Rishta Networking is committed to ensuring your data is protected and used in ways that you allow us to use it. This policy statement outlines what measures we take to keep your data safe and also lists what information we collect. By accessing our website https://rishta-networking.co.uk and all its related pages, you acknowledge and agree to the Terms and Conditions stipulated in this policy. We reserve the right to change this policy at our discretion without notice. We encourage you to read the policy often.  

WHAT INFORMATION IS COLLECTED? 

General use of the website 

When you visit our website, we collect information about the visit that does not identify you personally. We track information such as the domain from which you are visiting and your browser type. We also collect specific information regarding your session on our website. This includes items such as the date and time of the visit and the pages viewed.  

When registering a candidate or yourself or opening an account 

When you are registering yourself or a candidate you acknowledge and agree to provide personally identifiable information (PII) voluntarily. If you are registering a candidate(other than yourself), you are also acknowledging and agreeing that you have the expressed permission of the person you are registering. 

The information you voluntarily provide may include, but is not limited to: 

• Contact Information: name, postal address, email address, and contact telephone number 
• Age and Date of Birth 
• Gender 
• Username and Password 
• Ethnicity information 
• Citizenship status 
• Height and build information  
• Education level  
• Your salary information 
• Your disability 
• Your smoking habits  
• Payment Information: your payment card number, expiry date, delivery address, and billing address 
• Marital status and number of children you have  
• Contact information for friends/candidates or other people/relatives you would like us to contact 
• The content you provide; like photographs, videos, reviews, articles, and comments 
• Information you provide by social media networks when you visit our social media platforms or use one of our social networking or mobile applications; this may include your name, profile picture, likes, location, and friend list. 
• Cultural heritage (place or origin etc) 

Rishta Networking does not collect any personally identifiable financial  or health-related information (except any disabilities). We do not intentionally collect information from people under the age of 18. 

HOW DO WE USE THIS INFORMATION? 

We may use the information you provide to: 

• Send you promotional materials, networking event notifications,  or other communications.  
• Follow-up calls, e-mail correspondence, or mail correspondence to follow up on the potential matches or to provide marketing information about promotions 
• Provide services to you e.g. information about a possible match or new services, 
• Process your payment and/or gift card transactions 
• Create and manage your online account 
• Respond to your inquiries 
• Communicate with you about, and administer your participation in, special events, prize promotions, programs, surveys, and other offers 
• communicate with you about our social media activities 
• Evaluate and improve our business 
• Analyze how our website is used and to improve the content and service the website provides. 
• Update on essential website changes 
• Comply with applicable legal requirements, relevant industry standards, and our policies 

We also may use the information in other ways for which we provide specific notice at the time of collection. 

WHAT ARE “COOKIES” AND HOW ARE THEY USED? 

We use cookies on this website. A cookie is a text file sent by a web server to a web browser, and stored by the browser. It allows the web server to remember you from one page to the next. The way we use cookies on our site does not affect your privacy in any way. 

We use cookies to monitor how well the site is working. One of the tools we use for this is Google Analytics. This allows us to gather aggregate data about how the website is used. It does not gather information that allows us to identify you individually. 

We’ll assume that you are happy to receive cookies from this site. If that’s not the case then most browsers provide a setting to allow you to refuse to accept cookies. For more information about how to do this, you can visit aboutcookies.org. If you disable cookies you will still be able to browse the website. 

Payments via our website 

We use third-party payment processing service providers. Only anonymized order details are sent to our partner. The only use we make of the information that identifies you personally is to process orders you place on the system or to respond to any messages you might send us through the website. 

HOW DO WE PROTECT PERSONAL INFORMATION? 

Rishta Networking uses a high-end hosting provider for our website, which maintains industry-standard methods and mechanisms such as firewalls, intrusion monitoring, and passwords to protect electronic information. The data is not easily accessible directly from the website. Only a limited number of authorized people have access for administration purposes. 

LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES 

The Rishta Networking website may contain links to other internet websites. Rishta Networking neither controls nor endorses external sites and is not responsible for the content of such sites. This policy does not cover non-Rishta Networking websites' privacy policies and data collection practices. 

HOW TO OPT OUT OF CORRESPONDENCE 

You may withdraw any consent you previously provided to us, or object at any time on legitimate grounds, to the processing of your personal information. We will consider your request and, as required by applicable, apply your preferences going forward, within a reasonable amount of time. In some circumstances, withdrawing your consent to our use or disclosure of your personal information will mean that you cannot take advantage of some of our products or services. Opt-out details are contained in the marketing emails you receive and you may request withdrawal of consent in writing via our Contact Us page. 

DISCLOSURE OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA 

We may disclose your details with your permission to potential matches/spouses or their relatives for the purpose of securing a partner for you. We may also disclose your details for legitimate law enforcement purposes. 

INTERNATIONAL TRANSFER 

Some of our third-party providers are businesses outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) countries which do not always offer the same levels of protection for your personal data. We do our best to ensure a similar degree of security by ensuring that contracts, codes of conduct, or certification are in place which gives your personal data the same protection it has within Europe. If we are not able to do so, we will request your explicit consent to the transfer and you can withdraw this consent at any time. 

DATA SECURITY 

Protecting your data is important to us and we have put in place security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorized way, altered, or disclosed. We also limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors, and other third parties who have a business need to know such data. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breaches and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so. In certain circumstances, you can ask us to delete your data. See the section entitled ‘Your rights’ below for more information. We may anonymize your personal data (so that you can no longer be identified from such data) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you. 

DATA RETENTION 

We will only keep your personal data for as long as is necessary to fulfill the purposes for which we collected it. We may retain your data to satisfy any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements so for example we need to keep certain information about you for 6 years after you cease to be a client for tax purposes. You have the right to ask us to delete the personal data we hold about you in certain circumstances. See the section below. 

YOUR RIGHTS 

You are able to exercise certain rights in relation to the personal data that we process. These are set out in more detail at https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/ In relation to a Subject Access Right request, you may request that we inform you of the data we hold about you and how we process it. We will not charge a fee for responding to this request unless your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive in which case we may charge a reasonable fee or decline to respond. We will, in most cases, reply within one month of the date of the request unless your request is complex or you have made a large number of requests in which case we will notify you of any delay and will in any event reply within 3 months. If you wish to make a Subject Access Request, please send the request via our Contact Us page marked for the attention of the Data Compliance Officer. 

KEEPING YOUR DATA UP TO DATE 

We have a duty to keep your personal data up to date and accurate so from time to time we will contact you to ask you to confirm that your personal data is still accurate and up to date. If there are any changes to your personal data (such as a change of address) please let us know as soon as possible by writing to or emailing the addresses set out in the section above. 

COMPLAINTS 

We are committed to protecting your personal data but if for some reason you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you can submit your complaint to us via our Contact Us page or to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk).