Privacy policy

Who handles your data, and how to contact us

Clapnumber is operated by Clapnumber Infotainment Private Limited. Under the DPDP Act we are the Data Fiduciary for the personal data described here.

• Postal address: Plot No.81, Amarajyothi Colony, Bhavana Enclave, New Bowenpally, Secunderabad TG 500011 INDIA.
• Email, for any question or complaint about privacy: hello@clapnumber.com.
• Web form: /contact.
• Grievance officer, for a complaint you want escalated: clapnumbergrievance@clapnumber.com, details at /legal/grievance.

What this policy covers

Clapnumber is an entertainment site: films, series, television, the people who make them, news, photographs, trailers and polls. Most of what is on it is about public work, not about you.

This policy covers three different things, and it is worth knowing which part you are reading. What we collect about you when you visit or make an account. What we take from other platforms when we show their videos and posts. And what we hold about the actors, directors and crew we write about, who are not our users and never signed up.

If you only read the site

You do not need an account to read Clapnumber, and we do not ask you to make one.

• Our servers log the usual things a web server logs: your IP address, the browser and device you used, the page you asked for, the page you came from and the time. We use these to keep the site up, to find faults and to spot abuse.
• One strictly necessary cookie keeps your session and protects forms against cross-site request forgery. The site cannot work without it.
• We remember which language edition you chose, so you are not asked again on every visit.
• We do not build an advertising profile of you, we do not sell data about you, and we do not track you across other websites.

What we collect when you make an account

An account exists so that your claps, votes, watchlist and comments can be shown back to you. Everything below is either something you typed or something your sign-in provider handed us.

• Your name and email address. If you change your email we hold the new one until you confirm it, and you can add a recovery email address so you are not locked out.
• A password, stored only as a hash. We never hold the password itself and nobody here can read it.
• Profile details, if you fill them in: first and last name, a short bio, gender, date of birth, country and a mobile number. All optional. Date of birth and gender are there so we can tell you apart from somebody with the same name, and they are never sold, never used for advertising and never shown to other readers unless you put them in your public profile.
• If you sign in with Google or Facebook, we receive your name, email address, profile picture and the id that provider uses for you. Never your password, and we keep no token from them afterwards.
• If you sign in with a one-time code, your mobile number and a hashed copy of the code until it is used or expires.
• If you turn on two-factor authentication or a passkey, the secret or credential that makes it work. These protect your account and are used for nothing else.
• Your settings: language and edition preference, appearance, and which emails you want from us.

What you do on Clapnumber

These are tied to your account, because that is the only way to show them back to you and the only way to count a vote once per person.

• Claps, ratings and poll votes, with the time you cast them.
• Your watchlist and anything you have marked as watched.
• Comments and replies you post, which are public, along with their status if a moderator has acted on one.
• Anything you report to us, with the reason you gave.
• An internal record of changes made from an administrator account, so an edit to the catalogue can be traced to the person who made it.

Emails we send you

• Transactional emails, which come with having an account and cannot be turned off while you have one: confirming your address, resetting your password, confirming a recovery email, and telling you about something that affects your account or its security.
• A newsletter and digests about films, releases and the shows we cover, if you asked for them or ticked for them when you signed up.
• You can stop the newsletter at any time with the unsubscribe link in it, or by writing to us. We act on it straight away and we do not ask you to explain.
• We do not rent, sell or lend your email address to anybody, and we do not send you somebody else’s advertising.

Why we collect it

• To give you an account and keep you signed in.
• To record and show your claps, votes, watchlist and comments.
• To count votes once per person per day, which is the only thing that keeps a poll meaningful.
• To send you the emails described above.
• To understand which pages are read, so we know what to write more of.
• To keep the site secure, to investigate abuse and to meet a legal obligation when one applies.

Cookies and analytics

We use one strictly necessary cookie to keep you signed in and to protect forms against cross-site request forgery. That one has no alternative — the site cannot work without it.

We also use Google Analytics 4 to count page views and see which sections are read. For visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland it stays switched off until you accept it, and you can change your mind at any time from the banner or by clearing this site’s data. Elsewhere it is on, and you can turn it off with Google’s Analytics opt-out browser add-on or your browser’s tracking protection. Google acts as our processor and may store this data outside India.

Content from YouTube, Instagram and other platforms

Clapnumber shows trailers, songs, clips, posts and news that other platforms host. We link to them and embed them; we do not copy them onto our own servers. Almost none of this is about you.

Clapnumber uses YouTube API Services to find videos published by film studios, music labels, TV channels and other official channels. By using Clapnumber you also agree to the YouTube Terms of Service (https://www.youtube.com/t/terms), and Google’s handling of data is covered by the Google Privacy Policy (https://policies.google.com/privacy).

• What we take is what is already public about a piece of content: for a video, its id, title, description, publish date, length, thumbnail address and the counts the platform publishes; for a channel or account, its id and name.
• Nothing about you. You can sign in with Google if you want to, and that tells us only your name, email address and profile picture; we keep no Google token afterwards. We never ask for access to your YouTube account, so we hold no YouTube permission for anybody, and no part of Clapnumber reads your subscriptions, your watch history, your likes or your playlists.
• Videos play in YouTube’s own embedded player, loaded from youtube-nocookie.com and not placed on the page until you press play. That player is a third party serving content inside our page, it can carry advertising we have no part in, and once you press play YouTube may store or read information on your device, including cookies and similar technology, under the Google Privacy Policy. We do not receive any of it.
• We store no video or photograph from another platform, only the id needed to ask the platform for it. A YouTube video id is eleven characters, and the picture and the playback come from YouTube every time.
• Videos on film, show and celebrity pages are re-checked against YouTube every week, and one that has been deleted, made private or blocked comes off our pages in the same run. Public comments we read to gauge how a show is being covered are erased 72 hours after we read them; the platform allows 30 days, we keep the words for three.
• If you have ever given any app access to your Google account, you can see and withdraw it at https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions. Clapnumber will not be listed, because it never asks for it.

People we write about

Clapnumber holds profiles for tens of thousands of actors, directors, singers, writers and crew. They are not our users. They did not sign up, and most of them have never heard of us. This section is for them, and for anyone acting on their behalf.

• What we hold is work and the public record around it: names and the names they are credited under, the films and shows they worked on, profession, a short biography, and where it is reliably published, date and place of birth, hometown, citizenship, years active, an official website and official social accounts. For someone who has died, the date and place.
• Where it comes from: open databases such as Wikidata, film and television databases, official channels and accounts, published news reporting, and our own editors. We do not buy dossiers on people and we do not scrape private accounts.
• What we never gather, because the numbers in circulation are invented and because it is nobody’s business: net worth, caste, religion and what somebody was paid for a film. Our systems are built to refuse these, not merely to leave them blank.
• A date of birth is published only where it is well attested. Where sources disagree we publish nothing rather than guess, and a birth date is never set by software without a person approving it.
• Photographs are shown from the people who own them or from official sources. We do not host another outlet’s photograph.
• Everything is marked with where we got it, so a claim on a page can be traced to its source.

If a page about you is wrong, or you want it taken down

You do not need a lawyer and you do not need to explain yourself at length. Write to us and say which page and what is wrong.

• Corrections: email hello@clapnumber.com or use /contact with the address of the page. We check it against the sources we hold and fix it, usually within a few days.
• Removal: tell us what you want removed and why. We will remove a date of birth, a place, a family detail, a photograph or a social link on request. Where the material is a matter of public record about published work, such as a screen credit, we may keep it and will tell you why.
• Anything urgent, or anything involving impersonation, a morphed image or material about a child, goes to our grievance officer at clapnumbergrievance@clapnumber.com. We acknowledge within 24 hours and act within 15 days, and on impersonation and morphed images within 24 hours.
• A removal we make is permanent: our systems record it so that a later automated pass cannot quietly put it back.

Who we share it with

• Amazon Web Services — hosting, databases and file storage, as our processor.
• Google — analytics, and sign-in if you choose it.
• Meta — sign-in only, if you choose it.
• Our email provider, to deliver the messages described above.
• We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.
• We will disclose data if a law, a court or a lawful government request requires it, and we will tell you unless we are forbidden from doing so.

Where your data is kept

Our servers and backups are run by Amazon Web Services. Some of our processors, Google among them, may store or process data outside India. Where that happens we rely on the provider’s own contractual safeguards, and nothing we hold is transferred to a country the Indian government has barred.

How long we keep it

• Your account data stays until you delete your account. You can delete it yourself in your settings, or ask us to.
• Once you delete your account we erase what we hold about you within 7 days, except where a law requires a record — for example the 180 days the intermediary rules require for content that has been taken down.
• Comments you posted are public and may remain, with your name removed, where a conversation would otherwise make no sense. Ask us and we will delete them outright.
• Server logs are kept for a short period and then rotated away. Analytics data is retained by Google for 14 months.
• Material we take from other platforms is refreshed or deleted on the clocks set out above.
• Deleting what we hold changes nothing on YouTube, Instagram or any other platform. To delete something there you have to do it there.

Your rights

Under the DPDP Act you can ask us to do all of the following, free of charge, and we will respond within 30 days.

• See the personal data we hold about you and who we have shared it with.
• Correct anything inaccurate, or complete anything incomplete.
• Erase your data where we no longer need it for the purpose you gave it for.
• Withdraw a consent you previously gave — including analytics and our newsletter — as easily as you gave it.
• Nominate someone to exercise these rights for you if you die or become incapacitated.
• Complain to us first at clapnumbergrievance@clapnumber.com, and to the Data Protection Board of India if we do not resolve it.

Children

Clapnumber is not intended for children under 18. The DPDP Act requires verifiable parental consent before processing a child’s data, and we are not set up to obtain it, so we ask that under-18s do not create an account. If you believe a child has given us data, write to us and we will delete it.

We do not publish personal details about the children of people we write about.

Security

Passwords are stored hashed, never in readable form. Traffic is encrypted in transit. You can add two-factor authentication or a passkey to your account, and we recommend it. Access to production data is limited to the people who operate the site, and administrative actions are logged.

No system is perfectly secure, and if a breach affects you we will notify you and the Data Protection Board as the Act requires.

Changes to this policy

If we change what we collect or why, we will update this page and change the effective date above. Where the change is significant we will tell you before it takes effect.