Privacy issues are a high priority for us at Sulekha and we follow standard industry practices to maintain your personal information. Please read the following to learn more about our privacy policy.

Sulekha does not spam or sell/lease its user information to third parties.

Policy Coverage

This Privacy Policy covers Sulekha's treatment of personally identifiable information that Sulekha collects when you are on the Sulekha site, and when you use Sulekha's services. This policy also covers Sulekha's treatment of any personally identifiable information that Sulekha's business partners share with Sulekha. This policy does not apply to the practices of companies that Sulekha does not own or control, or to people that Sulekha does not employ or manage.

Personal Information Collected by Sulekha

ONLINE REGISTRATION: In order to become a Sulekha member, you must first create a member account on Sulekha by providing information about yourself including but not limited to name, email address, country, ZIP/postal code, birth date, a brief summary of yourself and a password. Sulekha checks for the validity of the email addresses.

OPTIONAL PROFILE INFORMATION: Once your provide the basic information to create an account, you will have the opportunity to provide additional information in the Profile section describing your skills, interests, professional and academic background and favorites. Provision of this additional information beyond what is required at registration is entirely optional; it allows you to better identify yourself and create superior networking opportunities with other through shared contexts. but enables you to better identify yourself and find new opportunities on Sulekha. Your Profile information can only be viewed by other Sulekha visitors or registered members or members of your personal network only depending on the option you choose.

FORMING YOUR OWN PERSONAL NETWORK: You can invite others to connect with you directly in Sulekha by entering their names and email addresses. This information will be used by Sulekha to send your invitation along with a message that you write. The names and email addresses of people that you invite will be used only to send your invitation and reminders. You will also have the option to upload your contact information either manually or via a computer upload directly from your Hotmail, Yahoo or Outlook section into your own private address book on Sulekha. All information entered there will only be viewable by you and will not be searchable by others in the Sulekha network without your permission. All information that you enter or upload about your contacts will be covered by the same terms of this privacy policy as cover your own personally identifiable information.

RECOGNIZING YOU AS A SULEKHA MEMBER: For Sulekha to recognize you as a registered member, you must login with your login email and password. At the time of login, you will have the option to instruct the site to remember you so when you come back the next time to use Sulekha, you would not have to login with your email and password. As is common in the industry, Sulekha uses the technology of cookies and site log files to monitor user registration, to recognize registered members when they revisit the site and to track site usage. Our ability to identify you as a registered member allows us to customize the Sulekha experience and to protect your personal information based on your account settings.

INTERNET COMMUNICATION PROTOCOL INFORMATION: The communication standards of the Internet industry transmit the URL of the site from which you visit Sulekha, the IP address of your computer, the IP address of your ISP, various attributes of your computer such as operating system, resolution and browser software, and the date and time of your various requests for pages on Sulekha. Sulekha file logging system automatically logs all of this information in its log files for its analysis.

NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIPTIONS: Visitors to Sulekha may also sign up with their name and email address for a variety of newsletters that Sulekha produces with varying frequency (e.g., News headlines) without having to register. Sulekha confirms the subscription by sending an email to the email address specified before sending the newsletter.

Use of Information by Sulekha

Sulekha is an online website that offers a variety of services designed to connect people from around the world. The information, whether personal information of any form of self-expression is used to help you describe yourself to other users. Sulekha also collects additional information in order to operate and improve our service. Sulekha US LLC, is the sole owner of the information collected on the Sulekha site.

PROFILE SHARING CUSTOMIZATION: Whether you register on Sulekha, what parts of your profile you fill, who you add to your network and what visibility levels you want to set for your profile are entirely up to you in the form of settings you can make on your profile. You also have the ability to change these at any point in time. Sulekha will show the information to enable personal networking only based on your preference.

VISIBILITY OF NETWORK LINKAGES: Where applicable, the path of members that connect you with another member of your network will be displayed to that member. This network path will not be shown to those who are not members of your personal network.

VISIBILITY OF PUBLIC CREATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS: In addition to being a social and professional networking site, Sulekha also provides a variety of forums for its members to express themselves in the form of articles, columns, opinions, comments, reviews, art and photographs. Since this expression is linked to the member's identity and the expression is in the public domain, the compilation of a member's creative contributions to Sulekha will be visible to all visitors of Sulekha whether or not they are registered members of Sulekha.

VISIBILITY OF PRIVATE MESSAGES WITHIN NETWORK: You will be able to create and share messages within your personal network. The visibility of these private notes will be restricted to your network unless you or one of the members in your network choose to forward it to others within or outside Sulekha.

SHARING OF INFORMATION WITH THIRD PARTIES: Sulekha takes your privacy very seriously. Sulekha will never sell, rent, or otherwise provide your personally identifiable information to any third parties unless it is to carry out your instructions and to provide specific services. As an example, we send your information to a credit card processing company to process a payment you have made for the use of a Sulekha service. These third parties are bound by strict confidentiality agreements which limit their use of such information. In addition, Sulekha may share your information to send direct mailers or complimentary coupons/offers to a mailing agency to process postal mailing. Again, such an agency would be bound by strict confidentiality agreements that limit their use of such information.

EMAIL COMMUNICATIONS: Sulekha generally communicates with you as a registered member of Sulekha through the primary email that you have specified at the time of registration. This is also used as the login text string in conjunction with the password to authenticate you on the Sulekha site. Your email and password are never shared with anybody within or outside Sulekha. Sulekha uses this email address to send you three types of communications:

• Sending you emails related to the proper functioning of your account (e.g. when you receive a response to a classified you have posted on Sulekha or when you receive an invitation to join the personal network of another person)
• Sending you newsletters that you have subscribed to
• Sending you occasional announcements about changes in Sulekha's policies or promotions introduction of new services
• Please note that these email communications may contain commercial messages of advertisers; however, Sulekha does not provide your personal information or emails to any of the advertisers; we just include the advertising banners they provide us in the emails that we send. As always you can opt out of the newsletters or promotional announcements.

PARTNERING WITH OTHERS: Sulekha may partner with other online services to offer a combined service. Whenever we offer such combined services, Sulekha will make it clear who the partner is and it will be entirely up to you to use or not to use the service. Where any personal information is passed along to the partner you will be informed prior to that sharing.

PROVISION OF AGGREGATE DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION TO THIRD PARTIES: Sulekha reserves the right to provide aggregate demographic information of its member base to advertisers and others so as to attract pertinent advertisers to advertise on Sulekha. We do not shared personal information of individual users with advertisers.

COMMUNICATIONS TO OTHERS FROM YOU THROUGH SULEKHA: You will be able to send emails to others -- members and non-members -- through the Sulekha system. For example, you may send a comment on an article written by another member. Or you may send an email invitation to a non-member to join your personal network. In these instances, these emails will list your name and email address in the header of the message. The recipients of these emails initiated by you will get to know your name and email address. Sulekha is not responsible for how these recipients use this information. Your contact information will only be shared with another member only if both of you indicated you would like to establish contact with each other.

COMMUNICATIONS FROM OTHERS TO YOU THROUGH SULEKHA: Only registered members of Sulekha are allowed to communicate with you through Sulekha through a form on Sulekha. Unless and until you respond to this email, they will not get to know your email address. You may, however, choose an account setting that prevents any other member from contacting you or inviting you to join their personal network.

DISCLOSURES REQUIRED BY LAW: It is possible that we may need to disclose personal information when required by law. We will disclose such information wherein we have a good-faith belief that it is necessary to comply with a court order, ongoing judicial proceeding, or other legal process served on our company or to exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims.

Accessing and Changing Your Account Information

You can review the personal information you provided us and make any desired changes to the information, or to the settings for your Sulekha account, at any time by logging in to your account on the Sulekha website and editing the information on your Profile page. You can also close your account through the Sulekha website by sending your request to member relations with your login email address. You request will be processed within 7 business days

Policy on Abuse on Sulekha.com

Sulekha.com is committed to ensuring and enforcing a safe and friendly online community space for all our members. To this effect, we have come up with a Policy on Abuse that we would like all our members to be aware of. These rules govern the use of the Sulekha.com website and its product/service offerings and we would like all our members to cooperate in complying with these rules so that everyone can have a pleasant experience.

Conduct and use of language:

• Member contributions must be civil and tasteful and must not be malicious or designed to offend. Use of swear-words or profanity is strictly prohibited.
• Do not refer to the personality of other participants or attack an individual’s character or personally insult another member. Do not use the Network to harass, threaten or verbally abuse or intimidate anyone, or behave in any manner that would cause annoyance or distress to other members.
• Members of Sulekha.com may not insult or defame the site, including any of its employees, moderators or freelancers. You may not post the contents (in part or whole) of any email that you may receive from any Sulekha.com employee(s) and/or moderator.
• Do not to post any material that is obscene, defamatory, profane, libelous, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful or embarrassing towards other person(s) or an entity. We encourage a healthy exchange of opinions and disagreements. By all means challenge an opinion – but please do it respectfully. Name-calling, insults and use of foul or abusive language will not be tolerated. This includes the use of offensive member Display Names and URLs (your personal website address on Sulekha.com).
• Please be sure before you divulge the details of your identity or personal information in your post(s), including photos of yourself or your family and friends. Anything posted online is accessible to the entire internet community and Sulekha.com is not liable in cases where such information is misused. Please be aware of the general dangers of online information sharing like identity theft, phishing and other fraudulent activites.
• Members of Sulekha.com are not permitted to collect or distribute personal data concerning other members at any time.
• Do not post messages more than once. This is also known as “flooding”. Sulekha.com reserves right to delete such posts and may terminate the accounts of such members.
• A member of Sulekha.com must not impersonate another member.

Advertising and Spamming:

• Commercial messages or promotional messages from businesses or organizations are not permitted on the Network. Sulekha.com provides a platform for its members to express themselves in the form of articles, columns, opinions, comments, reviews, art and photos but the website must not be used as a medium for marketing or selling to our members.
• No advertising or promotion is allowed except where it is for an event, publication or similar item that has direct relevance to the subject of discussion and is non-commercial in nature. Please bear in mind that the space on the Network is for creative contributions by members and not for personal advertising or promotion(s). Information about locating and sharing knowledge and expertise is welcomed, but must have relevance to the topic on which an opinion is expressed or a discussion is initiated.
• Do not post chain letters, promote pyramid schemes or recruit members for any “network marketing” or “multilevel marketing” businesses.
• Do not recruit members to join another website forum or chat group, whether personal or otherwise. If you have a suggestion for a new forum, please contact us or send your queries to member relations.
• Sulekha.com encourages healthy discussion on the topics that members contribute to in forums and where relevant, members are allowed to post links to their content. However, overt promotion of, or inappropriate links to other known commercial websites on any forum are not permitted and will be removed. If you are unsure whether a link or a posting is allowed, please send your queries to member relations. The definition of an “appropriate link” is one that is relevant to both the posting and the forum topic. A “commercial” site is considered as one which promotes a product or service for a price or for other consideration that suggests it is a for-profit business.

Copyrighted Material:Uploading copies of copyrighted material as a whole or in part on Sulekha.com without explicit permission from the copyright owner shall be deemed to infringe on the copyright and this applies to materials such as text, images, music, movies, games, and other software in digital and analog format. Sulekha.com reserves the right to immediately delete such material without prior permission/consultation from the member. If you suspect that an image submitted to Sulekha.com is copyright protected and has been used fraudulently, please contact us immediately or send us an email to: member relations

Safety Guidelines:Sulekha.com is always reaching out to a wider audience by showcasing the best of our member contributions. However, in doing so, we will not allow to be uploaded anything on the site that we think could be potentially endangering or is inflammatory or embarrassing to our members. It also helps members to be aware of certain things in the interest of their safety.

• All members are responsible for the safety of their personal information. We recommend that members do not disclose their names, addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers or other personal information online.
• All members need to be aware that when they upload their photos to the site, the photos are not only visible to the entire internet community but can also be downloaded, since any image that can be displayed on a computer screen can be saved by the person viewing it. It is technically not possible to prevent this and hence Sulekha.com cannot be held liable in such cases. If you are worried about someone else viewing or saving your images then please do not submit them.
• Do not post chain letters, promote pyramid schemes or recruit members for any “network marketing” or “multilevel marketing” businesses.
• Do not recruit members to join another website forum or chat group, whether personal or otherwise. If you have a suggestion for a new forum, please contact us or send your queries to member relations.
• Sulekha.com encourages healthy discussion on the topics that members contribute to in forums and where relevant, members are allowed to post links to their content. However, overt promotion of, or inappropriate links to other known commercial websites on any forum are not permitted and will be removed. If you are unsure whether a link or a posting is allowed, please send your queries to member.relations@sulekha.net. The definition of an “appropriate link” is one that is relevant to both the posting and the forum topic. A “commercial” site is considered as one which promotes a product or service for a price or for other consideration that suggests it is a for-profit business.

Legalities:

• All members are reminded that they may be held legally accountable for what they say or do online. In particular, members may be held liable for any defamatory comments, threats and/or untrue statements or other illegal and fraudulent claims made by them.
• Sulekha.com does not endorse the opinions expressed by its members.
• If any member fails to observe the above rules of conduct at any time, Sulekha.com reserves the right to terminate the membership of the member and/or delete all their contributions (either temporarily or permanently) from the site, depending on the nature and severity of the breach and without prior warning or consent of the member.

Registration as a Sulekha.com member at any time – past or present and use of the Sulekha.com website and all its product/service offerings will be taken as acceptance of the above rules of conduct. Sulekha.com’s decision on all matters is final and binding on its members. Legal jurisdiction for all disputes is the High Court of Chennai, India.

Sulekha.com endeavours to foster a vibrant online community of Indians worldwide by providing a platform with global reach to express themselves and connect with other people, thus forming mutually beneficial relationships. We are here to serve our members 24x7 and use all feedback to refine and improve the online experience for our members. You can reach TEAM SULEKHA anytime by writing to member relations and we will respond to you in a timely manner. We hope you have an enjoyable and rewarding experience on the Sulekha.com Network. Welcome aboard!