Privacy Policy — Pickup Bell

Last updated: July 2026 (v2 — corrected to match actual system behaviour; pending review by the school and by legal counsel under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023)

Pickup Bell ("the App") is a school pickup and attendance notification system built and operated by Taqniva for participating schools. This policy explains what personal data the App processes and how, for both the Pickup Bell Parent/Driver app and the Pickup Bell Staff (Teacher/Gate Staff/Admin) app. The school named in your app, onboarding notice, or service agreement decides why and how its student/household data is processed for pickup, attendance, and communication workflows (Data Fiduciary); Taqniva operates the App on that school's documented instructions (Data Processor). You, or your child, whose data is processed are each a "Data Principal" under Indian law.

Information We Collect

• Account/PIN data: a 6-digit PIN chosen for each role. When you enter or change a PIN, it travels to our servers only over an encrypted (HTTPS/TLS) connection and is hashed there, on the server, before being saved — we never store your PIN as plain text, and the hash itself cannot be read back or reversed to recover the original PIN by any app screen, including Admin.
• Student and household information: student name, class, assigned teacher, parent/guardian name(s) and mobile number(s), pickup arrangement (e.g. parent, driver, or authorized pickup person), and — where entered by the school — address and blood group, for the purpose of coordinating dismissal and, for blood group, emergency safety.
• Location (Parent/Driver/Gate Staff only): your device's location is checked only at the moment you tap "I am here for pickup," to confirm you are near the school before a pickup request is sent. Location is not tracked continuously and is not stored — the coordinates never leave your device, only a yes/no proximity result is used.
• Push notification token: a device token used to deliver pickup, attendance, and announcement notifications. Notification text shown on your lock screen is kept generic (e.g. "Attendance updated — open the app") and does not include your child's name or specific status; details are only visible after you open the App and sign in.
• Attendance and leave records: daily attendance status (present/late/half day/absent) and leave applications (including a reason you provide), visible to the relevant student's household and the school.
• Messages and notices: messages you exchange with the school/teachers, and notices posted to your child's class or household, are stored so both sides can see the conversation history.
• Vehicle details (Admin/Staff only, optional): if a school admin looks up a driver's vehicle registration number to verify it, the vehicle number is sent to a third-party vehicle-registration lookup service (RapidAPI/Surepass), which returns the registered owner's name and vehicle details. This is only used for driver verification and is not exposed to parents.
• Basic page-visit and error diagnostics: when you use the web app, the page path, browser type, and (for error reports) the error message are sent to our servers so we can keep the site working. This is first-party diagnostic logging, not third-party analytics or advertising tracking.

How We Use Information

Information is used solely to operate the pickup, attendance, and school-communication workflow: notifying teachers/admin of a pickup request, notifying parents when a student is sent for pickup, delivering attendance/leave/announcement updates, and letting parents and the school message each other. We do not use your data for advertising, and we do not sell your data. The vehicle-lookup and page-diagnostics services described above are the only third parties this App currently sends any data to.

Data Storage & Security

Data is stored in Google Firebase (Firestore/Storage), hosted on Google Cloud infrastructure in India-adjacent regions, with access controlled by sign-in and role. The App does not use third-party analytics or advertising SDKs. Google's reCAPTCHA/App Check services are used to confirm requests come from a genuine copy of the App, not a script — this involves a request to Google, governed by Google's own privacy policy.

Note: as of this update, we are actively reviewing and tightening exactly which roles can read which records, since some records are currently readable more broadly within the signed-in app than they need to be. This section will be revised as that work completes.

Data Retention & Deletion

Roster information (student, teacher, driver, and household records) is retained for as long as the student/staff member is associated with the school. Operational records — pickup requests, attendance, leave applications, messages, notices, homework, and exam schedules — are exported to the school in a spreadsheet and then removed from our live systems on a recurring schedule (currently monthly), so day-to-day activity data is not kept indefinitely; the school separately retains the exported copies under its own records policy. To request access, correction, deletion, or withdrawal of consent for your data, contact the school administration or Taqniva at the address below — we will route your request appropriately and let you know the outcome.

Children's Information

The App is used by school staff and parents/guardians to coordinate the pickup, attendance, and schooling of children; it is not intended for direct use by children themselves, and there is no self-registration by a child. Student information is entered and managed by school administration under the school's authority as the Data Fiduciary, for education, safety, and pickup/transport purposes only — never for behavioural advertising or profiling unrelated to those purposes.

Your Rights & Grievance Redressal

The rights below are drafted to reflect India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) — this section is pending review by the school and by legal counsel, like the rest of this policy, and should not yet be treated as a final legal statement of how these rights are implemented in practice.

As a Data Principal (or, for a child, as the parent/guardian exercising these rights on the child's behalf), you may ask the school — or Taqniva, on the school's behalf — to:

• Access a summary of the personal data held about you or your child, and how it has been processed.
• Correct or update inaccurate or incomplete personal data.
• Erase personal data that is no longer needed for the purpose it was collected for, subject to the school's own record-keeping and legal retention obligations.
• Withdraw consent previously given, at any time, as easily as it was given — withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal.
• Nominate another individual to exercise these rights on your behalf in the event of your death or incapacity.
• Raise a grievance about how your data has been processed and receive a response within a reasonable time.

To exercise any of these rights, contact the school administration in the first instance, or write to Taqniva at the contact below. If a grievance is not resolved to your satisfaction, you may escalate it to India's Data Protection Board once it is operational.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data can be sent to hello@taqniva.com or via taqniva.com.