScorecardResearch may use cookies or other identifiers for audience measurement purposes.

Where comScore first-party cookie functionality is enabled, a first-party cookie such as _scor_uid may be used for audience measurement. Where this functionality is disabled, that particular first-party cookie will not be intentionally enabled by AP7AM through the comScore publisher tag.

The use of comScore measurement technologies is subject to applicable privacy laws, consent requirements, and user privacy choices.

For more information about ScorecardResearch privacy practices, please visit: ScorecardResearch Privacy Policy .

Users may also review available ScorecardResearch privacy choices at: ScorecardResearch Privacy Choices .

3.3 comScore Surveys

As part of its audience measurement services, comScore or ScorecardResearch may, where enabled, offer visitors an opportunity to participate in short voluntary surveys.

Participation in such surveys is voluntary.

According to comScore's service terms, these surveys are intended to collect non-personal information for research and measurement purposes, including purposes such as improving cross-device audience measurement.

Users may decline participation in such surveys.

4. Advertising

We display advertising through third-party advertising platforms, ad servers, programmatic advertising providers, advertising agencies, and direct advertisers.

These may include:

  • Google AdSense
  • Google Ad Manager
  • Google advertising services
  • Approved programmatic advertising partners
  • Direct advertisers and advertising agencies

Third-party advertising providers may place or read cookies on your browser, or use web beacons, IP addresses, device identifiers, and similar technologies in connection with advertisements displayed through our Services.

These technologies may be used to:

  • Select advertisements
  • Deliver advertisements
  • Limit advertisement frequency
  • Measure advertisement impressions
  • Measure advertisement viewability
  • Measure interactions with advertisements
  • Detect invalid traffic
  • Prevent advertising fraud
  • Produce aggregated campaign reports
  • Personalise advertisements where permitted and consented to

Depending on your location and privacy choices, advertisements may be personalised, contextual, or non-personalised.

Where applicable law requires consent, personalised advertising and associated non-essential tracking technologies will be subject to the appropriate consent mechanism.

5. Advertising, Analytics and Cookie Choices

Depending on the technologies used and your location, you may manage certain advertising, analytics, audience measurement, and cookie preferences through:

Where consent is the basis for processing, you may withdraw that consent at any time through the available consent controls. Withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing that occurred before consent was withdrawn.

6. How We Use Information

We may use information for purposes including:

  • Operating and maintaining our Services
  • Delivering news and other content
  • Improving website usability and performance
  • Understanding audience behaviour
  • Measuring website traffic and reach
  • Producing aggregated audience statistics
  • Analysing readership and engagement
  • Choosing the stories shown to you in "More for you" and "For you" (section 1, Personalised story recommendations)
  • Trying out changes to our Services with a share of readers and comparing the results as aggregate counts
  • Delivering and measuring advertising
  • Limiting advertisement frequency
  • Detecting fraud, bots, abuse, and invalid traffic
  • Protecting the security and integrity of our Services
  • Responding to enquiries
  • Managing newsletters or communications requested by users
  • Complying with applicable legal and regulatory requirements
  • Establishing, exercising, or defending legal rights

7. Legal Basis for Processing

The legal basis on which we process information depends on the type of information, purpose of processing, and jurisdiction in which you are located.

Where applicable, processing may be based on:

  • Your consent
  • Our legitimate interests
  • Performance of a service requested by you
  • Compliance with legal obligations
  • Security, fraud prevention, and protection against abuse
  • Other lawful grounds recognised under applicable data protection law

Where consent is legally required for non-essential cookies, personalised advertising, audience measurement, or analytics technologies, we seek the appropriate consent before using those technologies to the extent required by applicable law.

Our privacy practices are intended to comply with applicable privacy and data protection requirements, which may include, depending on the circumstances:

  • India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and applicable rules and provisions as they come into force
  • EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
  • UK GDPR
  • Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP)
  • Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI)
  • Other applicable regional privacy and data protection laws

8. How We Share Information

We do not sell personal information for monetary consideration.

We may disclose or make limited information available to authorised service providers and partners where reasonably necessary for operating, measuring, securing, or monetising our Services.

These recipients may include:

  • Website hosting and infrastructure providers
  • Content delivery providers
  • Analytics providers
  • Audience measurement providers, including comScore
  • Advertising technology providers
  • Advertising networks and exchanges
  • Advertising agencies and direct advertisers
  • Fraud detection and security providers
  • Email and communications providers
  • Professional advisers
  • Regulators, courts, or law-enforcement authorities where legally required
  • Potential purchasers, investors, successors, or advisers in connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, restructuring, or sale of some or all of our business or assets

Our principal service providers at present are:

  • Amazon Web Services: hosting in India and the United States, content delivery (CloudFront), databases and email delivery
  • Google: analytics (section 3), Ad Manager and AdSense (section 4), reCAPTCHA on our forms, the consent management platform, and web fonts
  • AnyMind Group: advertising partner on part of our pages (section 4)
  • comScore / ScorecardResearch: audience measurement (section 3)
  • Mailgun: delivery of email sent through our forms

We expect service providers processing information on our behalf to handle that information in accordance with applicable contractual, security, confidentiality, and legal requirements.

Some third-party providers may process information under their own privacy policies where they operate independently rather than solely on our behalf.

9. Data Security

We use reasonable technical and organisational safeguards designed to protect information against unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration, loss, destruction, or misuse.

These measures may include:

  • HTTPS encryption
  • Server and administrative access controls
  • Security monitoring
  • Restricted access to systems
  • Appropriate security practices by infrastructure and service providers

However, no website, network, database, transmission method, or electronic storage system can be guaranteed to be completely secure.

You should therefore exercise appropriate caution when transmitting confidential or sensitive information online.

10. Data Retention

We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, including:

  • Providing requested services
  • Responding to enquiries
  • Maintaining business and operational records
  • Security and fraud prevention
  • Resolving disputes
  • Complying with legal obligations

Retention periods may vary depending on the nature of the information and applicable legal, contractual, and operational requirements.

For data that we hold ourselves, the current retention periods are:

  • Counts of stories read together (section 1, Personalised story recommendations): 14 days, then deleted.
  • Daily counts of home-page views and clicks per trial group: kept as statistics; they contain nothing about any person.
  • Readers' corrections to the Telugu typing tool: kept as approved or rejected corrections; they contain no identifier.
  • Short links for calculator results: kept so that the links keep working.
  • Form submissions: as business correspondence for as long as needed to deal with the matter and for our records, then deleted.
  • Server and content-delivery logs (IP address, page requested, browser): for a limited period, for security, troubleshooting and traffic measurement.
  • IP addresses used for rate limiting: in server memory only, for the limit's window (minutes to an hour), never written to storage.

Analytics, advertising, and audience measurement providers may apply their own retention periods in accordance with their respective policies and user settings.

11. Your Privacy Rights

Depending on where you live and the applicable law, you may have rights concerning your personal information.

These may include the right to:

  • Request access to your personal information
  • Request correction of inaccurate information
  • Request deletion of information
  • Withdraw previously given consent
  • Object to or restrict certain processing
  • Request information about how your data is processed
  • Exercise applicable data portability rights
  • Lodge a complaint with an appropriate privacy or data-protection authority

Some rights may be subject to legal exceptions or limitations.

To exercise a privacy right relating to information controlled by AP7AM, please contact us at: contact@ap7am.com.

We may need to verify your request before taking action.

For information processed independently by third-party services such as Google or comScore, you may also need to use the privacy controls provided directly by those organisations.

11.1 Readers in India

If you are in India, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the rules made under it apply to our processing of your personal data, and AP7AM is the Data Fiduciary for it. Most of what this policy describes is not personal data under that Act: it is either aggregate counts or information that stays in your own browser. Where we do process your personal data, chiefly what you send us through our forms, you have the right to:

  • a summary of the personal data we process about you and of that processing;
  • correction, completion, updating and erasure of that data;
  • withdraw consent you have given, as easily as you gave it, without affecting processing done before the withdrawal;
  • nominate a person to exercise your rights if you die or become incapacitated;
  • readily available grievance redressal.

To exercise these rights, write to contact@ap7am.com or use our Grievance Redressal form, which reaches our Grievance Officer (section 17). We respond within the period the law prescribes. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India. Should a personal data breach affect you, we will inform you and the Board as the Act requires.

12. Children's Privacy

Our Services are intended for a general news audience and are not specifically directed at children.

We do not knowingly solicit personal information from children in violation of applicable law.

In India, a child is anyone under 18. We do not knowingly process a child's personal data without the verifiable consent of a parent or lawful guardian, and we do not track children's behaviour or direct advertising at them.

If you are a parent or guardian and believe that a child has provided personal information to us inappropriately, please contact us at contact@ap7am.com, and we will review the matter and take appropriate action.

13. International Users and Cross-Border Data Transfers

AP7AM operates services that may involve infrastructure, technology platforms, advertising providers, analytics providers, and other service providers located in different countries.

Information may therefore be processed or transferred outside the country in which you are located.

For example, analytics, audience measurement, advertising, cloud infrastructure, and technology providers may process information in India, the United States, or other jurisdictions.

Our own web servers run on Amazon Web Services in India (Hyderabad) and, for readers served from the Americas, in the United States. The reading counts described in section 1 (Personalised story recommendations) are kept in India, with a read-only copy in the United States; they contain no personal data. Form submissions are delivered to our team in India.

Where applicable law requires safeguards for international transfers of personal information, we or our service providers may rely on recognised mechanisms such as:

  • Standard Contractual Clauses
  • Adequacy decisions
  • Contractual data-protection safeguards
  • Applicable statutory exceptions
  • Consent where legally appropriate
  • Other legally recognised transfer mechanisms

Privacy and data-protection laws in another country may differ from those in your home jurisdiction.

13.1 Japan

Where applicable under Japan's APPI and relevant service-provider requirements, we do not intentionally combine non-personally identifiable analytics information with personally identifiable information in a manner requiring consent without first obtaining the legally required consent.

14. Third-Party Websites and Services

Our Services may contain links to websites, social-media platforms, advertisements, embedded content, and services operated by third parties.

We do not control the privacy practices of those third parties.

When you interact with an external website or third-party service, that organisation's own privacy policy and terms may apply.

We encourage you to review the privacy policies of third-party services you choose to use.

15. Google Privacy Information

Google services used on AP7AM may process information as described in Google's applicable privacy policies and partner-site disclosures.

16. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect:

  • Changes to our Services
  • New analytics, measurement, or advertising providers
  • Changes in technology
  • Changes to applicable legal or regulatory requirements
  • Changes to our privacy practices

When we make changes, we will update the Last Updated date shown at the top of this page.

Material changes may also be communicated through additional notices where appropriate or legally required.

We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically.

17. Contact Us

If you have questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or AP7AM's handling of information, please contact us:

Email: contact@ap7am.com
Grievance Officer: T. Krishna Mohan, through our Grievance Redressal form
Website: https://www.ap7am.com

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