Manipal Academy of Higher Education (hereafter referred to as ‘MAHE’, ‘us’, ‘we’) is committed to safeguarding the privacy of individuals whose personal data is collected and processed by MAHE.

This Privacy Policy, is intended to inform you on how we gather, define, and use personal data that you provide to the Institute when you use any of websites and services offered by MAHE.

This Privacy Policy will primarily help you understand:

• The nature of information we collect from you
• The sources from where your information is collected (Including the cases where personal data is not directly collected from you)
• The purpose of collecting your information
• The manner in which your information is collected, stored, used and processed
• The rights that can be exercised by you

We do not sell or trade your personal data or personally identifiable information; however, we may share the same with third parties who assist us in conducting our business, operating our website, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential.

This Policy applies to all students, parents, visitors and other individuals who provide their personal data to the Institute (hereinafter referred to as “Data Subject(s)”).

Personal data you provide directly:

When you use certain functions provided by the Website, such as when you register for certain services, access or features, we may ask you to provide certain personal data, which primarily consists of:

A. Personal data: We may collect your personal data elements which may include but is not limited to your name, contact details, postal address, email address, gender, age, date of birth, username and password.

B. Sensitive Personal Data

• We may collect and process data concerning health which may constitute as sensitive personal data under the governing privacy legislation with respect to the product and services provided by us.
• We may also collect and process financial information which may constitute as sensitive personal data under the governing privacy legislation at time of purchase of product/service and/or online payment;

Personal data that is automatically collected when you visit the Website:

When you download and visit the website, certain personal data may be collected automatically, which includes:

• Your computer’s Internet Protocol (IP) Address,
• Your browser type and operating system,
• Web pages and links you visit, advertisements you view
• Your bandwidth speed and information about the about the software programs that are installed on your computer,
• Standard server log information

Personal data that we collect from other sources:

We may receive information about you from publicly and commercially available sources (as permitted by law), which we may combine with other information we receive from or about you. We also may receive information about you from third-party social networking services when you choose to connect with those services.

Data collected from cookies and similar technologies:

This website uses cookies and/or similar technologies to collect such information including IP addresses as may assist in personalize and enhance the browsing experience for the visitor, analyse behaviour, administer the website, track users’ movements, and to collect information about users. This is done in order to personalise and enhance your experience with us.

Please refer to the Section 7-Cookie Policy for more details.

General:

We may use the information collected from you for enrolment, to provide a service, to provide customized content and make recommendations based on your past activities on our Website. We may also use your personal details to send statements, payment reminders, newsletters, brochures etc.

Advertisements:

We believe in being open, honest and transparent with our clients and suppliers and want you to feel comfortable about your decision to give us your personal information and how we use it.

MAHE may use your information to provide you with updates, sending newsletters and other communications about existing and/or new programmes by post, email, telephone, in-device messaging and/or text message (SMS), if you have provided your prior consent or we are otherwise permitted to do so under applicable law.

You can change your mind at any time, and it is quick and easy to let us know that you no longer want to hear from us by contacting us at  privacy.mahe@manipal.edu .

Statistics and Research:

MAHE may use your information to create user group profiles or segment data and to otherwise create anonymous, aggregated statistics about the use of our courses or programs, which we may share with third parties and/or make available to the public.

Product/Services Improvement:

MAHE may use your information to improve and enhance existing MAHE functioning, develop new offerings, recommendations, advertisements and other communications, and learn more about individuals’ preferences in general.

Further, we may use information provided by you to deal with enquiries and complaints made; to keep our website and other systems secure and to prevent fraud. 

Other Purposes:

MAHE may use your personal data, as we believe to be necessary or appropriate:

• under applicable law, including laws outside your state or country of residence;
• to comply with legal process and to prevent, detect, or suppress abuse, fraud, or criminal activity;
• to respond to requests from public and government authorities and self-regulatory organizations, including public and government authorities and self-regulatory organizations outside your state or country of residence;
• to enforce our terms and conditions;
• to protect our operations, assets, or interests or those of any of our affiliates;
• to protect our rights, privacy, safety, or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you, or others; and
• to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain

Change of Purpose

We will only use your data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis, which allows MAHE to do so.

Please note that in certain circumstances, we may process your personal data without knowledge or consent, in compliance with the applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

Please note that if you wish to opt-out of any such processing activities for purposes other than the original purpose, you can reach out to us by writing to us at privacy.mahe@manipal.edu.

Our grounds of processing your personal information are:

• Where you have given consent for the processing of data for a specific purpose. 
• Processing is necessary to meet contractual obligations entered by you
• Processing is necessary for a legal obligation that the Institute is subjected to
• Purposes related to employment; or in response to your application for a job that we have advertised about

Processing is necessary for other reasonable purposes pursued by our institutes which may include reasonable purposes such as fraud prevention, information security, and processing publicly available personal data. 

• To any of our employees, officers, insurers, professional advisers, agents, partners, suppliers or subcontractors insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this policy and for the purpose of providing services to you.
• To college affiliates, associate colleges and any member of MAHE.
• To our third-party service providers who provide services such as website hosting and webinars. The information we provide to third parties service providers is subject to confidentiality obligations and is intended to be used solely for the purpose(s) permitted thereby.
• We may employ third party entities and individuals to facilitate our Services (e.g. maintenance, analysis, audit, marketing and development). These third parties have limited access to your information only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated to MAHE, not to disclose or use it for other purposes. All of our approved third-party providers go through an extensive data protection compliance vetting process before being selected as a third party provider and are bound by all relevant data privacy laws, terms of confidentiality, and this Privacy Policy.
• If you choose to use the Website, you will be asked to confirm acceptance of MAHE’s Privacy Policy.

There may be instances when we disclose your information to other parties to comply with the law or respond to compulsory legal process or to verify or enforce compliance with the policies governing our Services or to protect the rights, property, or safety of MAHE, or any of our respective affiliates or business partners.

We offer a variety of choices about how we use your information. You can make choices about whether to receive promotional communications from us by following the unsubscribe instructions included in the communication. In addition, you can also generally make choices in your settings, or by visiting relevant links.

For data subjects in the EU who are subject to the GDPR’s provisions, you have the following rights with respect to the personal data that we hold and process about you:

    i) Right to Be Informed

    ii) Right to Access

    iii) Right to Correction (“Rectification”)

    iv) Right to Erasure (Right to Be Forgotten)

    v) Right to Restriction of Processing

    vi) Right to Data Portability

    vii) Right to Object to Processing

    viii) Right to Not Be Subject to Automated Decision Making

You can make a request by directly writing to us at privacy.mahe@manipal.edu

For your protection, we may only implement requests with respect to the personal data associated with the particular email address that you use to send us your request, and we may need to verify your identity before implementing your request.  The Institute will act on all data subject requests received without undue delay and respond within the stipulated timelines prescribed by regulations, post completion of necessary verification checks.

Discrepancies and grievances

Any discrepancies or grievances will be addressed in a timely manner and expeditiously within 30 days from the date of receipt of the grievance by MAHE. If you have any such grievances, please write to us at privacy.mahe@manipal.edu and we will attempt to resolve your issues in a timely manner.

Unsubscribe Policy

If at any time you require us to cease processing your personal data, you may write to us (contact details at the bottom of the page). By following the appropriate directions, your record will be marked as “do not contact”, and you will no longer receive communications from MAHE.

Please note that we may need to retain certain personal data for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services, for recordkeeping purposes and/or to complete any undertaking that you began prior to requesting a change or deletion. There may also be residual information, which may be subject to a legal hold or subject to certain sectoral or regulatory retention requirements that will remain within our databases and other records, which will not be removed.

We will only retain your data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. We will destroy the personal data in a secure manner post retention period as per our internal data retention and destruction policy

The security of your personal data is of great importance to us. We have put in place reasonable physical and technical measures to safeguard the information we collect in connection with the services to ensure the protection of your personal data processed by us, which include but are not limited to the following:

• Comprehensive documented information security programme and information security policies that contain managerial, technical, operational and physical security control measures that are commensurate with the information assets being protected with the nature of business are available.
• Security measures deployed to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure, or destruction of data. These include secure socket layers, firewalls and encryption, internal reviews of our data collection, storage and processing practices, as well as physical security measures to guard against unauthorized access to systems.
• If we retain personal data on our systems, we restrict access to personal data to employees, contractors, and agents who need to know that information in order to operate, develop, or improve our Website and Services. These individuals are bound by confidentiality obligations and may be subject to discipline, including termination, if they fail to meet these obligations
•  In the event of an information security/privacy breach, MAHE or a competent and duly authorized person having knowledge of and in possession of information relating to such security breach shall be prepared to demonstrate, as and when called upon to do so by the regulatory agency created under the  applicable law, that the Institute has taken all bonafide measures and have implemented security control measures in accordance with the MAHE documented information security programme and information security policies together with standards and codes of best practices in letter and spirit.
• Such policies, standard or the codes of best practices have been certified or audited on a regular basis by entities by an independent auditor
• However, please note that although we take reasonable steps to protect your personal data, no website, Internet transmission, computer system or wireless connection is completely secure. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password that enables you to access all or certain parts of our website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We strongly suggest that you do not share your passwords with anyone.

The purpose of this Policy is to communicate to the site visitor how MAHE’s website listed below makes use of a technology called “cookies”.  The aim of this policy is to support the user in taking informed decisions when accessing the said website.  Please take a minute to read and understand the policy. 

When a user visits an online site, a small text file which may contain a unique identifier is sent by a webserver to the browser on the user’s computer, mobile phone or any other internet enabled device.  This small text file is termed as a “cookie”.  Cookies and other similar technologies help the websites to work efficiently and collect information about the online preferences of the user. Hereafter, these technologies may be referred to collectively as "cookies".

Electronic images known as ‘web beacons’ (also known as clear gifs, tags or pixels) may be present on some of our website pages that allows us to count users who have visited our pages and run analytics. Web beacons are responsible for collecting limited information e.g. a cookie number, time and date of a page view, and description of the page on which it resides. Please note that Web Beacons placed by third party advertisers might be present on our website. 

In order to customise the content & advertise, provide social media features and to see how users move through our website, cookies and other such technologies are used. Cookies are used to carry information from one session on a website to another, or between sessions on related websites for smooth working of website, hence, information received from cookies supports us in taking decisions about the ways to improve the services offered by us and enhance your user experience. Moreover, the cookies will expire once the relevant session is terminated.

We may engage third party service providers to act on our behalf to analyse the usage of our website by users. These third parties collect, and share with us, usage information about visits to our website and, sometimes by correlating this information with other information (e.g. your IP address), measure and research the effectiveness of our advertisements, track page usage, help us target our recommendations and advertising, and track use of our recommendations for related advertisements, courses, programmes, etc.

By default, we only collect cookies that are strictly necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. 

Below you can find out more about the purpose of each type of cookies that we use.

• Strictly Necessary cookies: These cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies. This includes cookies that enable you use a shopping cart, or make use of e-billing services, etc. 

Types of non- mandatory cookies:

•  Advertising cookies: These cookies allow us to serve you with relevant advertising and to know whether you have seen an advert or a type of advert, and how long it is since you have seen it.
•  Third party cookies: Any Third party advertising cookies set on Institute’s website.
•  Analytical/Performance cookies: These cookies allow us to calculate the aggregate number of people visiting the sites and which part of the sites are most popular. This helps us improve the way the sites work, for example by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
•  Functionality cookies: These cookies are used to recognize you when you return to the sites. They enable us to greet you by name and remember your preferences such as choice of language or region.
•  Personalization cookies: These cookies enable us to build profiles relating to you and other visitors (where we have received consent) so that we can direct more relevant content to you based on your use of the sites.
•  Social Media cookies: These cookies personalize your interaction with social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and YouTube. These cookies allow users to quickly share content across social media by using simple sharing buttons.
•  Session and Persistent Cookies: On MAHE’s web sites, both session and persistent cookies are used. With transient cookies, we refer to cookies that are only kept in memory within the lifespan of the user's session with the site. These cookies are not persisted to the end user's system. Persistent cookies make it possible for our web site to recognize you whenever you return to our web site so that the settings you have made during previous visits are recognized so you do not need to re-set them ever visit. Persistent cookies are persistently stored on the client system (hard drive or elsewhere), the lifetime of these cookies can span from a few seconds to several years. Examples of where MAHE web sites use persistent cookies are to remember country/language selections; helping with collecting statistics; and for remembering if the user already has responded to an on line survey.

In case of any queries corresponding to cookies that are deployed on our website, you can contact us at  privacy.mahe@manipal.edu

Your personal data will be collected via cookies and other similar tracking technologies with prior consent from you. We will maintain a record of the types of cookies that you have authorised us to use and ensure adherence to your preferences. If you do not wish to accept cookies from the Institute website you can - leave this web site, or configure your browser to either notify you when you receive a cookie (giving you the chance to decide whether to accept it) or to block all or certain categories of cookies. The browser can also delete previously stored cookies. Please see your browser's help facility for information on setting how cookies are handled and managing cookie preferences.

You can at any time change or withdraw your consent by sending mail to privacy.mahe@manipal.edu

We may update this Privacy & Cookie Policy at any time to reflect changes in our practices and service offerings. If we modify this Privacy & Cookie Policy, we will update the date on which the new policy will be effective. We will notify you of any material changes in the way we treat your information by placing a prominent notice on our website. 

If you have any questions about the MAHE Privacy & Cookie Privacy, do send us an email at privacy.mahe@manipal.edu