Privacy Policy & Terms of Use

1 Privacy

Your privacy is very important to us. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use and share it, how long we keep it, and how you can delete your account and data. We encourage you to read it and use it to make informed decisions.

2 Information We Collect

To provide a matrimonial matchmaking service we collect: (a) registration details — your name, email address, date of birth, gender, marital status, religion and community, mother tongue, height, and country, state and city of residence; (b) profile details you choose to add — education, profession, income range, lifestyle, family information and an "about me" description; (c) photos you upload; (d) contact details you provide for interested members; (e) partner preferences; (f) optional verification information — a government-issued identity document, a live selfie, a work email, professional registration number, GSTIN, or LinkedIn profile, if you choose to get verified; (g) messages and interactions with other members (interests, photo requests, favourites, blocks, reports, chat); and (h) technical records — sign-in times and IP addresses, device push-notification tokens, and payment transaction references.

3 How We Use Your Information

We use your information to operate your profile and show it to other members searching for a match; to send match alerts and notifications you can control from your profile settings; to verify identity and award trust badges (identity documents and selfies are compared using automated face-matching, and photos are screened by automated moderation before an administrator reviews them); to prevent fraud, fake profiles and abuse (including screening messages for shared contact details, detecting duplicate accounts, and reviewing reported profiles); and to process membership payments and refunds.

4 Photos and Verification Documents

Photos are visible to other members only after review and approval. Government-identity documents and selfies submitted for verification are used solely to verify your identity, are stored separately from your profile, are never shown to other members, and are permanently deleted 90 days after you delete your account (or earlier upon request once verification is complete).

5 Payments

Membership payments are processed by our payment partners (Stripe and Braintree, a PayPal service). Your full card number is entered directly with the payment partner and never touches or is stored on our servers. We retain the transaction reference, amount, currency, and a card fingerprint used for fraud and refund-abuse prevention. Records of payments and refunds are retained as required for tax, accounting and dispute resolution.

6 Account Deletion and Data Retention

You can delete your account at any time from Edit Profile → Delete account on the website, or Settings → Delete account in the app, after confirming your password. Your profile is hidden from all members immediately and your sign-in credentials are revoked. If you change your mind, contact support within 30 days and we can restore your account. Thereafter: your photos, profile details, partner preferences and verification documents are permanently deleted 90 days after deletion; your registration details (such as name and email address) and sign-in records are retained for up to 180 days after deletion, as required by applicable law (including India's Information Technology Rules, 2021); payment and refund records are retained for the statutory tax and accounting periods; and messages you sent to other members remain in their inbox, attributed to "Deleted Member" once your identity is removed. If your profile is the subject of an unresolved report or an open payment dispute when you delete your account, the related data is retained until that matter is resolved and is then deleted on the schedule above.

7 Data Security

We use industry-standard safeguards to protect your information. All traffic to and from Live Rishta is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS) — the site does not serve any page over plain HTTP. Passwords are never stored in plain text; they are hashed with bcrypt. Your payment card number is never entered on our servers — it goes directly to our PCI-compliant payment partners (Stripe and Braintree), so we never see or store full card numbers. Verification documents (government ID, selfies) are stored separately from your public profile data and are only accessible to authorised staff reviewing your verification request. Administrative actions on member accounts (approvals, disapprovals, account changes) are logged to an internal audit trail. Our database is backed up daily to encrypted, access-controlled storage. If you believe you have found a security vulnerability, please report it to our Grievance Officer or Support contact below rather than disclosing it publicly.

8 Cookies

We use a session cookie and an authentication cookie to keep you signed in on the web; the mobile app uses an access token that expires automatically after 90 days of no sign-in. Sign-in records (time and IP address) are kept for security and fraud prevention and are deleted on the retention schedule above.

9 Sharing Your Content and Information

You own all of the content and information you post on Live Rishta. Your profile and approved photos are visible to other registered members; your contact details are shown only according to the contact-visibility setting you choose, and only to premium members who use a contact view. We do not sell your personal information. Information is disclosed only to the specific service providers needed to run the service — our payment partners (Stripe, Braintree) for payment processing, our identity-verification and photo-moderation providers, and our push-notification provider — transmitted directly to each via their secure, authenticated API, and limited to the data each provider needs to perform its function. We also disclose information to law-enforcement agencies when required by law. For content covered by intellectual property rights, like photos, you give us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide licence to use it in connection with operating Live Rishta ("IP Licence"). This IP Licence ends when your content is deleted under the retention schedule above.

10 Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)

Live Rishta is for genuine matrimonial matchmaking between adults only. By using Live Rishta you agree not to:

Age: register or attempt to register if you are under 18 years old, or misrepresent your age or date of birth.

Child sexual abuse material (CSAM): Live Rishta has zero tolerance for CSAM or any content that sexualises, exploits, or endangers a minor. Any account, message, or image involving a minor in a sexual context is removed immediately on detection — see AUP Enforcement & Detection Controls below — and reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and relevant law enforcement as required by law. This is enforced in addition to, not instead of, the Age requirement above.

Human or sex trafficking: use Live Rishta to recruit, advertise, solicit, or facilitate human trafficking or sex trafficking in any form, including coercive or fraudulent matchmaking, forced marriage, or offering another person for commercial sexual services.

Sexual violence and exploitation: Live Rishta has zero tolerance for sexual violence. You may not use Live Rishta to commit, threaten, incite, facilitate, glorify, or normalise any non-consensual sexual act, including rape, sexual assault, sexual abuse, or coercing or pressuring anyone into sexual activity (including by threat, blackmail, deception, or abuse of authority). You may not share, threaten to share, or solicit non-consensual intimate imagery, or engage in sextortion. You may not send unsolicited sexual content, sexual advances, or sexually explicit messages or images to another member, and you may not continue any sexual conversation after the other member has declined or asked you to stop. Consent is required, must be freely given, and can be withdrawn at any time. Reports of sexual violence or non-consensual intimate imagery are treated as urgent: the reported profile is hidden immediately on a single report pending review, the account is permanently removed where the report is substantiated, and we report to law enforcement as required by law.

Illegal acts: use Live Rishta to plan, promote, or carry out any activity that is illegal under applicable law, including fraud, extortion, sale of prohibited goods or substances, or facilitating any of the other prohibited activities on this list.

Impersonation: impersonate any person, organisation, or entity, or create a false identity or profile misrepresenting who you are.

Prohibited content: upload or share sexually explicit, obscene, or adult content; hate speech or content that attacks or demeans a person or group on the basis of religion, caste, race, gender, disability, or similar; content that is unlawful, defamatory, or infringes someone else's intellectual property or other rights.

Prohibited behaviour: create an account for anyone other than yourself without their permission (a profile may be created for a family member with their consent); create more than one personal account, or a new account after we've disabled a previous one, without our permission; harass, threaten, stalk, or abuse other members; send spam or unsolicited commercial messages; solicit or advertise commercial services, including matchmaking-agent/broker activity, escort or pay-per-message services; solicit money, gifts, cryptocurrency, or financial information from another member, or use romance-scam pretexts (e.g. medical emergencies, travel/customs fees, inheritance claims) to do so; or collect other users' content or information using automated means (scraping, bots) without our prior permission.

We investigate reported violations (see Safety below) and may suspend or terminate any account that breaches this policy — see AUP Enforcement & Detection Controls below for the automated and manual controls we use to detect violations, and Registration and Account Security, and Termination, for how enforcement works.

11 AUP Enforcement & Detection Controls

We use layered, always-on controls to detect and act on AUP violations:

Age. Date of birth is a required registration field and is validated server-side — anyone entering a date of birth under 18 years is blocked from creating an account.

Automated message screening. Every direct message and interest note is scanned in real time for contact-detail sharing (phone numbers, emails — nudging members to stay on-platform before exchanging contact details), off-platform redirects (WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.), payment/financial solicitation (UPI, bank transfers, gift cards, cryptocurrency, wire transfers), and romance-scam pretexts (claimed emergencies, stranded-abroad stories, inheritance claims). Flagged messages are recorded for admin review and the sender is shown an in-app safety warning; members who repeatedly trigger flags have messaging automatically suspended for a cooling-off period.

Manual review. Every profile and every uploaded photo is reviewed by our moderation team before it becomes visible to other members or appears in search — this is where content that automated screening can't reliably judge (explicit photos, hate speech, misleading biodata) is caught.

Member reporting. Every profile page and every chat conversation has a one-tap Report and Block control. Blocking is instant and mutual (neither member can see or contact the other again). Reports are acknowledged within 24 hours in line with India's IT Rules, 2021, and reviewed by our moderation team. Reports of sexual violence, non-consensual intimate imagery, or a profile created about someone without their consent are treated as urgent: the profile is hidden immediately on a single report, pending review, rather than waiting for multiple reports to accumulate.

Enforcement. Accounts found in violation are disapproved, suspended, or permanently removed depending on severity; an active paid membership on a removed account is ended immediately rather than left to run out.

12 Safety

We do our best to keep Live Rishta safe, but we cannot guarantee it. Every profile and photo is reviewed before it becomes visible. You can block any member (they will no longer be able to see or interact with you) and report any profile for review by our team. We need your help too: you will not send spam, harass other members, or collect users' content or information using automated means without our prior permission.

13 Registration and Account Security

Live Rishta users provide their real names and information, and we need your help to keep it that way. You will not provide any false personal information on Live Rishta, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission (a profile may be created for a family member with their consent). You will not create more than one personal account. If we disable your account, you will not create another one without our permission.

14 Protecting Other People's Rights

We respect other people's rights and expect you to do the same. You will not post content or take any action on Live Rishta that infringes or violates someone else's rights or otherwise violates the law.

15 Termination

If you violate the letter or spirit of this Statement, or otherwise create risk or possible legal exposure for us, we can stop providing all or part of Live Rishta to you. We will notify you by email or at the next time you attempt to access your account.

16 Pricing and Refund Policy

Current membership pricing is published at liverishta.com/pricing for every region we serve — no login required to view it. If you're not satisfied with a paid membership, you may request a refund within 7 days of purchase, provided: (a) you haven't already used your one-time lifetime refund on this account, (b) you have no other refund request pending on the same plan, and (c) you have viewed fewer than 3 members' contact details on that plan. Refund requests are submitted from Membership → Request Refund once signed in, and are reviewed and processed within 1–2 business days if eligible. Refunds outside these conditions (for example, after heavier usage of the plan) are handled case-by-case — contact our Support team below. Approved refunds are returned to the original payment method via our payment partner (Stripe or Braintree).

17 Law Enforcement & Legal Compliance Protocol

Live Rishta, LLC cooperates with verified law enforcement agencies in accordance with applicable US state and federal laws. Authorized law enforcement officials requesting user data, account records, or reporting criminal activity may submit official requests, court orders, or subpoenas on official letterhead to [email protected].

18 Disputes

You will resolve any claim, cause of action or dispute ("claim") you have with us arising out of or relating to this Statement or Live Rishta exclusively in a court located in Ontario, Canada, and you agree to submit to the personal jurisdiction of such courts for the purpose of litigating all such claims.

19 Special Provisions Applicable to Users Outside Canada

We strive to create a global community with consistent standards for everyone, but we also strive to respect local laws, including the data-protection laws of India, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. The retention periods above reflect those obligations. The following provisions apply to users and non-users who interact with Live Rishta outside Canada.

20 Grievances and Contact

For questions about this policy, to request restoration of a deleted account within the 30-day window, to report unlawful content, or to raise a privacy grievance, you may contact our Grievance Officer (details below) or use the Contact page. In line with India's Information Technology Rules, 2021, we acknowledge every complaint within 24 hours and resolve it within 15 days; content that a court or authorised government agency orders removed is actioned within 36 hours.

What we process, and why

Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, here's an itemised notice of what we process to run Live Rishta. The categories below are necessary to provide the service you signed up for and are covered by the single consent you gave at registration; one category — marketing emails — is optional and separately consented, and you can withdraw it any time.

Necessary for the service

• Profile & matchmaking data — Name, date of birth, gender, religion, caste, location, education, occupation, family and partner-preference answers you provide — used to build your profile and to match and search against other members.
• Photos — Photos you upload — shown on your profile to other members per your privacy settings, and automatically screened for policy violations.
• Identity verification documents — Government ID, selfie, and face-match data if you choose to verify — used only to confirm your identity and award a verification badge; stored encrypted and never shown to other members.
• Communications on the platform — Messages, interest expressions, and photo/contact requests you send or receive through Live Rishta — used to deliver those features and, where flagged, screened for scam/harassment patterns.
• Payment & billing data — Membership purchases are processed by Stripe or Braintree. We store the transaction amount, currency and a card fingerprint for fraud checks — not your full card number.
• Account & security data — Email, phone, IP address, sign-in history — used for account access, regional pricing integrity, and fraud/abuse prevention.
• Service communications — OTPs, password resets, moderation notices, and other emails needed to operate your account. These aren't marketing and can't be turned off while your account is active.

Optional — you choose

• Match alerts & renewal reminders — Periodic emails about new matches and membership renewal reminders. You can withdraw this at any time from Settings — doing so does not affect your account or the core matchmaking service.

Manage optional consent from Settings → Privacy & Consent. Withdrawing essential processing means we can no longer provide the service — use Delete Account instead.