Vrka Privacy Policy

Effective date: October 21, 2026

Vrka is a desktop study companion: you ask a question about what is on your screen, and Vrka answers in text and speech. Ankit Anand personally operates Vrka. In this policy, “we” means Ankit Anand. Vrka is for people aged 13 and older and is offered as a free beta under our Terms of Service.

Asking a question

Vrka takes one picture of the display you selected each time you ask a question, either by holding the talk key or by sending a typed question. It does not record your screen continuously or in the background, and the Vrka panel itself is left out of the picture. Anything else visible on that display can be included, such as other windows, notifications, or personal information, so hide anything you do not want sent.

For each question, Vrka sends that picture, your question as text, and your most recent exchanges with Vrka (up to three earlier questions and answers) over encrypted connections to the computers that answer it. On the way, it passes through our account and sign-in provider, whose gateway checks that you are signed in. When the answering computers are ones we operate ourselves, it also passes through a network security provider, which provides a secure tunnel to them. Whichever provider carries it passes it on without storing it. The answer is produced by an AI model in one of two places: on computers we operate ourselves, or on cloud computers rented from a third-party infrastructure company in the United States. At times all questions are answered in the cloud, and at other times on our own computers; we cannot always say in advance which. When a question is answered in the cloud, the picture, your question and your recent exchanges are sent to that company to produce the answer, so they are processed by a company other than Vrka. The picture, question, and conversation are used only to answer that question. They are held in memory while the answer is produced and are not saved by Vrka’s servers. We do not use them to train AI models. If we ever want to use questions for research, that will be opt-in only: we will ask you first, and nothing changes unless you agree.

Voice

When you hold the talk key, Vrka records your microphone and turns your speech into text on your computer. When Speak answers is on, the spoken version of an answer may instead be produced on computers we operate ourselves: the answer text is sent to them, and the audio comes back to you, through our account and sign-in provider and our network security provider, which pass it on without storing it; if that is unavailable, the answer is spoken on your computer. The speech models are installed with the app. Recordings of your voice are not sent to Vrka’s servers or anyone else; only the resulting question text is sent, as described above.

Your account

You sign in with Google or with an email address and password, through our account and sign-in provider. For email sign-up we collect your first and last name, email address, and password; that provider stores the password in protected form, and Vrka never stores it on your computer. For Google sign-in, Google shares your basic profile information with our account and sign-in provider. When you sign up, you also confirm that you are 13 or older, and that confirmation is stored with your account.

Our account and sign-in provider creates and checks sign-up confirmation codes. Our email delivery provider sends our invitation, confirmation and welcome emails and processes your email address and the message content to do so.

Joining the waitlist

If you join the waitlist, we keep your email only to send your invitation; email ankitanand@vrka.ai to be removed. When you join the waitlist, we keep a one-way hash of your IP address for up to 24 hours to limit abuse, then delete it.

What we keep

For each question, we keep a usage record with your account identifier, a request identifier, a one-way fingerprint of the request used to detect duplicates, its status, timestamps and duration, the amount of text processed, any error code, and which version of Vrka’s model answered. This record does not contain your question, the answer, or the picture.

The Home screen’s activity calendar stores the calendar dates on which you used Vrka while signed in, one entry per day, with no times or content. Dates recorded while you are offline wait on your computer until they can be saved to your account.

We may also record operational measurements about the service, such as response times, the amount of text processed, and error rates, labelled with the model version and without questions, answers, or pictures. These measurements are sent to a monitoring service in the United States.

On your computer

To keep you signed in, the app stores an encrypted sign-in token protected by your operating system (Keychain on macOS, Data Protection on Windows). It also stores the last page you viewed and any activity dates waiting to be saved. Your conversation with Vrka is kept in memory only and is not saved to disk. While you are signed in, the app sends a few operational events to Vrka, which stores them with our monitoring service in the United States: for example that the app opened, that a question finished or failed and how long it took, whether a screen picture or voice transcription succeeded, and the app version and operating system. They never contain your questions, answers, pictures, audio or transcripts. They are tied to your account only through a random analytics identifier; when you delete your account that link is deleted, so events already recorded remain only as records no longer connected to you. Our monitoring service keeps them for 30 days and then deletes them. On Windows, a speech component may report basic usage events through Windows’ own diagnostic data settings; no audio or text is included. On Mac, the app checks vrka.ai for updates shortly after it opens and every four hours, downloads a new version in the background, and installs it when you choose “Restart to update” or the next time you quit. On Windows, it checks once each time it opens and tells you when a new version is available. These checks share your internet address and the time; on Mac they also include a random identifier created for this installation, which is not connected to your account.

To detect the talk key, Vrka watches for that key and, while it is held, only whether another key is pressed with it, never which key. Nothing you type is recorded or sent.

Website

Vrka’s website is stored and delivered by our website hosting provider, which processes network and request information, including your IP address and the page requested, to deliver it. A network security provider provides DNS for the domain and processes DNS queries.

When you email us, we receive the information you include in your message.

Who receives information

We do not sell your information or share it for advertising. Information is processed by the service providers described in this policy (our account and sign-in provider, our email delivery provider, a network security provider, a third-party cloud infrastructure provider, our website hosting provider, and a monitoring service) only to provide their part of Vrka. Our account and sign-in provider carries your questions and pictures to the computers that answer them, and the network security provider also carries them when those are our own computers; neither stores them. Questions are answered on computers we operate or, at times, by a third-party cloud infrastructure provider, which receives the picture, question and recent exchanges to produce the answer. We may disclose information if the law requires it or to protect Vrka, its users, or others from harm.

The computers that answer your questions, ours and the cloud provider’s, are in the United States, and our account and sign-in provider stores account information in the United States. Our other service providers also process information in the United States. If you live elsewhere, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States.

How long we keep it

Questions, answers, and pictures are not kept by Vrka’s servers after an answer is produced. When a question is answered in the cloud, our setup there does not save the picture, the question or the answer; the cloud provider may keep limited operating records, such as logs that a request was made, under its own policies. Your account information, usage records, and activity dates are kept until you delete your account. Operational events are kept by our monitoring service for 30 days, and after you delete your account they remain only as records no longer connected to you. Emails you send us are kept as long as needed to respond and keep a record of the conversation.

Your choices

You choose which display Vrka can see and when to ask a question. You can manage microphone and screen recording permissions in your operating system settings. You can delete your account at any time from inside the Vrka app; this deletes your account, usage records, and activity dates. You can also email us to ask for a copy of your information, to correct it, or to delete it.

Security

Vrka uses encrypted connections, requires a signed-in account to answer questions, and stores your sign-in token with your operating system’s protection. No system is perfectly secure, and these measures cannot guarantee protection against every unauthorised access.

Children

Vrka is not for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, contact us and we will delete it. If you are under 18, use Vrka with the permission of a parent or legal guardian.

Earlier versions of the Vrka desktop app

Desktop versions released before this policy (0.1.x) work differently: they send questions and screen pictures to an outside AI provider you choose with your own API key, under that provider’s terms, and can optionally save research recordings on your computer. Updating to the current version replaces that behaviour with the one described above. If you saved a provider API key in an earlier version, you can remove it with that version’s “Forget saved key” control before updating, or from your operating system’s credential store.

Changes to this policy

We will update this page when Vrka’s handling of information changes. The effective date shows which version applies. For important changes we will give notice on the website or in the app.