Privacy Policy

BHAKTI VEDANTA BOOK TRUST (BBT) is a public charitable trust registered under the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950 - E 5032 (Bom). It is engaged primarily in printing, publishing and distributing books, writings and speeches of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who is the Author/Settlor of the said Trust. His Divine Grace A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada formed a Trust dated 30th March 1972 called the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust and assigned the rights of all his books, writings, and speeches to it. BBT is the copyright owner of his books, writings, and speeches and artworks. BBT reserves the right to grant permission/license to any third party to use the said copyrighted works, subject to such conditions as it may deem fit, or deny the same without providing any reasons.

This privacy policy (“Policy”) explains the policy regarding the collection, use, storage, disclosure and transfer of your information by BHAKTI VEDANTA BOOK TRUST and/or its affiliate(s) (collectively referred to as the "BBT"), which, among others, operates websites, including sub-sites, applications m-web platforms and other platforms (collectively referred to as “Application”) for delivery of information, products, offerings and content via any mobile or internet connected device or otherwise (collectively the "BBT Services"). This Policy forms part and parcel of the Terms of Use and other terms on the Application (“Terms of Use”). Capitalized terms which have been used here but are undefined shall have the same meaning as attributed to them in the Terms of Use.

This Privacy Policy is applicable to persons who access, browse or use the Application/BBT Services (“User”). For the purpose of this Policy, wherever the context so requires "you" or "your" shall mean User and the term "we", "us", "our" shall mean BBT.

As we update, improve and expand the Application/BBT Services, this Policy may change, so please refer back to it periodically. By accessing and using the Application or otherwise using the BBT Services, you consent to collection, storage, and use of the personal information you provide (including any changes thereto as provided by you) for any of the BBT Services that we provide.

BBT respects the privacy of the Users of the BBT Services and is committed to protect it in all respects. The information about the User as collected by the BBT is: (a) information supplied by Users; (b) information automatically tracked while navigation; and (c) information collected from any other source (collectively referred to as “Information”).

INFORMATION RECEIVED, COLLECTED AND STORED BY BBT

A. Information Supplied By Users

Registration data:

When User register on the Application for the BBT Service, you are required to provide basic contact information such as your name, address, pin code, contact number and email address etc.

Paid service data:

When you choose any paid service provided as part of our services, we or our payment gateway provider may collect your purchase, address or billing information, including your credit card number, billing address, expiration date etc.

Voluntary information:

We may collect additional information at other times, including but not limited to, when you provide feedback, comments, change your content or email preferences, respond to a survey, or any communications with us.

B. Information Automatically Collected/ Tracked While Navigation

Cookies:

To improve the responsiveness of the Application for our Users and for internal purposes, we may use "cookies", or similar electronic tools to collect Information to assign each visitor a unique, random number as a User Identification (User ID) to understand the User's individual interests using the identified computer or device. Unless you voluntarily identify yourself (through registration, for example), we will have no way of knowing who you are, even if we assign a cookie to your computer or device. The only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply. A cookie cannot read data off your hard drive or device. Our network partners may also assign their own cookies to your browser (if you click on their ads etc.), a process that we do not control. We receive and store certain types of Information whenever you interact with us via Application or BBT Service though your computer/laptop/netbook or mobile/tablet/pad/handheld device etc.

Log File Information:

We automatically collect limited information about your computer's connection to the Internet, mobile number, including your IP address, when you visit our application or service. Your IP address is a number that lets computers attached to the Internet know where to send you the data such as the pages you view. We automatically receive and log information from your browser, including your IP address, details of your computer, your operating system, browser type and version, CPU speed, and connection speed. We may also collect log information from your device, including your location, IP address, your device's name, device's serial number or unique identification number (e.g. UDiD on your iOS device), your device operating system, browser type and version, CPU speed, and connection speed etc.

Clear GIFs:

We may use "clear GIFs" (Web Beacons) or such other software, to track the online usage patterns of our Users in an anonymous manner, without personally identifying the User. We may also use clear GIFs in HTML-based emails sent to our Users to track which emails are opened by recipients. We use this information to inter-alia deliver our web pages to you upon request, to tailor our Application or BBT Service to the interests of our users, to measure traffic within our Application to improve the quality, functionality and interactivity of our Application and the geographic locations from where our Users come without personally identifying the Users.

Information From Other Sources:

We may receive Information about you from other sources, add it to our account information or use it in such other manner in accordance with this Policy. If you provide Information to the platform provider or other partner, whom we provide services, your account information and order information may be passed on to us.

Demographic and other information:

We may reference other sources of demographic and other Information in order to provide you with more targeted communications and promotions. We may use various services including Google Analytics and many others, to track the user behaviour on our Application. Google Analytics specifically may been enabled to support display advertising towards helping us gain understanding of our users' demographics and interests. The reports are anonymous and cannot be associated with any individual personally identifiable information that you may have shared with us. You can opt-out of Google Analytics for display advertising and customize Google Display Network ads using the Ads Settings options provided by Google.

Links To Third Party Sites / Ad-Server

The Application may include links to other websites or applications. Such websites or applications are governed by their respective privacy policies, which are beyond our control. Once you leave our servers (you can tell where you are by checking the URL in the location bar on your browser), use of any information you provide is governed by the privacy policy of the operator of the application, you are visiting. That privacy policy may differ from ours. If you can't find the privacy policy of any of these sites via a link from the application's homepage, you should contact the application owners directly for more information.

When we present Information to our advertisers -- to help them understand our audience and confirm the value of advertising on our Application -- it is usually in the form of aggregated statistics on traffic to various pages / content within our Application. We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our Application. These companies may use Information (excluding your name, address, email address or telephone number or other personally identifiable information) about your visits to this and other websites or application, in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.

We do not provide any personally identifiable information to third party websites / advertisers / ad-servers without your consent.

Information Use By BBT

The information as supplied by the users enables us to improve the BBT Services and provide you the most user-friendly experience. In some cases, while providing certain service(s) or utility(ies), we may require your contact address as well. All required Information is service dependent and BBT may use the above said user Information to maintain, protect, and improve the BBT Services (including advertising and personalisation on the Application or such other platforms) and for developing new services. We may also use your email address or other personally identifiable information to send commercial or marketing messages about BBT services and/or such additional updates and features about third parties products and services with an option to subscribe / unsubscribe (where feasible). We may use your email address for non-marketing or administrative purposes (such as notifying you of major changes, customer service purposes, billing, etc.).

Any personally identifiable information provided by you will not be considered as sensitive if it is freely available and / or accessible in the public domain like any comments, messages, blogs, scribbles available on social platforms like Facebook, twitter etc.

Any posts/uploads or such other communications by users on the public sections of Application becomes published content and is not considered personally identifiable information subject to this Policy.

In case you choose to decline to submit personally identifiable information on Application, we may not be able to provide certain services on Application to you. We will make reasonable efforts to notify you of the same at the time of opening your account. In any case, we will not be liable and or responsible for the denial of certain services to you for lack of you providing the necessary personal information.

When you register on Application or BBT Services, we contact you from time to time about updating of your personal information to provide the Users such features that we believe may benefit / interest you.

Information Sharing

BBT may share your Information with any third party without obtaining the prior consent of the User in the following limited circumstances:

  • When it is requested or required by law or by any court or governmental agency or authority to disclose, for the purpose of verification of identity, or for the prevention, detection, investigation including but not limited to cyber incidents, or for prosecution and punishment of offences. These disclosures are made in good faith and belief that such disclosure is reasonably necessary for enforcing these Terms or for complying with the applicable laws and regulations.
  • BBT proposes to share such Information with its officers and employees for the purpose of processing personal information on its behalf. We also ensure that these recipients of such Information agree to process such information based on our instructions and in compliance with this Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
  • BBT may present Information to our advertisers and third parties - to help them understand our audience and confirm the value of advertising on our Application – however it is usually in the form of aggregated statistics on traffic to various pages within our Application.
  • BBT may share your Information regarding your activities on Application with third party social websites to populate your social wall that is visible to other people however you will have an option to set your privacy settings, where you can decide what you would like to share or not to share with others.
  • BBT may share your Information to enforce or protect our rights or any or all of its affiliates, associates, employees, trustees or officers or when we have reason to believe that disclosing Information of User(s) is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing interference with our rights or our Application, whether intentionally or otherwise, or when anyone else could be harmed by such activities.
  • BBT may share or disclose your personal information with our service providers, partners. For example, providing SMS and E-mail related services such as marketing newsletters, promotions and offers.
  • In order to carry out your requests, services and content available to you through Application, and to respond to your queries, we may share your information with our affiliates, trusted partners, third parties that perform functions such as companies/entities who process payments; analyze data; provide customer service; operate the technical infrastructure; sponsors, advertisers or other third parties.
  • Your information may also be used by us or shared with our sponsors, partners, advertisers, advertising networks, advertising servers, programmatic partners and analytics companies or other third parties in connection with marketing, promotional, and other offers, as well as product information, and for such third party’s advertising, analytics and market research.
  • These advertisers, advertising networks, advertising servers, and analytics companies use various technologies to collect data in order to send (or serve) relevant ads to users on Application, or on platforms or websites operated by third parties. Use of Your information collected by such third-party platform will be governed by the privacy policy in such third-party platform. Such websites or applications are governed by their respective privacy policies, which are beyond our control.
Accessing And Updating Personal Information

When you use the BBT Services or Application (or any of its sub sites), BBT make good faith efforts to provide you, as and when requested by you, with access to your personal information and shall further ensure that any personal information or sensitive personal data or information found to be inaccurate or deficient shall be corrected or amended as feasible, subject to any requirement for such personal information or sensitive personal data or information to be retained by law or for legitimate business purposes. BBT may ask individual users to identify themselves and the information requested to be accessed, corrected or removed before processing such requests, and BBT may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive or systematic, require disproportionate technical effort, jeopardize the privacy of others, or would be extremely impractical (for instance, requests concerning information residing on backup tapes), or for which access is not otherwise required. In any case, where BBT provide information access and correction, BBT perform this service free of charge, except if doing so would require a disproportionate effort. Because of the way BBT maintain certain services, after you delete your information, residual copies may take a period of time before they are deleted from our active servers and may remain in our backup systems.

Information Security

BBT will endeavour to take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure or destruction of data. These include internal reviews of our data collection, storage and processing practices and security measures, including appropriate encryption and physical security measures to guard against unauthorized access to systems where BBT store personal data. All information gathered on Application is securely stored within the controlled database. The database is stored on servers secured behind a firewall; access to the servers is password-protected and is strictly limited. However, as effective as our security measures are, no security system is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the security of our database, nor can we guarantee that information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the Internet. Needless to say, any information you include in a posting to the discussion areas is available to anyone with Internet access.

BBT may use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit or use our Application or BBT Services. These companies may use information (excluding your name, address, email address or telephone number or any personally identifiable information) about your visits or use to particular website, mobile application or services, in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you.

Changes To This Privacy Policy

The internet is an ever evolving medium. BBT may alter its Policy from time to time to incorporate necessary changes in technology, applicable law or any other variant. In any case, we reserve the right to change (at any point of time) the terms of this Policy or the Terms of Use. Any changes we make will be effective immediately on notice, which we may give by posting the new policy on the Application. Your use of Application or BBT Services after such notice will be deemed acceptance of such changes. We may also make reasonable efforts to inform you via electronic mail. In any case, you are advised to review this Policy periodically on the Application to ensure that you are aware of the latest version.