Privacy and Cookie Policy

Who we are

[to be confirmed by the temple] — the temple community known as ISKCON Greater Noida West — decides how and why your personal information is used in connection with this website and with donations offered to the temple. In the language of India’s data protection law, we are the Data Fiduciary for that information.

This policy explains what we collect, why, who else sees it, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do about it. It is written to meet the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the rules made under it, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

If anything here is unclear, please ask — our Grievance Officer is named in the last section.

What we collect

When you donate

Your name, mobile number, email address and postal address; the seva you chose and the amount; and, so that we can report the donation and you can claim your tax deduction, yourPAN or Aadhaar. We may also record a dedication you ask us to note — a name for whom the seva is offered, or an occasion.

Your payment details

Card numbers, UPI IDs, net-banking credentials and the like are entered on the payment provider’s own secure page. We never see or store them. What comes back to us is a confirmation, the amount, and a transaction reference.

When you write to us or subscribe

Your name and contact details, and whatever you choose to tell us in your message.

When you simply browse

Ordinary technical information that any website receives: your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you visited and when. We use it to keep the site working and secure.

Why we use it

To receive and record your donation

To process the payment, apply it to the seva you chose, and keep an accurate record.

To issue your receipt and tax certificate

To send your acknowledgement, to file the statement of donations the Income-tax Act requires, and to issue your Form 10BE certificate.

To answer you

To respond to a question, trace a payment, or deal with a refund request or complaint.

To keep you in touch, if you want that

To tell you about festivals, programmes and seva opportunities. You can stop these at any time and we will not hold it against you — ask once and we will remove you.

To comply with the law and to protect the temple

To meet accounting, tax and audit obligations, and to detect and prevent fraudulent or unauthorised transactions.

We use your information for the purposes above and for nothing else. If we ever want to use it for a genuinely new purpose, we will ask you first.

Who else sees it

We do not sell, rent or trade your personal information. Ever. We share it only in these circumstances:

• The temple’s donation system at seva.gnw.myiskcon.org, which records donations and issues receipts on our behalf.
• Our payment provider, [to be confirmed by the temple], to take the payment and to process any refund.
• The Income Tax Department, in the statement of donations we are required by law to file, and our auditors and professional advisers.
• Service providers who help us run the site and send email, bound to use the information only as we instruct.
• Anyone the law requires — a court, a regulator or a lawful government request — and where we must act to protect someone’s safety or the temple’s rights.

We do not publish donor names, amounts or photographs on this website without asking you first. If you would like your seva acknowledged publicly, tell us; if you would rather it stayed between you and the Lord, that is the default.

The donation system is a separate service

This is worth stating plainly, because it is easy to miss. When you choose a seva on this website, you leave it. The donation itself happens on the temple’s donation system atseva.gnw.myiskcon.org, which is a different application on a different address.

There, you may be able to create an account, sign in with a mobile number and one-time password, or sign in with a Google account. If you do, that system holds your account details and your donation history, and signing in with Google means Google knows you signed in. The account is optional — you can donate without creating one.

The donation system is operated for the temple and holds the same information described in this policy, for the same purposes. Your rights below apply to it too, and a request made to the temple office covers both.

Cookies

This website itself sets no advertising or tracking cookies. We use only what is needed for the site to work — and your browser will store your font and image cache as it would for any site.

Two things we embed do set their own cookies:

• Google Maps, in the map on our Contact page.
• Google Fonts, which serves the typefaces the site is set in.

The donation system at seva.gnw.myiskcon.org sets its own session cookies, which it needs to keep you signed in and to keep the payment secure.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. Blocking them will not stop you reading this site, though the embedded map may not load.

How long we keep it

Donation records — your name, contact details, PAN, the amount and the date — are kept for 8 financial years after the financial year of the donation. We are required to: the Income-tax Act obliges a charitable institution to preserve its books and donation records, and your Form 10BE has to be reproducible if the department or you ask for it.

Enquiries and correspondence are kept for as long as needed to deal with them and for a reasonable period afterwards. Newsletter details are kept until you unsubscribe. Technical logs are kept for a short period and then discarded.

When we no longer need something, we delete it or render it anonymous.

How we protect it

This website is served over an encrypted connection (HTTPS), and so is the donation system. Payments are handled on the payment provider’s PCI-DSS compliant infrastructure — card details never touch our systems. Access to donor records is limited to the devotees who need it to do their seva.

No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach occurs that affects your personal data, we will inform you and the Data Protection Board as the law requires.

Your rights

You may ask us to:

• Show you what personal information we hold about you and who we have shared it with.
• Correct anything inaccurate, incomplete or out of date — a misspelt name or a wrong PAN on a receipt, for instance.
• Erase information we no longer need. We may have to keep donation records for the statutory period above even after such a request, and we will tell you if that applies.
• Stop sending you newsletters and programme updates. This one takes effect immediately.
• Withdraw your consent where we relied on it. Withdrawing consent does not undo what was lawfully done before, and it does not reverse a completed donation.
• Nominate someone to exercise these rights on your behalf if you die or become unable to act.
• Complain — to our Grievance Officer first, and to the Data Protection Board of India if we have not dealt with it properly.

Write to our Grievance Officer with enough detail for us to find your record. We do not charge for this. We will respond within 30 days, and sooner where we can.

Children

This website is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. Please do not donate on your own behalf if you are under 18 — ask a parent or guardian. If you believe a child’s information has reached us, tell us and we will delete it.

Children are of course welcome at the temple and at our programmes. Where a programme involves children, we obtain consent from a parent or guardian separately.

Grievance Officer

Our Grievance Officer is responsible for questions and complaints about this policy and about the personal information we hold.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when our practices change or when the law does. The date it last changed is shown at the top of this page. Where a change is significant we will say so on the website, and where the law requires it we will contact you.

This policy should be read with our Terms and Conditions and ourDonation and Pricing Policy.