What's a cookie
A cookie is a small piece of text a website asks your browser to store and send back on later requests. DesiFam uses a short, fixed list of them: three to keep you signed in and recognize a trusted device, three that remember a preference — which country’s DesiFam you’re browsing, the area you’ve set in the header, and your time zone — so the very first page of a visit already looks right, and three short-lived helpers described in the table below. If you arrive through a campaign or invite link, two more remember how you found DesiFam. A few other preferences live in your browser’s local storage instead, which stays on your device and is never sent to us on its own — see Browser storage below.
Cookies we set
| Cookie | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|
userid / apitoken | Keeps you signed in. Sent with every request so DesiFam knows which account you are. | Until you close the browser, or up to a year if you check “remember this device” at sign-in. |
sessionportal | Names the DesiFam site you signed in on, so a sign-in from one community site is never used on another. It holds no personal information. | Same as the sign-in cookies above. |
deviceid | Remembers that this browser already passed a new-device security check, so you’re not asked for a one-time code again on every sign-in. | Up to 400 days. |
viewerCountry | Which country’s DesiFam you’re browsing (a country code and name) — from our first-visit guess, or the country you picked yourself. Drives currency, distance units and date formats. | Up to a year. |
desifamArea | The city and radius you set in the header (and that city’s country), so the first page of your next visit already shows your area instead of asking again. | Up to a year, refreshed whenever you change your area. |
tz | Your browser’s time zone name, so times we render on our servers — message stamps, event times, receipts — show in your local time. | Up to a year. |
desifamBannerDismissed | Remembers that you closed a site-wide announcement, so it doesn’t show again. | Ends when you close your browser. |
desifamStaffNotice | Staff only: carries a one-time confirmation or error message to the next admin page after an action. | Expires after 2 minutes. |
desifam_verify_next | Remembers which page to bring you back to after identity verification. | Expires after 2 hours. |
desifam_src | Only if you arrive through a link with a campaign tag (for example the QR code on a flyer): remembers that tag so that, if you create an account, we know which campaign brought you. Not set for visitors in the EU, the EEA or the UK. | Up to 60 days, or until you create an account. |
desifam_ref | Only if you arrive through a member’s invite link: remembers the invite code so that, if you create an account, you and the member who invited you can get the invite reward. Not set for visitors in the EU, the EEA or the UK. | Up to 60 days, or until you create an account. |
None of these are used for advertising or cross-site tracking, and none identify you to anyone but DesiFam. The first three are essential — DesiFam can’t keep you signed in without them. The next three only store a preference you set (or a default we guessed) so the site loads correctly; block them and DesiFam still works, it just has to ask about your area and country again. The next three are short-lived conveniences — block them and DesiFam still works too. The last two are set only when you follow a campaign or invite link, are read only if you create an account, and never follow you to other sites; block them and DesiFam still works — you can type an invite code when you sign up. We don’t set them for visitors in the EU, the EEA or the UK. That’s why there is no cookie-consent banner.
Browser storage (not cookies)
A few preferences live in your browser’s local storage. They stay on your device and are never sent to our servers on their own:
- Your chosen theme (light or dark).
- Your header “home area” and the last city you used in each country you’ve browsed, so switching countries lands you back where you left off. (The current area is also mirrored into the
desifamArea cookie above — that copy is sent to us, so the page can render your area before any script runs.) - Your matrimony search reach (metro / state / country / world), if you’ve used that section.
- A “distance from an address” point you’ve typed into a section that offers it (Rentals, Tutors, Restaurants and others), kept separately per section.
Clearing your browser’s site data removes these the same way it removes a cookie.
Third parties
A few pages load content from, or send a request to, a third party as part of doing their job: Stripe (when you’re completing a payment, saving a card, or setting up payouts), Cloudflare Turnstile (to confirm you’re not a bot on forms that need it), and Didit (only if you start identity verification). Each operates under its own privacy policy for the interaction it handles.
The rentals map loads its map images from OpenStreetMap’s tile servers. Your browser asks them for the map squares around the area you’re looking at, so they see your IP address and that area — nothing else about you, and they set no cookies.
If a page crashes, your browser sends an error report — the page, your browser type and the error itself — to DesiFam’s own error-monitoring server, which we run ourselves rather than through a third-party analytics service. It sets no cookies.
If the DesiFam app crashes, it sends a crash report — the error and your device type, never your name, email or messages — to DesiFam’s own error-tracking server so we can fix it.
What we don't use
No third-party advertising trackers, no analytics beacons, no cross-site retargeting pixels, and no sale of your browsing activity to anyone. The sponsored placements you see on DesiFam are served by DesiFam itself from the area you’ve set — not by an ad network following you around. If that ever changes, we’ll update this page and, where the law requires it, ask for your consent first.
Your choices
Most browsers let you block or delete cookies from their settings. Since userid/apitoken are how DesiFam keeps you signed in, blocking them means you’ll be signed out and asked to log in again on your next visit — browsing signed out still works normally. Blocking the preference cookies just means we ask for your country and area again each visit and show times in UTC. You can also clear the browser-storage items above at any time without affecting your account itself, since those are local shortcuts, not where your account data lives.
Changes to this policy
We’ll update the date at the top of this page whenever this list changes, and post a notice on the site for any change we consider material.