Privacy Policy.

Last updated: 6 November 2026

This Privacy Policy applies to bhaavna.com (the "Site"), the official website of the author Bhaavna Arora ("we", "us", "our"). By using the Site you accept the practices described here. If you do not agree, please do not use the Site.

1. Adult audience

The Site and the books it describes deal with war, conflict, violence and mature themes, and are intended for adults. The Site is not directed at children and is intended only for users aged 18 or older (or the age of majority in their jurisdiction).

2. Children's privacy

We do not knowingly collect, use, store or disclose personal information from children under the age of 18, and no part of the Site is structured to attract anyone under 18. If you are under 18, do not use the contact form or send us any personal information. If we learn that we have received personal information from a child, we will delete it promptly. Parents or guardians who believe a child has submitted information may contact us at writer@bhaavna.com and we will remove it.

3. Information we collect

• Contact form submissions. If you write to us through the contact form, we receive your name, email address, the subject you select, and your message. We also process a hashed version of the sender’s email address to enforce the contact-form limit described below.
• Technical data. Like almost every website, our hosting provider (Cloudflare) automatically processes standard technical data when pages are served — IP address, browser type, approximate region, and request timestamps — for security, abuse prevention and performance. We do not use this data to identify or profile individual visitors.

4. What we do not do

• No advertising trackers, no analytics beacons, no fingerprinting.
• No sale, rental or sharing of your personal information with marketers or data brokers.
• No marketing newsletters or mailing lists — you will only hear from us if you write to us first.
• No account creation, and no payment or financial data is collected on the Site. Purchases happen on third-party stores such as Amazon, under their own privacy policies.

5. Cookies and browser storage

Our own website code does not set cookies or use browser storage for advertising or tracking. It uses the following storage for site features:

• Theme preference: local storage remembers your chosen light or dark theme in this browser across visits. The saved preference has no automatic expiry; you can change it using the theme switch or remove it by clearing this site’s browser data. Light is the default when no preference is saved.
• Hero introduction: session storage records whether the intro video has already been shown in the current tab session, so it does not repeat when you refresh or return to the homepage. Browsers normally clear this storage when the tab session ends; restoring a browser session may restore it.

Cloudflare security services and embedded YouTube players may use cookies or other browser storage as described below. Blocking or clearing browser storage may prevent your preferences from being remembered.

6. Third-party services

• Cloudflare hosts the Site and processes contact-message delivery through its Email Sending service. The contact form is protected by Cloudflare Turnstile (our invisible bot-protection widget, named "BHAAVNA"). Turnstile processes browser, device and request signals to help distinguish human submissions from automated abuse. Our server validates its token before accepting a message. Turnstile is configured as an invisible widget; availability and verification behaviour depend on Cloudflare. Cloudflare may use security cookies or similar storage; in particular, a cf_clearance cookie can be issued when pre-clearance is enabled. These security features are not used by us for advertising. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy.
• Video playback: our hero intro, biography interview and several gallery videos are hosted with the Site. These players do not load YouTube. Two videos on the News page use embedded YouTube players. When an embedded player loads, your browser connects to Google/YouTube and may share technical data, such as your IP address, browser information and referring page, before you press Play. Google/YouTube may also use cookies or other storage and collect playback activity under Google’s privacy policy.
• External links (Amazon, Instagram, X/Twitter, news outlets) lead to sites we do not control. Their privacy practices are governed by their own policies, which we encourage you to read.

7. How we use contact-form information

Messages sent through the contact form are delivered to us by email and used only to read and respond to your enquiry. We keep correspondence only as long as needed to handle it, and we do not add you to any list.

8. Data retention and security

The Site is served over HTTPS. Contact messages are delivered through Cloudflare Email Sending. The Site does not persist your name, message body or full email address in its contact-limit database. To enforce one message per email address every 24 hours, it derives an identifier from your trimmed, lowercased email address using SHA-256 and stores an expiry timestamp in Cloudflare Durable Objects. This identifier is pseudonymous, not guaranteed anonymous. The expiry record is scheduled for removal after the 24-hour period; storage cleanup can occur later. A failed send releases the reservation so you can retry. We retain emails only as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose they were sent, after which they are deleted.

9. International processing

The Site is operated from India and served through Cloudflare's global network, so technical data may transit servers in other countries. By using the Site you consent to this transfer.

10. Your rights

You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of any personal information you have sent us, at any time, by emailing writer@bhaavna.com. We will respond within a reasonable time.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The "Last updated" date above shows the current version; continued use of the Site after changes constitutes acceptance.

12. Contact

Questions about this policy: writer@bhaavna.com.