Privacy & Trust

When you vote for a contestant, we ask for:

• First name
• Phone number

This information is collected only to help prevent duplicate voting and maintain fairness in the People's Choice Award voting process.

Your name and phone number are not displayed publicly.

When you submit a vote, a protected (hashed) version of your network address is also recorded. Your actual IP address is not stored or displayed, and this information is used only to verify the authenticity of votes and prevent bulk or repeated voting attempts.

• Phone numbers are not shown on the website or public leaderboard.
• The system stores a protected version of the phone number for duplicate-vote prevention. This helps us check whether the same phone number has already voted in the same category, without displaying the phone number publicly.
• One phone number can vote once per category.
• The network address is stored only in a protected, hashed form. The original IP address is never stored, shown, or shared.
• Network-level checks are used to keep voting fair when multiple voting attempts come from the same Wi-Fi or shared connection.
• This information is used strictly for vote authenticity and fairness. It is not shared with any third party and is not used for marketing, tracking, or any purpose outside the People's Choice Award process.

Contestants may submit details such as:

• Name
• Category
• City and state
• Qualification
• Introduction
• "Why vote for me" message
• Oral health message
• Profile photo
• Optional second photo
• Optional Instagram or LinkedIn link

Contestant email addresses are used only for profile submission and admin communication. They are not displayed publicly.

Contestant profiles are published only after review and approval by the organising team.

The following may be publicly visible on contestant profile pages:

• Contestant name
• Category
• City and state
• Qualification
• Submitted profile text
• Approved photos
• Optional social links, if provided by the contestant

Voter names and phone numbers are never shown publicly.

The public leaderboard may show contestant names, ranks, photos, categories, and vote counts depending on the settings chosen by the organising team.

Leaderboard results are provisional. Duplicate, suspicious, or invalid votes may be removed during final verification.

Final People's Choice Award results will be confirmed by the organising team.

To keep the People's Choice Award fair, automated fairness checks are performed on the voting data to detect unusual patterns, such as a large number of votes coming from the same network. These checks use only the protected, hashed information already described on this page and do not identify individual voters.

Votes found to be duplicate, suspicious, or in violation of the fair-voting rules may be removed during final verification by the organising team. The results of these checks are used only internally by the organising team and are not shared with any third party.

• Only authorised members of the organising/admin team can access the voting dashboard and submitted contestant data.
• Public visitors can only see approved contestant profiles and public leaderboard information.

The information collected through the People's Choice voting platform is used for:

• Creating contestant profiles
• Enabling public voting
• Preventing duplicate voting
• Verifying the authenticity of votes and preventing bulk or repeated voting attempts
• Maintaining fairness
• Reviewing and verifying results
• Managing the People's Choice Award process

This information is not sold or used for unrelated marketing.

Contestants who want to correct or update their profile can contact the organising team.

Voters or contestants with privacy-related concerns can also contact the organising team of The Indian Dental Pageant 2026, IDA Pimpri-Chinchwad.

This page is intended as a simple transparency notice for the People's Choice Award voting platform of The Indian Dental Pageant 2026.