What we collect, and what we deliberately do not.

The short version

• You can read every public page without giving us any personal information.
• There are no student accounts yet, so there is no profile, no password and no saved history.
• We do not use advertising cookies, behavioural tracking or third-party analytics.
• We do not sell, rent or share personal data with data brokers, colleges or coaching institutes.
• Fonts are loaded from Google's servers, which means Google receives your IP address. This is the one third party involved in an ordinary page view.
• We never ask for Aadhaar, marksheets, application IDs or payment details.

What is actually collected

Rather than list every category a website could theoretically collect, here is what this site does collect, and why:

Nothing, to browse

Reading guides, courses, careers, exams, comparisons and the calendar requires no registration and no personal details.

Search terms

Words you type into the site search are sent to our server to return results. They are processed to answer the request and are not linked to an identity.

Technical error logs

When a page fails, we record the technical fault details, the file and line involved, and the time. These records are kept to fix defects. They do not contain your name, email or IP address.

Server and hosting logs

Like any website, our hosting infrastructure processes standard request data — including IP address, browser type and requested page — to deliver pages and defend against abuse.

Staff audit records

Actions taken by our own editorial and administrative staff inside the internal admin panel are logged, including the staff account, the change made, IP address and browser. This applies to our staff, not to public visitors.

Rate-limit checks

Sign-in attempts to the internal admin area are rate-limited per IP address to resist brute-force attacks. This check happens in memory and is not stored as a profile.

We do not operate newsletters, contact forms, lead-generation forms or "get a call back" widgets on this site. If you ever see one, treat it as suspicious and report it.

Cookies we set

We use a deliberately small number of cookies, all of them strictly necessary for the site to function securely. We do not use advertising, profiling or analytics cookies.

ICG.AntiForgery

A security cookie that protects form submissions against cross-site request forgery. Strictly necessary. Set with HttpOnly and a strict same-site policy.

ICG.Auth

Signs in members of our own editorial and administrative team to the internal admin area. Ordinary visitors never receive this cookie. It expires after eight hours of inactivity.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary for security and access control, they do not require consent under standard cookie rules. If we ever introduce analytics or any non-essential cookie, we will ask for your consent first and update this section before it is switched on.

Who else is involved in a page view

We keep third parties to a minimum, but we should be precise about the ones that exist:

• Google Fonts. Typefaces are loaded from Google's servers. To deliver those files, Google necessarily receives your IP address and basic request information. We do not send Google any other data about you, and we do not use Google Analytics, Google Ads or any Google tracking product on this site.
• Our hosting provider. Processes requests on our behalf to serve pages and maintain security.

Links to official exam authorities, universities and government portals point to sites we do not control. Once you follow one, that site's own privacy policy applies, not ours.

Students under 18

A large share of our readers are school students, many of them under 18. Indian law — in particular the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — treats anyone under 18 as a child and places strict obligations on anyone processing their personal data, including a requirement for verifiable parental consent and a prohibition on tracking, behavioural monitoring and targeted advertising directed at children.

Our current design is the simplest way to respect that: we do not collect personal data from any visitor, of any age, to read this site. There is no account, no profile, no behavioural tracking and no advertising.

If you believe a child's personal data has reached us in any way, contact us and we will delete it.

How the information is used

The limited data described above is used only to:

• Deliver the pages you request and keep the site available.
• Diagnose and fix defects reported through the error log.
• Protect the site against abuse, brute-force attempts and automated scraping.
• Maintain an internal record of who changed published content, and when.
• Understand which sections need better coverage, in aggregate and without identifying individuals.

We do not use it to build advertising profiles, to score or rank individuals, or to make automated decisions about anyone.

Sharing and selling

We do not sell personal data. We do not share it with colleges, coaching centres, admission consultants, lead-generation companies or data brokers. This matters in our sector: student contact data is routinely traded in Indian education, and we have chosen not to participate in that market.

We disclose information only where:

• A service provider processes it strictly on our behalf under contract, such as our hosting provider.
• We are required to by law, a court order, or a lawful request from a competent authority.
• It is necessary to investigate a security incident, prevent fraud, or protect the rights and safety of users.

How long records are kept

• Technical error logs — kept while the defect is open and for a reasonable period after it is resolved, then cleared.
• Staff audit records — retained for accountability over published content changes.
• Hosting logs — retained for a short operational period for security and diagnostics.
• Session cookies — the admin session cookie expires after eight hours of inactivity; the antiforgery cookie ends with the browser session.

How the site is protected

No system is perfectly secure, but the following measures are in place today:

• All traffic is served over HTTPS, with HTTP Strict Transport Security enabled.
• Security response headers are applied to every request.
• Session and antiforgery cookies are HttpOnly, same-site restricted and secure in production.
• The administrative area sits behind a non-obvious address, role-based authorisation and rate-limited sign-in.
• Administrative passwords must meet length and complexity requirements, with lockout after repeated failures.
• Records are soft-deleted with an audit trail rather than silently destroyed.

Your rights over your data

Under Indian data protection law you have rights to access, correct and erase your personal data, to withdraw consent, and to raise a grievance. In practice, because we do not collect personal data from visitors, there is usually nothing held about you to retrieve or delete.

If you believe we hold personal data about you, you may contact us to ask what is held, to have it corrected, or to have it erased. We will respond within the timelines required by applicable law. See the contact page for how to reach us and how to mark a message as a privacy request.

A named grievance officer and published contact address will be added here before the public launch, as required for Indian websites.

Changes to this policy

This policy will be updated when the site's functionality changes — most significantly when student accounts, saved shortlists or the AI advisor are introduced, each of which will involve collecting information we do not collect today.

When that happens we will revise this page, update the "last updated" date at the top, and describe what changed. Material changes affecting personal data will be announced on the site before they take effect.