Privacy Policy

HalfChat · Last updated 30 October 2026

HalfChat ("we", "us") is an AI relationship messenger. This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have. By using HalfChat you agree to this policy.

1. Information we collect

Account details you provide: name, email, phone number, and profile photo.

Date of birth — required when you sign up, so we can check you meet our minimum age of 13. We store it on your account. It has a second use, and we would rather name it here than leave you to find it: when an advertiser buys an age range, we work out from your date of birth which range you fall into, so we know whether to show you that ad. The advertiser never receives your date of birth, your age, or anything else about you.

Gender — optional, asked at sign-up and changeable any time in Edit Profile. It has two uses, and one switch controls both: you appear when someone browsing People near you filters by Women or Men, and a gender-targeted ad can reach you. Leave it blank and everything else works exactly the same.

Where you are, as text you type — state, district, village or ward, and postal or PIN code. All of it is optional. The PIN code is asked once at sign-up and you can skip it; the rest live in Settings → Ad preferences, where you can add, change or clear any of them at any time. We use these to decide which local ads you are eligible to see, and for nothing else. We do not derive them from your phone, your network or your GPS.

Interests — optional, chosen from a fixed list in Settings → Ad preferences. They exist only to pick which ads you see, and can be cleared on the same screen.

Contacts — only if you turn on contact sync. When you do, we upload your phone's address book and store two things for each entry: the phone number in a normalized form, and the name exactly as you saved it on your device. That includes entries for people who do not use HalfChat, because there is no way to tell which numbers belong to an account without checking them against ours. We use this to show which of your contacts are here, under the names you gave them. We never write to or modify your address book. Once synced, these entries stay on your account until you delete your account, which removes all of them.

Messages and chat content you send, including text and attachments.

Photos and videos you capture or upload for chats, stories, and status posts.

Voice and audio — voice messages you record, and the microphone stream during voice and video calls.

Other content you create: journals, memories, and status posts.

Dates you save in Special Dates — a birthday or an anniversary, and the name of the person it belongs to — so Aura can remind you.

Comments and reactions you leave on statuses, reels and sponsored reels.

Circle Collab — only if you use it. As a creator: whether you take offers, your call hours, starting rate and categories. As a business: the brand name you send under (kept as your business profile), its website and category if you add them, and each offer you send — promotion type, budget, message and, for a call, the time you asked for. For a deal either of you accepts: the amount you agree, how it is split into payments, which parts are marked sent and received, the deal's progress, and the ratings you give each other. We never receive or hold the money itself, or any bank, UPI or card details.

What you search for in the app is used only to find the results and is not kept: there is no search history.

Feedback and bug reports — only if you send one: what you write, any screenshots or voice notes you attach, and your app version, platform and phone model, so we can see the problem you saw.

Safety reports — only if you send one from the Safety screen: the message you write about what happened, and anything more you write to our safety team about it afterwards. Nothing else is asked for — no phone number. The Safety screen does not accept recordings, photos, screenshots or files; keep those yourself for the police or cybercrime.gov.in. So that we know who we are helping, the safety team sees the report with your HalfChat ID and email address — not your phone number — and keeps its own notes on the report while it helps you.

An encrypted copy of your device key, if Cloud Backup is on — see section 3. It is a sealed box that we cannot open.

Precise location — only when you choose to send it in a chat or tag it on a status. We do not track your location in the background.

Approximate location for Discover — while Discovery is on and you have allowed location, when you open the app (at most every six hours) we keep your position rounded to about a kilometre, and the PIN code and district it falls in, so people near you can find you. Other members only ever see a distance band such as "within 5 km", never the position. Turning Discovery off stops this, and deleting your account erases it.

Live location — if you start a live share, your position is sent to that one conversation repeatedly until the time you picked (15 minutes, 1 hour or 8 hours) runs out, or until you stop it, whichever comes first. It only updates while the app is open, and we keep the latest position only for the life of the share.

Nearby — only while you have Nearby switched on, which is off unless you turn it on. Your phone then says one thing out loud, over Bluetooth and over the Wi-Fi network you are on: a random code that changes every few minutes and means nothing by itself. Only our server can turn a code into a person, and only for somebody broadcasting a code of their own — which is why you both have to have Nearby on to see each other. Your name, your photo and your phone's own name are never broadcast. We ask for Bluetooth permission the first time you open that screen; you can refuse and still use the Wi-Fi half.

Usage and device data needed to keep the service secure and working, including your phone's type and the language it is set to.

2. How we use it

To provide messaging, calls and AI features, match your contacts, keep your account secure, send reminders you enable, choose which ads you see, and improve the app. AI features may process the text you send to Aura to generate suggestions.

Public Reels is put in order for you from what you have done there: the topics you watch, and the creators whose reels you liked, commented on or watched to the end in the last 30 days, whose new reels come first. One place on a page goes to a creator in their first 30 days. A reel placed for either reason says so on it, and only you see that label. Saying "Not interested" to a creator's reel stops their reels coming first.

We count how many people are in each state and district, from the state and district you typed in Ad preferences, to understand where HalfChat is used. Only totals are seen, by a few people on our team; a place with fewer than five people is not counted out loud, and no name or account is ever shown.

Badges. When an account at least a week old watches one of your public reels (posted to everyone and shown in Public Reels) to the end, we record that it did, once per account. The number of those people decides your badge: Naya Chehra at 100, Ubharta Star at 1,000, Chamakta Star at 10,000 and HalfChat Superstar at 100,000. The number is shown only to you; others see the level, and you can hide your badge in My badge. Statuses for your contacts never count. We keep the record of which accounts watched until either account is deleted; your number does not go down when it is.

Aaj Ka Star and Teen Star. Only if you turn it on (My badge → Aaj Ka Star; off until you do), one of your public reels from the last day may be picked as the day’s Star. Three are shortlisted by the same count as badges, and a person on our team watches them and chooses. Aaj Ka Star (18 and over) is shown on Home to everyone for 24 hours; Teen Star (13 to 17) only to other people aged 13 to 17. Nobody is a Star twice in 30 days, or with a report against them in that time. There is no prize or money. We keep the days you were a Star, shown on your profile, until you delete your account.

We also send occasional notifications from HalfChat itself — an outage, a change to these policies, a feature worth knowing about. They are never advertising: nothing with an offer in it goes through that channel, and the server refuses to send one that reads like a sale. You can turn them off in Settings → Updates from HalfChat, and off means nothing is written for your account at all, not merely hidden on your phone. Some go only to people in one area or age group: we choose that from the pincode, district, state and birthday in your own profile, and nobody else sees who received one. One may include a photo, a video or a link; a link always shows the website it opens before you open it, and is never sent to people aged 13 to 18.

3. Encryption and security

Your data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS). Voice and video calls are encrypted peer-to-peer, so we cannot hear them. When two phones cannot reach each other directly, the call is relayed through our own server; it stays encrypted end to end on the way, and we still cannot hear it.

One-to-one chats are end-to-end encrypted from the moment they are created. You do not have to find a setting or turn anything on: a new direct chat is sealed by default, and only the two phones in it can read what is sent there. We cannot.

You can turn it off for a single chat, and only you can. Tap the line at the top of that chat — it always says which of the two states the chat is in, so you know before you type. Turning it off is a real choice with a reason behind it: an unencrypted chat can be searched, and it can be read by Aura for a journal or a story. Turning it off does not unseal what was already sent, and turning it on does not seal what was sent in the clear. Each message keeps whatever it was written with, because nothing else is possible.

Group chats are end-to-end encrypted once everyone in the group is on a version of HalfChat that supports it; until then the group says so at the top, and its messages are encrypted in transit and at rest with keys we hold. In an encrypted group, a key made on a member's phone is shared with each member sealed to their own key, so only the phones in the group can read it — we cannot. When someone joins, leaves or is removed, or a member changes phones, a new key is made: someone who has left cannot read what is sent after, and someone who joins cannot read what was sent before. Messages sent before a group became encrypted stay as they were. Your chat with Aura is not end-to-end encrypted, because reading it is the whole point of it.

In an end-to-end encrypted chat or group the seal covers more than what you type: contact cards you share, and photos, videos, audio and files you attach, are sealed on your phone with a key that never reaches us, and a preview of a photo travels sealed inside the message alongside it. Two things are not sealed yet: voice messages you record in the chat, and locations you share (once or live). Those are encrypted in transit and at rest with a key we hold. A reply to a status lands in your chat with the person who posted it and is sealed the same way, with two exceptions: if their app has not set up encryption yet, the reply is sent unsealed rather than in a form they cannot open; and if the two of you cannot message each other yet, the reply reaches them as a message request, whose short note we can read so that it can be shown to them before they decide. We store something we cannot open. Everywhere else — groups that are not encrypted yet, profile pictures, statuses — media is encrypted in transit and encrypted at rest on our servers, but we hold that key and could in principle open it.

By default nothing we run can read an end-to-end encrypted chat, including Aura — which is why journals, stories and novels skip those conversations rather than making something up. Two things can change that, and only you can change them. Asking to translate a message sends that one message, and we ask before the first time. And Settings has a switch, off unless you turn it on, called "Let Aura read my encrypted chats" — with it on, asking for a journal, a story or a novel sends that conversation to be read. We never send anything on our own, the switch can be turned off again, and off means nothing is sent.

Cloud Backup is on by default, and it is worth being exact about what that puts on our servers. Your device's secret key is sealed with a recovery key that is generated on your phone, shown to you once, and never sent anywhere. The sealed result is uploaded to us, so that a lost or reset phone does not mean every encrypted message becomes permanently unreadable. We hold an encrypted copy of your key and cannot open it — not as a policy, as a fact, because the only thing that opens it never left your phone. The cost is that same fact from the other side: lose the recovery key and nobody, including us, can recover those messages. You can turn Cloud Backup off in Settings.

4. Ads, and what decides which one you see

Advertising space is not sold inside the app. Campaigns are created by us, on our own admin tools, and any money for one is arranged outside HalfChat — there is no checkout here, no payment gateway, and no card or UPI details are asked for or stored by the app. If that ever changes, this section changes with it before the feature ships.

HalfChat shows ads, and the rest of this section says in full what is used to pick them. An advertiser describes an audience and pays for it; we decide, on our servers, whether you fall inside that description. Advertisers never see who they reached — they pick an audience and get counts. We never hand over your name, your gender, your date of birth, your address, your interests, or anything else that identifies you.

Six things about you can be matched against an ad: your gender; where you are, from the state, district, village and PIN code on your profile; which age range you fall into, worked out from your date of birth; your interests; the language your phone is set to; and what kind of device it is. On the reels feed there are two more: the mood or category of the reels you are looking at, and how many times you have already been shown that particular ad today.

Your controls, stated exactly, because the difference matters. Clearing your interests in Settings → Ad preferences stops interest-targeted ads. Clearing your state, district, village and PIN code on the same screen stops location-targeted ads, because an ad aimed at a place you no longer list cannot match you. Turning off the gender switch in Settings → Discovery stops every gender-targeted ad, and it does so at the moment the ad is chosen, not merely in the estimate an advertiser is shown.

Two things you cannot switch off, and we would rather say so than let you discover it. Your date of birth is required for the age check at sign-up and cannot be cleared while your account exists, so age-range targeting cannot be turned off on its own. Your phone's language and device type are sent with ordinary requests and are not settings. So there is no combination of switches that turns off personalised ads entirely: clearing gender, interests and location removes most of it, and age, language and device remain. If you want no ads chosen this way at all, the only complete answer is to stop using the app — and we would rather write that sentence than a friendlier one that is untrue.

5. What other people can see

Nearby broadcasts, and a broadcast is public by its nature. While it is on, anyone running a Bluetooth scanner — or any device on the same Wi-Fi — can see that a phone near them is advertising, and can tell that it is HalfChat, because the code carries a fixed marker so two HalfChat phones can recognise each other. What they cannot tell is who: the code is random, it changes every few minutes, and turning one into a person needs our server, which only answers somebody broadcasting a code of their own. If that is more than you want to say in a particular place, switch Nearby off — it broadcasts nothing at all while it is off.

Dost jodo. Two people standing together can add each other: both open Dost jodo, the phones broadcast a random code in the same way as Nearby, and each sees only the other people who have Dost jodo open at that moment — a name and photo, never an age, distance or place. Nothing happens until both say yes; then you can message each other. It is open to everyone aged 13 and over, and is the only way someone under 18 can be found by somebody nearby. The codes live only in our server’s memory for a few minutes and are never stored. It broadcasts only while the screen is open.

Content you send in a chat is visible to that chat's participants. They can also see when it reached your phone (two grey ticks) and, unless you turn Read receipts off in Settings, when you have read it (two blue ticks). With Read receipts off, nobody sees when you have read their messages and you do not see when others have read yours. A status is visible to the audience you pick (contacts, selected people, or everyone). Choosing everyone is what makes it public: it is discoverable by other HalfChat users in Public Reels for its 24 hours. That is one choice rather than two — picking everyone and appearing in Reels are the same thing, and the app says so where you pick it. You can change the audience or delete the status at any time, and either removes it from Reels immediately. We never make a private or contacts-only status public on your behalf.

Screenshots of a status are reported to its owner, by name. If you screenshot or screen-record someone's status, we record that you did it and send them a notification saying so, and they can see the list of who did. The same happens the other way round, for your statuses. This is deliberate — a status is meant to expire, and a screenshot is the one thing that stops it expiring — but it does mean the act is not private, so it is written here rather than left to be discovered.

Circle. When you Connect with someone you join their Circle, and they become one of your Connected. Your profile shows how many people are in your Circle and how many you are Connected with, to anyone who opens it. On a public account, anyone can see who is in those lists; on a private account, only you and the people in your Circle can, and joining needs your yes. When someone joins your Circle, asks to, or accepts your request, the other person is told; leaving a Circle, removing someone from yours, and declining a request are never announced. People who have blocked each other are not shown in each other's lists. Following someone does not let them message or call you — that still needs a message request. People you already chat with one to one, or whose message request you accepted, are in each other's Circle automatically and count towards both numbers; only the two of you see each other's name in those lists, so your Circle never shows anyone whom you talk to.

Circle Collab. If you take collab offers, anyone aged 18 or over who opens your profile sees a Collab button, your starting rate, categories, call hours and your average rating. An offer is seen only by the creator it was sent to and the business that sent it; so are the deal amount, its payments and the ratings on that deal. An admin can see business profiles and how many offers each has sent, to decide on the Verified tick. Your phone number is never shown to the other side, and a collab call happens inside the app.

A comment or reaction on a status or reel can be seen, with your name and photo, by everyone who can see that status or reel — on a public reel, that is anyone on HalfChat. A comment on a sponsored reel is shown to the people who see that ad.

The caption of a public status is checked automatically for spam and offensive words when you post it. One that trips the check, or that people report, is kept out of Public Reels until a person on our team looks at it. Statuses for your contacts or chosen people are not checked this way.

Opening someone's profile is counted. We record that you viewed it and when, so the number shown on their profile is accurate. They see a count, not a list of names, and the record is removed when either of you deletes their account.

People near you shows other members roughly how far away you are and whether you are active. The distance is always a band — "within 5 km" — and never a number, because a precise distance read from two or three places locates a person exactly. Whether you are shown as active follows the same privacy settings as your online status and last seen: set those to nobody and the dot does not appear for strangers either. Turning off Discovery in Settings removes you from the screen entirely, and removes the screen from you.

Anyone you show your profile QR code to can open your profile with it, and so can anyone they pass it on to. The QR holds a random code, not your phone number or email, and your profile then shows them only what your privacy settings already allow. You can reset your QR at any time; the old one stops working at once. When you scan a QR code, the camera picture is read on your phone and is not sent to us.

Your HalfChat ID (like @suraj.k) is public within HalfChat. We give you one made from your name, and you can change it. Anyone who knows it can search for it, and anyone with your profile link (which carries the ID) can open your profile, under the same privacy settings as everything else on it. Someone who has blocked you, or whom you have blocked, cannot find you by it. The web page a profile link opens shows only the ID, never your name or photo. When you change your ID, links with the old one stop working and someone else may take it.

Nobody can add you to a group unless you know them: you have saved their number, accepted a request from them or sent them one that they accepted, or already chat with them one to one. Someone who only has your number saved cannot. Anyone else has to send you a message request first.

6. Sharing

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only with service providers that help us run HalfChat, under confidentiality obligations, or when required by law.

AI features are powered by OpenAI. When you use Aura, tone rewrite, translation or an AI journal, the text involved is sent to OpenAI to generate the response. This means it is processed on servers outside India. An end-to-end encrypted chat is only ever sent when you ask: one message when you translate it, or that conversation when you ask for a journal, a story or a novel with the Settings switch on. Nothing goes on its own.

When you use the microphone in Aura, your recording is sent to OpenAI (or, if OpenAI is unavailable, to Groq) to turn it into text, which appears in the message box for you to check before sending. When you ask Aura to translate a photo or a PDF, or to explain one or answer a question about it, that file is sent to OpenAI to read it; if OpenAI is unavailable, a photo is sent to Groq instead, and for a PDF only the text inside it is sent to Groq. We do not keep the recording or the file: it is held in memory only while it is processed. What Aura answers about a photo or PDF is saved in your Aura chat like any other reply, together with notes on the text the file contained, so that you can ask about it again later; these stay until you delete your account. The provider may keep it for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring and does not use it to train its models. Aura asks for your agreement before the first recording or file is sent. When you ask Aura to speak, or turn on her spoken replies or greeting, the text of her own reply (or the greeting with your first name) is sent to OpenAI to turn it into an AI-generated voice; nothing you said or recorded is part of that request. If that voice cannot be made, your phone reads the same reply aloud with its own built-in voice, on the phone. While the Aura screen is open, your phone can listen for "Hi" followed by the name you gave your assistant, and during a conversation you start that way, for what you say to her; this listening and the turning of speech into text happen on your phone, no recording is made or sent, and only the text of what you say to her is sent, as if you had typed it. The first time you open the Aura screen it tells you this and listens only if you agree, and you can turn it off there at any time. Short spoken commands — opening the camera, a PDF or the scanner, closing them, or deleting your conversation with Aura — are recognised on your phone and are not sent to us; deleting a conversation always asks you to confirm first. When you delete a conversation with Aura it is removed, except that the words of a reply you had reported are kept with that report so it can still be reviewed. The name you give your assistant is stored with your settings. If you turn on "Talk like a close friend", your first name is sent along with each message to Aura so she can use it; with it off, it is not.

Hosting and storage providers keep the app and your data running. Our servers are run by Hostinger, in India. Photos, videos, voice notes and files are stored either on those servers or with Cloudflare (R2 storage and its delivery network), which may hold and deliver them from outside India; they are encrypted at rest in both places.

Push notifications reach your phone through Expo's push service and then Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (Android) or the Apple Push Notification service (iPhone). A notification carries a title and a short line: for a group chat or a chat that is not end-to-end encrypted, the sender's name and a preview of the message; for an end-to-end encrypted chat, only "New message", because we do not have the text; for a chat you have locked, nothing but "New message" — not even who sent it.

Sign-in codes and security alerts about your account are sent by email through our email provider. App updates are downloaded from Expo (EAS Update), which sees your app version and platform when your phone checks for one.

The document scanner uses Google ML Kit, which runs on your phone through Google Play services; the pages you scan are not sent to us unless you send the PDF somewhere yourself. Google may receive information about the scanner's use under its own terms.

A safety report is read only by the HalfChat safety team, and every time one of them opens or acts on it is logged. The person you report is never told that you reported them or what you wrote. We give a safety report to the police only if you ask us to, or if the law requires it.

7. How long we keep things

Messages stay until you delete them. Deleting your account removes the files you sent, but the text of messages you sent stays in the other person’s chat, shown as from a deleted user (see Deleting your account).

Photos, videos, voice notes and files sent in chats are kept on our servers for a limited time, currently up to one year. A photo or video is removed sooner — currently 30 days after everyone it was sent to has saved it to their phone. When a file is removed the message stays and says the file is no longer on our servers. If you turn on "Save chat photos to gallery" in Settings, photos and videos sent to you are copied to your phone's gallery and that copy is yours to keep; only then does your phone tell us it has saved one. A file nothing uses any more — a photo deleted for everyone, a profile picture you replaced, an upload that was never sent — is deleted after a week.

Stories and status posts disappear after 24 hours, and the photo, video or music file goes with them. This sentence used to be true only of what people could see: the post stopped showing and the file stayed on our servers indefinitely. It is now true of both — at expiry the file is deleted from storage, whether the post was public, contacts-only or archived. Only that post's own files are removed, and only when nothing else on your account still points at them.

A status or reel we remove for breaking our rules is taken down for everyone at once and its photo, video or music file is deleted from storage straight away, rather than at the end of its 24 hours. We tell the person who posted it, with the reason. The removal and its reason are kept in our moderation log.

Who is in your Circle and whom you are Connected with is kept until one of you leaves, removes the other, blocks the other, or deletes their account. A request to join a private Circle is kept after it is answered — a declined one is what stops the same person asking again the same day — and goes when either account is deleted.

A live location share is kept only until it expires or you stop it.

Circle Collab offers, deal amounts, payment records and ratings are kept so both sides keep the same record of what was agreed, until either account is deleted; your collab settings and business profile go with your account.

Feedback you sent, with its attachments, stays until you delete your account.

A safety report stays until you delete it from the Safety screen or delete your account; everything written on it, including the safety team's notes, goes with it.

The record of which accounts watched your public reels to the end (for your badge) is kept until either account is deleted. The days you were a Star, and your choice of Bharosemand Bada, are kept until you delete your account or change them; a Bharosemand Bada is removed when you turn 18.

Your daily streak is kept as the days of the last two months you opened the app, plus your current and best run. Your Aura Score is worked out each night from numbers already on your account. If you turn on being featured, your city is shown on the Leaderboard and you may appear in Daily Spotlight; turning it off takes you off both. Who invited you, and whom you invited, is kept so invite badges can be counted. Anonymous questions: the person you ask never sees who you are, but we keep which account sent each question so it can be blocked or reported and acted on. Answered questions show on the profile of the person who answered until they delete them. All of this goes when you delete your account.

Nearby and Dost jodo keep nothing at all. The codes sit in memory for a few minutes and expire; there is no record of who was near whom, ever, and nothing about it is written to your account.

Sign-in sessions last 7 days. The six-digit code that signs you in or confirms your address expires 30 minutes after it is sent.

8. Your controls

You can edit your profile, manage permissions in Settings, control who can see your status and last seen, clear your ad interests and location fields, turn off notifications from HalfChat itself, and block or report other users at any time. You can also hide your badge (My badge), stop being considered for Aaj Ka Star or Teen Star, and, if you are under 18, change or remove your Bharosemand Bada.

You can make your account private (Settings → Private account), so that joining your Circle needs your yes; leave anyone's Circle; and remove anyone from yours without them being told.

Aura's replies are generated by AI and can be wrong, and occasionally something a person finds offensive. Any reply can be reported by holding it — it goes to the same review queue as a report about a person, and we read them.

9. Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Delete Account inside the app, or without installing anything at all, by emailing [email protected] from the address on the account. The account deletion page linked at the bottom of this page explains both.

This deletes your journals, memories, notifications, sign-in sessions, your synced address book, your conversations with Aura and everything in them, the journals and published stories Aura wrote from your chats, your saved push tokens, the record of whose profiles you viewed and who viewed yours, the record of any status you screenshotted, your timeline and its photos, your special dates, your starred messages, the people you muted or blocked, and where you were during any live location share. It scrubs your name, email, phone number, photo, date of birth, gender, address fields, interests and other profile details, and destroys the encrypted backup of your device key.

Every photo, video, voice note and file you uploaded is deleted from our storage, including your profile picture and your status posts. Where one of those was sent into a chat, the other person now sees "This message was deleted".

Your badge records go too, both ways — who watched your public reels and where you were counted among other people’s viewers — with the days you were a Star and your Bharosemand Bada choice.

You leave every Circle you were in, your own Circle and Connected lists are emptied, and every Circle request to or from you is deleted.

Comments you left on other people's statuses, reels and sponsored reels are emptied and shown as deleted, and the note on any message request you sent is removed.

Two things remain, and we would rather say so than surprise you. The text of messages you already sent stays in the other person's conversation, shown as from a deleted user — that copy is theirs as much as yours, so we do not remove it from their chat. And small mechanical traces stay attached to other people's content — a reaction on a message in their chat, a view counted on a status of theirs — none of which names you, because the account behind them has been scrubbed.

10. Children

HalfChat is not for anyone under 13 (or the minimum age where you live). We ask for your date of birth when you sign up and refuse accounts below that age. Our Child Safety page describes how we handle child-safety reports.

People near you and Nearby, the two ways to find people you do not already know, are for people aged 18 and over. Nobody under 18 is ever shown there, and they cannot use them. Your date of birth decides this, and it cannot be changed once set.

An account made before we asked for a date of birth is treated as under 18 for every rule on this page until one is added. The app asks for it on Home; it can be added once.

If you are under 18, only people you know (someone whose number you have saved, whose request you accepted, or who you already chat with) can comment on your statuses and reels, including public ones. Someone saving your number does not make them someone you know. Anyone can still see a public reel, and people you do not know can react to it only with Taali — a fixed set of encouraging words — never with an emoji or anything they choose.

If you are under 18, your badge and the days you were a Teen Star are shown only to people you know.

If you are under 18, a status you post to everyone reaches your contacts, and other people aged 13 to 17, at once; it waits for a person on our team to look at it before anyone else sees it in Public Reels or the Status tab. A status our team rejects is shown to nobody but you. People you do not know cannot screenshot or record it on Android (on an iPhone it cannot be stopped). For the 24 hours you are Teen Star, nobody new can send you a message request, and a safety report you send is marked urgent for our team.

If you are under 18, your account is private unless you choose otherwise, so nobody joins your Circle without your yes. Someone you do not know who is over 18, or whose age we do not know, cannot join it or even ask to.

If you are under 18, notifications about statuses and Teen Star do not make your phone buzz between 10 pm and 7 am India time; they wait in the app until morning. Messages and calls are never held. You may choose a Bharosemand Bada — a grown-up whose number you have saved or whom you chat with. They are told only that you became Teen Star, or that you reported someone or wrote to our safety team, never what you wrote, and nothing else. You can change or remove them at any time without them being told.

When you turn 18, the rules on this page for people under 18 stop applying from that day: people you do not know can find you by name and send you requests, and your badge is shown to everyone unless you hide it. We tell you on the day. Your Bharosemand Bada is removed, and if you had joined Teen Star you are not moved into Aaj Ka Star — you choose again.

If you are under 18, people aged 18 or over whom you do not know in that same sense cannot send you a message request, call you, add you to a group, or find you by searching your name. Someone you give your exact HalfChat ID or phone number to can still find you, and you can always send requests yourself.

11. Contact

Questions? Email [email protected].