Privacy Policy

1.Who we are

GateBell is a product of Stynosoft Private Limited, A702 Manorath Lifestyle, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India 382007 (“we”, “us”). It is a mobile app and a web portal that housing societies in India use for visitor approvals at the gate, resident and flat records, daily help, vehicles, notices, complaints and maintenance billing.

Two different parties are responsible for your information, depending on what it is:

• Your housing society is responsible for the information that guards, residents and admins enter through GateBell about visitors, residents, daily help, vehicles, notices, complaints and payments. The society decides why that information is collected and how it is used. We provide GateBell to the society and handle that information on the society’s behalf. In the words of India’s DPDP Act, the society is the Data Fiduciary and we are its Data Processor.
• We are responsible for account security (your mobile number, PIN and sign-in) and for technical and diagnostic data (such as device details, crash reports and logs).

If you want to know what your society records about you, you can ask the society office. You can also write to us and we will help (see your rights).

2.What we collect and why

We collect only what GateBell needs to do its job. Here it is, group by group.

Account

• Your name and mobile number. The mobile number is how you sign in.
• Your PIN. We never keep the PIN itself. We keep only a keyed hash of it, which cannot be turned back into your PIN.
• Your role (for example admin, treasurer, guard or resident), your society and your flat.
• An optional profile photo.

Why: to know who you are, to let you in, and to show you the right things.

Gate and visitors

• For each visitor the guard logs: name, phone number, company, purpose of the visit, vehicle number and photo; the times of arrival and exit; and who approved or denied the entry.
• Guest passes that residents create for expected guests.

Why: so the resident can say yes or no before someone comes in, and so the society has a record of who entered.

Daily help and vehicles

• For daily help (maid, cook, driver and so on): name, phone number, photo, entry code and attendance.
• For vehicles registered with a flat: the vehicle number, type and make or model.

Why: so regular helpers can enter with their code and residents can see when they came.

Billing

• Maintenance invoices, the UTR (payment reference number), the payment screenshot and receipts.

Why: so the society can collect maintenance and confirm payments. GateBell does not move or hold money. Residents pay the society directly.

Community

• Notices that admins post.
• Complaints that residents raise, with their text and any photos.
• Directory entries (name, flat and phone number). Neighbours can see them unless you hide yours or the society switches the directory off.

Why: so the society can talk to its residents and fix problems.

Technical

• A push token, so we can send notifications to your phone.
• Device model, operating system version and app version.
• Crash and error reports. We scrub them to remove things like tokens, phone numbers and email addresses.
• Audit logs: a record of important actions in a society, such as who approved a payment.
• Login-attempt records, and your IP address, which we use to slow down people who keep guessing PINs (rate limiting).

Why: to deliver alerts, keep accounts safe, find and fix bugs, and show what happened if something goes wrong.

Cookies and the web portal

The admin web portal uses cookies only to keep you signed in, and remembers your light or dark choice in your browser. There are no advertising or tracking cookies.

3.Permissions the app asks for

On your phone, the app may ask for these permissions. You can change them any time in your phone’s settings.

We do not ask for access to your location, contacts, SMS messages or microphone.

4.Who can see what

Each society’s information is kept apart. People in one society cannot see another society’s records.

5.Who we share data with

We do not sell personal data. We share it only with these two services, which we need to run GateBell:

• Google Firebase. We use it for exactly two things: push notifications (Firebase Cloud Messaging) and crash reports (Firebase Crashlytics). Your push token and the notifications themselves pass through Google so they can reach your phone, and crash reports go to Google so we can fix bugs. We do not use Firebase for anything else.
• Our hosting provider. GateBell runs on a Contabo server in Europe. The database and the uploaded photos and files are stored there.

Inside a society, information is shared with the people listed in who can see what. We may also disclose information if the law or a court requires it.

6.Where your data is processed

Our server is in Europe, and Google processes push and crash data on its own systems, which can be outside India. So your information is processed outside India. The DPDP Act allows this, except in countries the Government of India restricts, and we keep to that.

7.How long we keep data

We keep information only as long as it is useful, then remove it automatically. Photos and files are deleted from storage, and the record they belonged to stays only where it is still needed, without the photo or the personal details.

Your society can choose a longer or shorter time for visitor photos, from 30 to 365 days. If it never changes the setting, the period is 90 days. All other periods are fixed.

When you delete your account (see Delete account), your personal details are erased at once. Society records you took part in stay, without your name or number.

8.How we protect data

These are the protections GateBell has in place today:

• Information travels between the app, the portal and our servers over encrypted connections (HTTPS).
• PINs are stored only as keyed hashes. We cannot read your PIN, and nobody at GateBell can look it up for you.
• After too many wrong PINs, sign-in is locked for a while.
• Access is controlled per society. You can only reach the societies you belong to, and only with the role you hold there.
• Photos and files are not public. The app and portal open them through short-lived links.
• Audit logs record important actions, and GateBell support sessions are logged and time-limited.

No system is perfectly secure. If you notice something that looks wrong, write to support@gatebell.in.

9.Your rights and how to use them

Under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, you have the right to:

• Access a summary of the personal data held about you and how it is used.
• Correct information that is wrong or out of date.
• Erase your personal data, by deleting your account.
• Grievance redressal: have a complaint about your data heard and answered.

How to use them

• Correct: change your own details in the app. For details a society entered about you, ask the society office to change them.
• Delete your account: in the app, go to Settings → Privacy & data → Delete my account. Full steps, and what we erase and keep, are on the Delete account page. If you cannot open the app, email support@gatebell.in with your name, mobile number and society. We check your identity with the society office and erase your account within 30 days.
• Access, or any other request: email support@gatebell.in. Because your society decides what it records, we may need to involve the society office to answer.
• Complaint: write to our Grievance Officer (below). We aim to reply within 30 days. If you are still not satisfied, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India, as the law provides.

10.Children

GateBell is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you think a child has an account, tell us at support@gatebell.in and we will look into it.

11.Changes to this policy

We may update this policy when GateBell or the law changes. The “Last updated” date at the top shows the latest version. If a change matters to you, for example if we start collecting something new, we will tell you in the app or the portal.

12.Contact and grievance officer

Grievance Officer

Kalpesh Thakkar
kalpesh@gatebell.in

We will respond to your complaint within 30 days.