1. Who we are
WAINDIAN (waindian.com) is a community-driven discovery service based in Bellevue. The name stands for WAtsApp + INDIAN. We help people find WhatsApp groups relevant to Indian families and individuals everywhere — across the United States and worldwide. WAINDIAN itself does not operate, moderate, or control the WhatsApp groups it lists; each group is independently run by its own admins. We are not affiliated with WhatsApp, Meta Platforms, Inc., or any of the groups we help you discover.
2. What information we collect
We try to keep data collection to the minimum needed to run a useful directory.
When you submit a group
When you fill out our “Submit Your Group” form, we collect:
- Group name, category, short description, group type (local / remote / both), city, and country
- WhatsApp invite link and optional group website
- Your name, email address, and WhatsApp phone number
We use this information to review your submission, contact you about it if needed, verify that you are an admin or authorized representative of the group, and — if approved — publish the group name, category, description, city, country, and invite link publicly on the directory. Your personal email, name, and WhatsApp phone number are not published on the public site. Your phone number is used only for admin verification and direct communication about your listing, and it is never shared, sold, or published.
When you browse the site
We do not require accounts or logins to browse. We may use standard web server logs and basic privacy-respecting analytics to understand page-level traffic (such as how many people visited the directory on a given day). We do not sell, rent, or share this data with advertisers.
When you report a group or contact us
If you report a group or email us, we retain your message and email address only for as long as needed to respond and to keep a record of moderation decisions.
3. How we store and share your data
WAINDIAN is a small, static site with a lightweight infrastructure:
- Hosting: The site is hosted on Netlify.
- Submissions: When you submit a group via our form, the data is routed through Web3Forms, which delivers it to us as an email. We don’t currently operate a separate database of submissions beyond these email records.
- Email correspondence: Emails we send from our domain are processed through Mailgun.
These providers process data on our behalf under their own privacy policies. We do not sell, rent, or share submitter data with any other third party.
If we change providers or add a database in the future, we’ll update this policy to reflect that. We may also disclose information if required to do so by law, or to protect the safety of our users or the public.
4. Your choices
- Remove your group: If you submitted a group and want it removed from the directory, email us and we will take it down, typically within a few days.
- Correct your submission: If any details are wrong, email us with the correction.
- Access or delete your data: You can request a copy or deletion of the personal information you provided. Deletion may mean your group listing is removed from the public directory.
5. Disclaimers about listed WhatsApp groups
WAINDIAN is a discovery service, not an operator. We help you find WhatsApp groups, but we do not run, own, moderate, or control any of them. Each group is operated independently by its own admins.
When you click a WhatsApp invite link on WAINDIAN, you leave our site and enter a third-party group governed by WhatsApp’s own terms and the individual group’s rules. Specifically:
- We make no guarantee that a group is active, safe, appropriate for a given audience, or accurately described.
- We are not responsible for any messages, media, solicitations, or conduct that occur inside a listed group.
- Joining a group means your WhatsApp profile (including phone number and display name) may become visible to other group members. That is a function of WhatsApp, not WAINDIAN.
- You are responsible for your own participation in any group and may leave at any time.
If you see a group on WAINDIAN that appears to be spam, scam, off-topic, or otherwise inappropriate, please use the report option or email us and we will review it.
6. Disclaimers for group admins listing a group
If you submit a group for listing, you confirm that:
- You are an admin or authorized representative of the group, or you have the admin’s permission to list it.
- The invite link is current and the group is actively moderated.
- The group complies with WhatsApp’s terms of service and applicable law.
- You accept that WAINDIAN may remove the listing at any time, for any reason, without notice — for example, if the group becomes inactive, the link breaks, or the group drifts off-topic.
Admin verification
Before a group is listed, we may verify that the person submitting is the actual admin (or authorized by the admin). This may include contacting you directly via WhatsApp on the phone number you provided, requesting a confirmation message sent from within the group, or other reasonable checks. Verification helps keep the directory trustworthy for users who rely on it to find authentic, well-moderated communities. We reserve the right to decline listings we cannot verify.
7. Children’s privacy
WAINDIAN is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. WhatsApp’s own terms require users to be at least 13 (or the minimum age in their country). If you believe a child has submitted information to us, please contact us and we will delete it.
8. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as the site evolves. When we do, we’ll change the “Last updated” date at the top. For material changes, we’ll try to highlight them on the home page for a reasonable period.