Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Silsilay Technologies (“Silsilay,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) operates Silsilay, a know-your-neighbour app for families in Pakistan's residential societies: families connect with their neighbours, organise events and polls, and chat family to family. Local organisations — a society's management office, shops, schools, clinics, mosques, clubs and charities — can also have an account, with a separate interface of their own. Silsilay is used through our iOS and Android apps. Our website at silsilay.pk carries information about the app, these policies, and a page for deleting your account.

This policy explains what information we collect, who can see it, and the choices you have. By using Silsilay you agree to it; if you do not agree, please do not use the service.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Information you give us

• Account: your name, email address and password. Passwords are stored only in hashed form by our authentication provider.
• Homes: the societies your family actually lives in — up to three, one marked as your main one — and optionally the block, building and apartment number for each. Your apartment number is never shown to any other member. We also record the societies you choose to follow, which are places you are interested in rather than places you live.
• Family: the Partner you link with, and for each child you choose to add, their first name, birth month and year, and interests. A parent enters this; children do not have accounts, and we do not collect children's photos, schools or gender.
• What you share: family chat messages, group chat messages, feed posts and their photos and comments, polls and your votes, events and your family's RSVPs (including how many adults and children are coming), event photos and comments, stall applications, answers to a host's sign-up questions, and your connection requests.
• Vouches: when you confirm that another family lives in your society, or that you know them personally. That family is told who vouched for them. We never ask for a CNIC, any other identity document, or a utility bill to verify anyone — not from you, and not from our own team.
• Safety: the accounts you block, and reports you make — including the reason, any detail you add and a copy of the reported content, so our team can review it even if the original is deleted.
• Help & Support: the messages you exchange with the Silsilay team in the app.
• Organisation accounts: if you sign up as a business or organisation rather than a family, we collect the organisation's name, what kind of organisation it is, the society it is in and the societies it serves, a contact phone number, an optional address and description, business hours and an away message. These are public details about the organisation — the kind already on its shopfront or flyer — and they are shown to members. We verify an organisation by calling that number, and sometimes by visiting. We never ask an organisation for a CNIC or any other identity document either.
• Sharing your address with an organisation: your apartment or house number is never shown to anyone. There are exactly two exceptions, and both are your own move. One is tapping Share my address in a chat with one organisation. The other is placing an order for delivery, which has to say where to deliver. Either way it is the full address of the one home you pick, it goes to that one organisation, it is recorded in the chat so you can always see what you sent, and it is never passed on. An order for pickup carries no address at all.
• Orders: if you order from a local shop on Silsilay, we hold what you ordered — the items and quantities, anything you typed in yourself, your note to the shop, whether it is delivery or pickup, and the status of the order as it moves along. The shop tells you the total when it accepts; Silsilay never takes a payment and holds no card, bank or payment details of any kind. You pay the shop directly, off the app. We also keep the items you pin for quick ordering, so the same chips are there next time.

2.2 Information collected automatically

• Notifications: a push notification token for each phone you sign in on, and whether it is an iPhone or Android phone.
• Sessions and logs: sign-in tokens that keep you logged in, and standard server logs (such as IP address and time of request) used for security and to fix problems.

We do not collect your precise location, your contacts, or any government identity document such as a CNIC. We do not use your phone's GPS, and we strip the location and other metadata out of every photo you upload before it is stored, so a photo taken at home does not reveal where you live. Silsilay never shows a map with pins on members' homes.

3. How We Use Your Information

• To run your account and the features you use: your family profile, connections, family chats, the feed, polls and events.
• To show you the families, posts, polls and events in the societies you live in and the ones you follow, and to show how families are connected to each other. Where we show connections between societies as a whole, we hide any figure below three so nobody can be identified from it.
• To send notifications you can switch off in your phone's settings, and transactional emails such as email verification, password resets, Partner invites and account deletion confirmations.
• To keep Silsilay safe: we automatically check posts, polls, events, comments and messages against a list of slurs and sexual terms before they are shared, limit how quickly content can be posted, hide content reported by three different members until it is reviewed, and review reports so we can remove content, warn, suspend or ban accounts.
• To show you verified local organisations in your societies, their announcements and events, and to carry the messages between you and them. An organisation gets counts — how many families follow it, how many opened an announcement, how many are coming to an event — never a list of who they are.
• To carry your orders to the shop you sent them to, show both of you the same status, and offer your own past orders and pinned items back to you as one-tap shortcuts. Orders are not used to advertise anything to you, and are never shared with any other shop.
• A private note of confirmed deliveries. When a shop delivers to one of your homes and you confirm you got it, we record that quietly for ourselves — it is one of the few honest signals that a household really lives where it says, which helps our team when it reviews residency. It is never shown to anyone, not to you, not to the shop and not to your neighbours; it appears nowhere in the app; and it does not give you a badge on its own. Orders for pickup record nothing.
• To answer your Help & Support messages.
• To meet legal obligations, including reporting child sexual abuse material to the authorities.

4. Who Can See What

• Families in a society you live in see your family's name, the first names of its adults, your profile photo, that society along with your block and building, how many kids you have listed and their age bands (for example “2 kids · 5–8, 9–12”), your badges, and what you post, poll and organise there.
• Everyone else sees less: your family's name, the adults' first names and photo, your main society only — not your block or building — your kids' count and age bands, and your badges. You control who outside your societies can find you at all, in Profile → Family: anyone on Silsilay, people linked to you (the default), or only your neighbours. Anyone you send your family link to can reach you whatever that setting says, because you chose to share it; resetting the link stops every copy already shared from working.
• Families you are connected with can also see your kids' first names and interests, and chat with your family. Both adults of each family are in a family chat and can read all of it. A partner who joins your family later does not get the history of chats from before they joined.
• Members of a group chat you join see your first name and your family's name on each message you send there.
• Hosts of an event you RSVP to see your family's name, how many of you are coming, and your answers to any sign-up questions they asked.
• Your Partner sees and manages everything that belongs to your family.
• An organisation you follow or message sees your family's name and the first names of its adults on the messages you send it, and your family's RSVP to its events. It sees your address only if you tapped Share my address. It cannot start a conversation with you, cannot connect with you or vouch for you, and never receives a list of the families that follow it — only how many there are.
• The Silsilay team (a small number of staff administrators) can see reported content, the history needed to review a report, and Help & Support conversations.
• Nobody else can ever see your apartment number, your email address or your password — at any level, to anyone, including the families you are connected with.

5. Children's Privacy

Silsilay accounts are for adults aged 18 and over. Silsilay is not directed at children, and children cannot sign in or hold an account.

• A parent may list a child on their family profile with only a first name, birth month and year, and interests.
• Members outside your connections see only how many kids you have listed and their age bands — never names.
• Families you are connected with also see first names and interests. Nobody sees a child's photo, school or exact date of birth.
• Either adult in the family can edit or remove a child at any time from Profile → My Kids.
• Photos shared in event albums may show children. They are added by adults attending the event and can be reported like any other content. See our Child Safety Standards.

6. Sharing and Disclosure

We do not sell your personal information, and Silsilay shows no advertising, sponsored posts or paid promotion of any kind. Organisation pages are not ads: nothing on Silsilay can be bought, including how many notifications an organisation may send. We share data only:

• With a shop you order from, and only that shop: what you ordered, your note, your family name, and — for a delivery, never a pickup — the full address of the home you chose. It goes nowhere else, and no other shop or member can see it.
• With service providers that host our database, authentication, file storage and website, deliver push notifications (through Apple and Google) and send email. They process data on our behalf under their own security and data-processing commitments.
• For legal reasons, when required by law, regulation or valid legal process — including reporting apparent child sexual abuse material to the FIA Cybercrime Wing, other law enforcement or NCMEC.
• For safety, when we believe it is necessary to protect someone from harm, prevent fraud or address a security issue.

7. Storage and Security

• Data is stored with cloud infrastructure providers, encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest.
• The app never writes to our database directly: every change goes through our servers, which check that you are allowed to make it.
• Passwords are hashed, and sign-in sessions use short-lived tokens that refresh automatically.
• Profile → Settings → Active devices lists every phone signed in to your account and lets you sign one, or all of them, out. Changing your password signs out every other device. This matters most for an organisation account, which is meant to be shared between a few phones.

8. Keeping and Deleting Your Data

We keep your data while your account is open. You can delete your account at any time, and deletion is immediate and permanent:

• In the app: Profile → Settings → Delete account, then type DELETE.
• Without the app: silsilay.pk/account/delete.

When you delete your account:

• We delete your login. Your email address and password are removed, so nobody can sign in as you and we no longer hold your credentials or your notification tokens.
• We clear what identifies you: your name, email address, profile photo and home details. If your family has no other adult, the kids you listed are hidden and their first names, birth months and years, and interests are cleared.
• We keep what you shared, without your name. Messages in family chats, feed posts, event comments, and the polls and events you created stay where they are, shown as “Deleted member”, so the conversations and plans other families were part of still make sense. They carry no name, photo or link to you.
• Your family: if you have a Partner, they continue the family with its kids and connections.
• An organisation account: deleting it takes the organisation's page down with it — it stops being visible, everyone following it is released, and its announcements and events stay in place like anything else, without a working link back to an account.
• Your orders: past orders stay with your family, so a Partner who continues the household still has them. If nobody is left, anything still open is cancelled so the shop is not left waiting, your pinned items go, and the orders themselves stay in place without your name — like everything else you shared.
• We keep safety records: reports you made (without your name) and reports about your content, along with any moderation decisions, so we can meet our safety and legal obligations.
• We do not erase rows from our database as part of ordinary use: anything you remove in the app — a post, a poll, an event, a kid, a connection — is hidden from everyone and kept out of the way, rather than wiped, so the records that refer to it stay consistent. It may also remain in encrypted backups.

9. Your Rights and Choices

• Access and correction: view and edit your profile, home, Partner and kids in the app.
• Deletion: delete your account as described above.
• A copy of your data: email privacy@silsilay.pk from your account's email address.
• Notifications: turn them off for Silsilay in your phone's settings.
• Blocking: block any family, and unblock it later from Profile → Settings → Blocked Accounts.

10. Website Analytics

The Silsilay app contains no advertising or third-party tracking SDKs. Our marketing website uses the Meta Pixel to measure visits to the site; it is not used inside the app and does not receive anything you do in the app.

11. International Data Transfers

Silsilay is intended for people in Pakistan. Our service providers may process and store data on servers outside Pakistan, under appropriate security and data-protection measures.

12. Changes to This Policy

When we make material changes, we update the “Last updated” date above and, where appropriate, tell you in the app or by email. Continuing to use Silsilay after a change means you accept the updated policy.

13. Contact Us

Questions or requests about your personal data: