What we
keep

What we ask for, and why

• The photograph. That is the archive.
• Where and when it was taken, and anything you want to say about it. Without this a photograph is just a picture; with it, it is a record.
• The name you want on it — or "Anonymous", which is always a real option.
• Your email address. Only so we can reach you if a curator has a question, or if something about your photograph needs sorting out. It is never published, never shown to anyone outside the curators, and never used to write to you about anything else.

What we keep, and for how long

A published photograph

Kept indefinitely, with tape over the faces of people in the crowd. That is what an archive is. You can ask for it back at any time — see below.

Your name, if you asked to be credited

Published beside the photograph and kept for as long as it is up. A credit that disappears is not a credit.

Your email address

Deleted 30 days after a curator decides on your photographs, along with the original files you uploaded. In its place we keep a one-way fingerprint of the address — a string that cannot be turned back into your email, but that lets us find your photographs if you write to us later asking for them down.

A photograph we did not publish

The file is deleted. We keep only a fingerprint of the image itself, so that the same picture cannot be accidentally re-published later by a different route.

A takedown request

Your address is kept until the removal is done and we have written back to confirm it, then for 90 days in case you reply, then deleted.

A bug report

90 days, then deleted.

An essay you sent to the Lighthouse

Your essay and your address go to a private file only the curators can read — it is never on the website, and an unpublished essay is never in the archive's public code. The copy sitting in the form's own storage is deleted after 90 days. If we publish the essay you keep your copyright and are credited however you asked, including not at all. If we don't, tell us and we will delete our copy too.

A curator's approve or reject

Kept for 90 days so that we can always say who decided what, then deleted. It records the curator, never the contributor.

The deletion runs by itself, every hour, and it is not a promise somebody has to remember to keep.

What we never collect

• No accounts, no passwords, no logins. There is nothing to sign up for.
• No tracking cookies, no advertising, no third-party analytics. We count page views and shares as anonymous daily tallies — no IP addresses, no device fingerprints, nothing that is tied to a person.
• No face recognition. Software finds faces in a photograph so that it can cover them. It never tries to work out whose face it is, and we hold no such record.
• No selling, sharing, or handing on of anything you send us, to anyone, ever.

Where it sits while we have it

• The site and the submission forms are hosted on Netlify; the archive itself lives in a private repository that only the curators can open.
• The anonymous view and like counts are held at Supabase, with no personal data attached to them.
• Both are outside India. If that matters to you, it is a reason to send a photograph and not a name.

Asking for something back

• Any photograph, any reason, no questions. Use the removal form — or just write. We act the same day and confirm when it is done.
• You can ask what we hold about you, and ask us to erase it, at ProjectDD@impactmojo.in.
• One thing we cannot undo. Once a photograph has been public, other people may have saved or reposted it. Taking it off this site is the part we control, and we do it properly; we cannot reach the copies.

A request to remove a photograph of a child is honoured on the word of the person asking. We do not ask for proof of guardianship, and we do not weigh it against anything else. What we publish of children in the first place is set out in the guidelines.

If we get something wrong

Tell us, and we will fix it and say so. If you have found a way to reach data you should not be able to reach, write to ProjectDD@impactmojo.in with "security" in the subject and please do not post it publicly first — it is people's safety, not a scoreboard.

Last updated 28 July 2026. When this policy changes, the date changes with it.