Privacy Policy

Effective date: 26 October 2026

Privacy is the core of how Ponoki is built, not an afterthought. Ponoki is local-first: your emotional life stays on your device. This policy explains, in plain English, exactly what data exists, where it lives, and what your choices are.

Ponoki is operated by Concept Allies, a sole proprietorship in India (Jauhari Niwas, Yahiyaganj, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh 226003, India). Concept Allies decides what Ponoki does with personal data, so it is responsible for that data under the laws that apply. In this policy, "we" and "us" mean Concept Allies.

This policy covers Ponoki at play.ponoki.app: the games, the installable web app, the Android app, and Ponoki Nights. It does not cover the website at ponoki.app (the website, its articles and any campaign or landing pages), which uses different tools, such as Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics and Brevo's sign-up form, and has its own privacy policy.

Ponoki is offered to adults aged 18 or older only (see the Terms & Conditions).

You can reach us any time by email at yogesh@conceptallies.com or conceptallies@gmail.com, or, when signed in, through the in-app feedback form (Profile → Account → Send feedback). Section 20 has everything about contacting us.

1. The short version

• Without an account, nothing you play or type in Ponoki is sent to us, apart from anonymous counts if you opt in to analytics (section 9). ("Hold to speak" in Ponoki Nights uses your phone's own speech service: section 6.)
• With an account, the server stores your email, a password hash, and numeric counters, no mood logs, no journal entries, no record of how you felt on any given day.
• Anything you type about your thoughts or feelings is never stored on our server and never sent to us, with one deliberate exception: the feedback message you choose to send us. Ponoki Nights' notes stay on your phone (section 7).
• If you buy Ponoki Nights, the payment company holds your payment details, and our server keeps a small purchase record: which account, where, the payment's id, the amount (none for a Google Play purchase made outside India, where Google sets the price in your currency) and whether it was refunded.
• Analytics is off by default and only ever anonymous if you opt in.
• You can delete your account and all server data in-app, immediately.

2. Data stored on your device (no account needed)

Ponoki works fully without an account. In that mode, all data lives in your browser's local storage on your device (in keys namespaced ponoki:*) and never leaves the device:

• Streaks and session counts, including the day you last played
• Simple per-game stats (sessions played, best scores, when you last played each game)
• Aggregate "after playing I felt better / same / rough" tally counts (totals only, never tied to a date or a session)
• Your companion's state (level, name, treats, colour) and settings (goals, reduced motion, breathing-sound calibration, onboarding progress, your consent choices)
• If you bought the optional extras Ponoki sold earlier: that they are on, and their license key
• Small bits of app bookkeeping: whether this is the Android app, which app update this device last took, and your update-email choice until it reaches your new account
• Ponoki Nights' own data, described in section 7

You can erase all of it at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser.

3. Data stored on the server (only if you create an account)

Creating an account is optional; it exists so your progress can survive a lost device and sync across devices, and it is needed to buy Ponoki Nights. If you do, we use Supabase (our database and authentication provider) to store:

• Your email address and a password hash, managed by Supabase Auth (we never see or store your plain password). If you sign in with Google, Supabase Auth handles that sign-in.
• Numeric counters and small settings only: total sessions, current/longest streak, streak freezes left, milestone ranks, weekly goal progress, your selected goals, per-game session counts and best scores, the aggregate better/same/rough tallies, your companion's level points and chosen display name, whether you have the optional extras Ponoki sold earlier, and a marketing-email opt-in flag (true/false).
• Two kinds of date: the day you last played, and when you last played each game. They keep streaks right across devices. They say nothing about how you felt.
• Ponoki Nights purchases, if you buy it: section 8.

What the server never stores:

• No mood logs
• No journal or free-text entries about how you feel
• No per-day emotional history of any kind
• No record linking any feeling to any date or session
• No notes from Ponoki Nights, typed or spoken

One deliberate exception: the in-app feedback form. If you choose to send us feedback, the message you type is stored so we can read it and improve Ponoki. That table is insert-only; the app cannot read feedback back out (not even you can, from your own account). Feedback is deleted along with everything else if you delete your account.

4. Ponoki isn't a medical service

• Ponoki collects no medical or health records. It never asks for a diagnosis, a condition, a medicine or a doctor.
• Nothing in Ponoki is designed to diagnose, treat or monitor anything. Ponoki is short games and bedtime rituals, for relaxation and play.
• The goals you can pick are play preferences. Ponoki keeps only which of the four goals you picked, to suggest games and count your plays toward them.
• The check-in after a game ("better", "same" or "rough") adds one to a running total for that game. Nothing else is kept: no date, no session, no list of answers. The question before a game is answered in the moment and never stored.

5. Sensitive content stays on-device

Some Ponoki tools (like Thought Untangler) invite you to type out a thought. A safety check scans what you type for crisis-related keywords so the app can show support resources. This check runs entirely in-memory, on your device. Your typed thoughts are never stored and never transmitted, not to our servers, not to anyone.

6. "Hold to speak" in Ponoki Nights

In Ponoki Nights you can type a note, or hold the microphone button and say it. Speaking uses your phone's own speech service, through your browser: usually Google's on Android and Apple's on iPhone (another browser may use its own maker's service). That service turns your voice into text under its own privacy terms.

• Ponoki never receives your voice. No recording reaches Ponoki or our server; only the words come back to the page.
• The words stay on your phone, exactly like a typed note (section 7).
• Before it listens for the first time, Ponoki tells you this and asks. Typing always works instead, and where a browser can't do speech, the button doesn't appear.

7. Ponoki Nights: what stays on your phone

Ponoki Nights keeps these in your browser's local storage on your device, and never sends them to us:

• The free night (ponoki:nights:trial:v1): which ritual you chose last, and whether and when your free night was used.
• Your box (ponoki:nights:box:v1): the notes you put in the Tomorrow box or the jar in Put It Away, typed or spoken, each with when you put it there and when you first saw it again. A note you put out of the window is never stored at all. Notes are let go by themselves: once you have seen them, at 5 pm that day (at least two hours after you saw them); unseen, after three days. You can also let them go yourself at any time.
• "Hold to speak" settings (ponoki:nights:speech:v1): whether you said yes to speaking, and the language to listen for.
• Your receipt (ponoki:nights:receipt:v1), only if you bought Ponoki Nights: a short note signed by our server saying the account owns Ponoki Nights, with that account's id, when it was bought and when its year ends. After the year ends it stays on the phone and unlocks nothing, so Ponoki Nights can say the year has ended. It lets Ponoki Nights know, without asking our server each time, that this phone may play the whole library. It counts only for the account signed in on that phone, and after a refund it is removed the next time Ponoki Nights checks online.
• On test copies of Ponoki Nights only, never at play.ponoki.app, a sound log can be turned on for checking: it lists which sounds played and when, never a note.

Ponoki Nights sends nothing to analytics.

8. Ponoki Nights: what the server keeps if you buy

Buying Ponoki Nights needs a Ponoki account, so that it stays yours on any phone. To know what your account owns, Ponoki Nights and Ponoki's profile screen ask our server, only when you are signed in; that request carries your sign-in and nothing else.

For each payment, the server keeps one purchase record, written only by our server after the payment company has confirmed the payment:

• the account it belongs to;
• where it was bought (Razorpay on the web, or Google Play in the Android app);
• the payment company's own id for the payment;
• the amount and currency;
• its status (paid, or refunded);
• when it was recorded and when it last changed.

While a refund is being made, the server also keeps a short-lived lock: the purchase's number and a time, so that one press makes one refund. It is removed when the payment company answers. If that call ever breaks off, the lock stays until your next refund press or until the account is deleted.

A purchase record holds nothing else: no name, email address, phone number, card, bank or UPI detail. Your account can read its own purchase records and nothing more; only our server writes them.

When it goes: deleting your account deletes its purchase records and any refund lock straight away, with everything else (section 13).

9. Analytics: opt-in only, anonymous only

Analytics is off unless you turn it on. You are asked once, plainly, and nothing is pre-ticked. You can change your mind any time in settings (Profile → Install & privacy).

If you never opt in, nothing is ever sent. No Ponoki analytics code is even loaded: without your recorded consent the app does not fetch Mixpanel, so there is no connection to it at all, not merely a switched-off one.

One thing does run without being asked, and we would rather say so plainly. Cloudflare, the company that serves this site, counts page visits. It is switched on at their end, not in our code, and it runs for everyone. It sets no cookies, keeps no identifier on your device, and cannot follow you to other websites. It tells us how many people opened a page and how fast it loaded. It is never joined to your account, and it never sees anything you typed or played.

If you do opt in, Ponoki sends anonymous, mechanical events to Mixpanel, our analytics provider. These are counters, meaning a thing the app did, never a thing you felt. The complete list is:

• the app was opened
• a game session was completed (which game, your total sessions, your current streak)
• an account was created, or signed in on this device
• the optional extras Ponoki sold earlier were turned on
• Ponoki was installed as an app

Each event is tied only to a random identifier generated on your device. That identifier is never linked to your account, your email, or your companion's name, and we do not send your IP address for location or attach it to events.

Anonymous analytics never include your email, your name, anything you typed, or any data about your feelings or moods. That is enforced in the code itself: events and their fields are checked against a fixed list before anything is sent, so there is no path by which a mood, a typed thought, or an email address could be transmitted even by mistake.

10. Marketing email: opt-in only

At signup you can tick a box to receive occasional Ponoki update emails. It is unticked by default. If you opt in, we store a single true/false flag with your profile, and your email address is shared with Brevo, the service we use to send email, so that it can be added to our mailing list. Brevo processes it only on our instructions and never for its own purposes. If you do not opt in, your address is never sent to Brevo at all. You can opt out at any time via the unsubscribe link in any such email or by asking us (section 20), and if you delete your account your Brevo contact is deleted too.

11. Payments

Ponoki never sees your card number, your bank login or your UPI PIN: you enter those on the payment company's own page or sheet, never on ours.

• Extras bought earlier: Gumroad. If you bought the optional extras Ponoki sold earlier, their license key is checked with Gumroad, which sold them, from your browser and, when you are signed in, from our server too.
• Ponoki Nights on the web: Razorpay. Concept Allies is the seller and Razorpay processes the payment. You pay on Razorpay's own page, under Razorpay's privacy policy; Razorpay may ask you for details it needs to take the payment, such as a phone number or email address, and those go to Razorpay. To start a payment, our server sends Razorpay the amount, the currency, the name "Ponoki Nights", a random reference, how long the payment link lasts, your Ponoki account's id (a random code, in the payment link's notes) and the address to bring you back to, and asks Razorpay not to send you its own text or email reminders. We send no name, email address or phone number. To refund, our server sends Razorpay the payment's id, the amount and a reference.
• What Razorpay tells our server. When a payment or refund happens, Razorpay sends our server a signed message about it, and our server asks Razorpay about a payment link when you come back from paying. These messages can include details of the payment, such as your UPI ID, email address or phone number. Our server reads only what it needs to check the payment (ids, amounts, currency, status, and the account id in the notes), keeps only the purchase record in section 8, and writes none of the rest to a log.
• In the Android app: Google Play. In the Android app you pay on Google Play's own payment sheet, under Google's terms and privacy policy. The app sends our server Google's purchase token. Our server sends it to Google to check the purchase, to acknowledge it, and, once your year has ended, to mark it used so you can buy another year. From Google's answer it reads only the purchase's state, the product, Google's order id and the country. It keeps only the purchase record in section 8. To refund, it sends Google the order id. Once a day it reads Google's list of refunded purchases. We send Google no name, email address or phone number.
• When a refund needs us. If an automatic refund doesn't go through, or Razorpay reports later that a refund failed, our server emails Ponoki's own inbox through Brevo. That email carries only ids and codes (your account's id, the purchase's number, the payment's id or Google Play's order id, the refund's id if there is one, and what failed, with Razorpay's or Google's error code) and never your name, email address or anything you typed. The same line is kept in our server's log, so the refund is on record even if the email is lost.

12. Cookies and tracking

Ponoki does not use advertising trackers or third-party tracking cookies. Local storage is used only for the app data described above, Supabase uses the storage needed to keep you signed in, and, only if you opted in to analytics, Mixpanel keeps one local storage entry for the random identifier in section 9. No cookies are set for analytics. Cloudflare's visit counting sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device.

13. Where your data lives, and for how long

• Account data, and Ponoki Nights' purchase records, are hosted by Supabase on its cloud infrastructure.
• Anonymous analytics, only if you opted in, are held by Mixpanel. There is no account data there to hold, only the counters and the random identifier described in section 9.
• The site itself is served by Cloudflare. Like any web host, Cloudflare receives each request, including your IP address, in order to deliver the page and block attacks. Its visit counts are held by Cloudflare.
• Payment details are held by the payment company you paid through (Gumroad, Razorpay or Google Play), under its own privacy policy.
• We keep your account data, purchase records included, until you delete your account; there is no other retention period, because there is nothing else to retain.
• Local device data stays on your device until you clear it. Ponoki Nights' notes let themselves go sooner (section 7).

14. Deleting your account

You can delete your account from inside the app (Profile → Account → Delete account), with no email needed and nothing to ask us for. Deletion is immediate and cascades through everything on the server: your profile, counters, per-game stats, tallies, any feedback messages you sent, and your Ponoki Nights purchase records. Ponoki Nights then no longer belongs to any account, so if you want a refund, ask for it before you delete. Your local device data is untouched (it's yours, on your device) unless you clear the site's data.

For the exact steps, and an email fallback if you cannot open the app, see How to delete your account.

15. Your rights

Whether you're covered by the GDPR, India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, or similar laws, we honor the substance of those rights for everyone:

• Access: everything the server holds about you is visible in the app (your progress numbers); there is no shadow profile. For a summary of what we hold and who processes it for us, write to us.
• Correction and updating: you can change your goals and your companion's name in the app; for anything else, write to us.
• Deletion: in-app, immediate, complete (section 14).
• Withdrawing consent: as easily as you gave it. Analytics: one switch in Profile → Install & privacy. Update emails: the unsubscribe link in any of them. Your account: delete it in the app.
• Naming someone to act for you if you die or cannot act yourself: write to us.
• Objection, portability and other requests: write to us and we will respond.

Write to us at the addresses in section 20. We acknowledge a request or complaint within 48 hours and answer it within one month.

If you are in India and are not satisfied with how we handled a complaint, you can complain to the Data Protection Board of India, set up under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

We never sell your personal data, and there is no "consent to sale" anywhere in this policy.

16. If the business is sold or transferred

If Ponoki (or the business operating it) is involved in a merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of assets, your data may be transferred to the successor as part of that transaction, under protections at least as strong as this policy. We will give you notice via the app before or promptly after such a transfer, and you will always retain the ability to delete your account.

17. Children

Ponoki is not directed to anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will delete it.

18. Security

Account data is protected by Supabase's security controls (encrypted connections, hashed passwords, and row-level security policies so each user can only ever access their own rows). Purchase records can be written only by our server, never from a browser. No system is perfectly secure, but Ponoki's strongest security measure is structural: the most sensitive data, how you feel, is simply never collected.

19. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in any material way, we will give notice in the app: the next time you open Ponoki's home screen, start a game or open Ponoki Nights, you are asked to agree to the new version before you carry on, and the "Effective date" above changes. We will never retroactively weaken the protections on data collected under an earlier version without your consent.

20. Contact and grievances

For any privacy question, request or complaint:

• Email yogesh@conceptallies.com or conceptallies@gmail.com.
• When signed in, use the in-app feedback form (Profile → Account → Send feedback).
• Grievance Officer: Yogesh Jain, Proprietor, Concept Allies, Jauhari Niwas, Yahiyaganj, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh 226003, India. Email yogesh@conceptallies.com.

Our full contact details are also on the Contact page.