Privacy Policy

Last Reviewed Date: 01/07/2024

This Privacy Policy describes the usage of information provided or collected, disclosed or transferred of your information by Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd (hereinafter referred to as “Awards Management” and/or “BCCL”) and/ or its subsidiary (ies) and / or affiliate(s) (collectively referred to as "we", "us", "our" or the "Company”), which operates various websites/ mobile applications & other services including but not limited to delivery of information and content via any mobile or internet connected device or otherwise (collectively the “Services”). This policy is created or designed in accordance with applicable law in the places where we operate. In some cases, we may provide additional data privacy notices specific to certain services or regions. The domain name www.toifa.in (“Website”) is the registered and official website of TOIFA-OTT Edition 2024 is owned by BCCL.

The purpose of this Privacy Policy is to explain how we collect, receive, use, disclose, safeguard and protect information when you visit our website www.toifa.com, use our services and/or interact with us in any way.

As a User, Participant, and/or Voter of www.toifa.com, we understand that you would be concerned about your online privacy. At TOIFA we are concerned and respect your privacy, and protect the privacy of all concerned by using the information you provide with utmost responsibility, care and security. First and foremost you need to have parental/ legal guardian's consent if you are a user/voter/participant below the age of 18 years. The policy regarding Children's privacy is discussed in detail below.

Please keep in mind that the information provided by you, the user, to us is covered under this Privacy Policy, however the information the third-party site or platform on a third-party site or platform (for example, via our website or applications like social media login (for e.g. Instagram, Facebook, Google+ etc.) collects is subject to the third-party site or platform’s privacy practices. The privacy preferences you have selected on third-party sites or platforms will not govern our use of information collected directly through our websites or applications.

Please also keep in mind that our websites and applications may contain links to other sites not owned or controlled by us and we are not responsible for the privacy practices of those sites. We encourage you to exercise caution when you leave our websites or applications to read the privacy policies of other sites they may collect your personal information. Additionally, all capitalized terms that have not been specifically defined herein shall have the same meaning as provided under the Terms of Use.

All capitalized terms that have not been specifically defined herein shall have the same meaning as provided under the Terms of Use. This Privacy Policy should be read in conjunction and together with the Terms of Use applicable to the services you are using.

User Consent

By using this website and its services (for example, when you visit our website and/or cast your vote in the categories as specified or browse through any or other portions of our websites or register via social media or via the registration form), you agree to provide consent to our collection, use and sharing of your personal information as described in this policy. In some cases, particularly if you reside in a country governed by a data protection regulation, we may ask you to provide explicit consent to access our services before proceeding for further operations.

What data is collected

Collection and Use of Personal Information

In order to understand how we collect Personal Information it is important to define the term first. ‘Personal Information’ is defined as any information that identifies (whether directly or indirectly) to a particular individual or natural person or a company, such as their name, postal address, email address, mobile number and any other identifier indicating to that particular person or company. Any data about an individual who is identifiable by or in relation to such data is Personal Information. When anonymous information is directly or indirectly associated with personal information, the resulting information also is treated as personal information. The Company respects the privacy of the users of the Services they use and is committed to reasonably protect it in all respects. The information about the user as collected by the Company are:

  • Information supplied by users
  • Information automatically tracked while navigation
  • Inferred information through usage and log data
  • Information collected from any other sources (like third party providers or social media platforms)

A. Information collected at the time of registration

The access to some general features of our website is free however during registration, following information is collected-

  • Phone Number
  • IP address

We shall not be responsible for privacy of any information provided by you on our website which has not been specifically requested by us. A login identity phone number would be sought for your use and a One-Time Password “OTP will be generated. All activities that occur using your OTP are your responsibility, whether or not authorised by you. You agree to immediately notify us of any unauthorised use of your OTP and/or vote. In case we cannot verify the information that you provide when you log on or otherwise, we may ask you to send us additional information by e-mail or may request you to answer additional questions online to help verify your personal identification information.

B. Information automatically collected while browsing/navigating through the website

Cookies

To improve the responsiveness of the “website” for our users, 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. 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. The only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply. A cookie cannot read data off your hard drive. We receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with us via the website. The detailed cookie policy is below.

Cookie Policy

We understand that your privacy is important to data subject “you”, “your”, “user”, “subscriber” and we are committed to being transparent about the technologies we use. This Cookie Policy explains how and why cookies and other similar technologies may be stored on and accessed from your device when you use or visit our website or application that posts a link to this Policy collectively, “the Sites”. This Cookie Policy should be read together with our Terms of Use.

What are cookies and other tracking technologies

A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. It enables the website to remember your actions and preferences such as login, language, font size and other display preferences over a period of time, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you come back to the site or browse from one page to another. The other tracking technologies work similarly to cookies and place small data files on your devices or monitor your website activity to enable us to collect information about how you use our websites. This allows our websites to recognize your device from those of other users of the websites. The information provided below about cookies also applies to these other tracking technologies.

How do our sites use cookies and other tracking technologies? We use cookies to collect and store information when you access our website and use other services. We use cookies for various purposes such as:

  • To provide you Services on www.toifa.in;
  • To identify your location
  • To identify your browser and device.
  • For analytics and research,
  • Measure and analyze the audience for each page in order to subsequently improve the ergonomics, browsing, or visibility of content;
  • Measure the reliability of Website by analyzing the number of visits to its pages in real time, and offer varied ads that are adapted to user's areas of interest;
  • Cookies may also be saved by social media tools if you use these functionalities (e.g. Facebook, Twitter).

Type of Cookies that we use:

“First party Cookies” these are the cookies that belong to us and which we place on your device or are those set by a website that is being visited by the user at the time (e.g., cookies placed by the Company).

The data collected by the websites and/or through cookies that may be placed on your computer will not be kept for longer than is necessary to fulfil the purposes mentioned above. In any event, such information will be kept in our database until we get explicit consent from you to remove all the stored cookies.

Do these cookies collect personal data/identify me?

Most types of these cookies track consumers via their Device ID or IP address therefore they may collect personal data.

Based on the type of cookies used by the relevant third-party, the information these cookies collect may include personal data but they would not be able to directly identify you as an individual or have any of your personal information such as Name, E-mail id or mobile number managing advertising cookies

How do I refuse or withdraw my consent to the use of Cookies?

If you do not want cookies to be dropped on your device, you can adjust the setting of your Internet browser to reject the setting of all or some cookies and to alert you when a cookie is placed on your device. For further information about how to do so, please refer to your browser ‘help’ / ‘tool’ or ‘edit’ section for cookie settings w.r.t your browser that may be Google Chrome, Safari, Mozilla Firefox etc.

Please note that if your browser setting is already setup to block all Cookies (including strictly necessary Cookies) you may not be able to access or use all or parts or functionalities of our Sites.

If you want to remove previously-stored Cookies, you can manually delete the Cookies at any time. However, this will not prevent the Sites from placing further Cookies on your device unless and until you adjust your Internet browser setting as described above.

C. Inferred Information through usage and log data

We may track certain information about you based upon your behaviour on using our services. We use this information for conducting internal research on our user's demographics, devices, interests, and behaviour to better understand, protect and serve our users. We may also collect Your Information to track user behaviour and preferences for internal analytics and research. We may also use Your information

  • To evaluate your interest for various genres of content, services, offers;
  • To perform analytics and conduct user research, to determine your interest, for identifying content that generate sales and to analyse traffic patterns.

If you choose to post messages on social media accounts, message boards, or other message areas or leave feedback, we will only collect the information you provide to us. We retain this information as necessary to resolve disputes, provide customer support and troubleshoot problems as permitted by applicable law.

The above information may also be captured by keeping cookies on our websites by our affiliates for the purposes mentioned above.

If you send us personal correspondence, such as emails or letters, or if other users or third parties send us correspondence about your activities or postings on our services, we may collect and store such information.

D. Clear GIFs

We may use "clear GIFs" (Web Beacons) 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 Sites or Service to the interests of our users, to measure traffic within our Sites to improve the quality, functionality and interactivity of our Sites and let advertisers know the geographic locations from where our Users come without personally identifying the Users.

E. Information we collect from third parties

Information obtained from other sources

We may receive information about you from other sources, add it to our account information and treat it 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. We may obtain updated contact information from third parties in order to correct our records and fulfil the Services or to communicate with you.

Demographic and purchase information

We may reference other sources of demographic and other information in order to provide you with more targeted communications and promotions. We use Google Analytics, among others, to track the user behaviour on our website. Google Analytics specifically has been able to support display advertising towards helping us gain understanding of our user's Demographics and Interests. The reports are anonymous and cannot be associated with any individual personally identifiable information that you may have shared with us.

Links to third party websites

The Website 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, website you are visiting. That 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/website homepage, you should contact the application/website owners directly for more information. We do not provide any personally identifiable information to third party websites / advertisers / ad-servers without your explicit consent

How collected data is used

Purpose and Lawfulness of processing

We will only collect and process personal data about you where we have lawful basis. Lawful basis on which we would process your personal information includes obtaining explicit consent from you or processing for "legitimate interests" where processing is necessary by us to provide you with Services (For e.g. processing your information by our group companies/affiliates). We use information to provide, analyse, administer, enhance and personalize our service and marketing efforts, to process your registration, to provide you Services, and to communicate with you related to below mentioned points. For example, we use information to :

  • Communicate with you concerning our Service (for example by email, push notifications), so that we can send you news about TOIFA-OTT Edition, details about new features and content available at TOIFA-OTT Edition promotional announcements, and surveys, and to assist you with operational requests.
  • Allow you to participate in interactive features offered through our Services
  • Sharing with our customer support team to resolve your queries/concerns related to your rights or Services provided to you

Information used by the Company

The Information supplied by you enables us to improve our Services and provide you the most user-friendly experience(s). In some cases for e.g. provision of certain service(s) or utility (ies), we may require your contact information as well. All required information is service dependent and the Company may use the above said user Information to, maintain, protect, and improve the Services (including advertising) and for developing new services. Any personally identifiable information provided by you will not be considered as sensitive and will not be qualified as Personal Information 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 posted/uploaded/conveyed/communication by Users on the public sections of the "application/websites" becomes published content and is not considered personally identifiable information subject to this Privacy Policy. In case you choose to decline to submit personally identifiable information on the application/websites, we may not be able to provide certain services on the application/websites 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 with our Services, we may contact you from time to time about updating your personal information to provide you features that we believe may benefit / interest you

Cross Border Data Protection

Information- Sharing and Disclosure

We do not rent, sell, or share personal information about you with other people, individuals or non-affiliated companies except to provide products or services requested and permitted by You to process the same, or under the following instances:

  • We may provide the information to trusted partners who work on our behalf of or under confidentiality agreements.. However, these companies do not have any independent right to share this information. In case these companies do share the information, We would not be held liable for the same.
  • We respond to summons, court orders, or legal process, or to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims.
  • We believe it is necessary to share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of www.toifa.in terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.
  • We transfer information about You if www.toifa.in is acquired by or merged with another company.
  • We do not provide any personal information to the advertiser when you interact with or view a targeted ad. However, by interacting with or viewing an ad you are consenting to the possibility that the advertiser will make the assumption that you meet the targeting criteria used to display the ad.
  • We work with vendors, partners, advertisers, and other service providers in different industries and categories of business.

User control over collected data

A. Accessing your personal information

When you use the Services (website/application or any of its sub sites), we 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.

B. Data Portability

You may also be entitled to request copies of personal information that you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format; wherever feasible. You may send your request by sending an e-mail to our support team.

C. Data Retention and Erasure

We retain your personal information for a period of 1 (one) year or as long as necessary for us to provide services to you or you ask us to not retain your data.

We may retain some of your personal information as necessary for our legitimate business interests, such as fraud detection and prevention and enhancing safety.

We may retain and use your personal information to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations. For example, we may keep some of your information for tax, legal reporting and auditing obligations.

i. Some copies of your information (e.g., log records) may remain in our database, but are disassociated from personal identifiers.

ii. Because of the way we 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.

iii. You can raise data deletion request related to your account on support email address.

D. Withdrawing Consent and Restriction of Processing

For withdrawing your consent at any time during the tenure of your Services with us, you may choose to do so by sending us an e-mail. We shall review your request and may ask you to verify your identity. Post verification we will withdraw the consent for which request was made by you and stop any further processing of your personal information. You may also withdraw your consent for cookies by going to ‘Settings’ and click on consent and withdraw the consent.

E. Complaints

You can write to us in case of any grievance or compliant at the support e-mail address. If you have any complaints regarding processing of your personal information you may contact our data protection officer or our grievance officer at the below mentioned e-mail address. You have the right to complain about the data processing activities carried out by BCCL before the competent data protection authorities.

F. Objection to Processing

Where your personal information is processed for direct marketing purposes or any contests or promotions or other services, you may, at any time ask us to cease processing your data for these direct marketing purposes by sending an e-mail to us.

Please be aware that if you do not allow us to collect personal information from you, we may not be able to deliver certain experiences, and Services to you, and some of our Services may not be able to take account of your interests and preferences. If collection of personal information is mandatory, we will make that clear at the point of collection so that you can make an informed decision whether to participate. If you have questions about the specific personal information about you that we process or retain, and your rights regarding that personal information, please contact us at the below mentioned e-mail address.

Children’s Privacy

TOIFA-OTT Edition 2023 is not intentionally designed for or directed at persons less than 18 years of age. If we become aware that any personally identifiable information of persons less than 18 years of age has been collected on our Services without verified parental/ legal guardian consent, then we will take the appropriate steps to delete any such information and notify the parent.

However, we consider it the responsibility of parents/ legal guardian to monitor their children’s use of our Services. Nevertheless, it is our policy not to collect and process any personal information from children below 18 years of age without parental/ legal guardian consent or offer to send any promotional materials to persons in that category. BCCL does not seek or intend to seek or receive any personal information from children. Should a parent or guardian have reasons to believe that a minor has provided us with personal information without their prior consent, please contact our customer support team to ensure that the personal information is removed from the services.

Data transfer, storage & processing globally

We operate globally and may transfer your personal information to individual companies of BCCL and affiliated companies or third parties in locations around the world for the purposes described in this privacy policy. Wherever your personal information is transferred, stored or processed by us, we will take reasonable steps to safeguard the privacy of your personal information. Additionally, when using or disclosing personal information transferred from the European Union, we use standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission, adopt other means under European Union law for ensuring adequate safeguards

Security and compliance with laws: How we protect your personal data

We 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 we store personal data. All information gathered on the Site is securely stored within the Company 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. If you know or have reason to believe that your credentials have been lost, stolen, altered, or otherwise compromised or in case of any actual or suspected unauthorized use of your account, please contact us by contacting our customer support team at the email address provided below.

Changes to privacy notice

The internet is an ever evolving medium. We may alter our privacy 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 Privacy Policy or the Terms of Use. Any changes we make will be effective immediately, upon posting the new policy on the “Website”. Your use of the Site or Services offered through the Website after such amendment to the Privacy Policy will be deemed acceptance of such changes. You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically on the “Website”) to ensure that you are aware of the latest version.

Resolving privacy issues

Support

If you require any information or clarification regarding the use of your personal information or this privacy policy or grievances with respect to use of your personal information, please email us at mohit.poddar@timesofindia.com.

Data Controller Office

The data controller for our services is Bennett, Coleman and Co. Limited (BCCL) with the business address of

Times of India Building, Dhobi Talao,
Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus Area, Fort,
Mumbai, Maharashtra 400001

The data protection officer (DPO) appointed by Bennett, Coleman and Co. Limited (BCCL) is Mohit Poddar who can be contacted at mohit.poddar@timesofindia.com.

Complaints

If you have any queries, complaints regarding the collecting, processing, transfer of personal data/information or regarding this policy please do contact at mohit.poddar@timesofindia.com .

Redressal Mechanism

Any complaints, abuse or concerns with regards to the processing of information provided by you or breach of these terms shall be immediately informed to the designated Grievance Officer as mentioned below via in writing or through email signed with the electronic signature to Mohit Poddar ("Grievance Redressal Officer")

Grievance Redressal Officer

Times of India Building, Dhobi Talao,
Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus Area, Fort,
Mumbai, Maharashtra 400001

We request you to please provide the following information in your complaint:-

  • Identification of the information provided by you;
  • Clear statement as to whether the information is personal information or sensitive personal information;
  • Your address, telephone number or e-mail address;
  • A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the information has been processed incorrectly or disclosed without authorization, as the case may be,
  • A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice is accurate, and that the information being complained about belongs to you;
  • You may also contact us in case you have any questions / suggestions about the Privacy Policy using the contact information mentioned above.

We shall not be responsible for any communication, if addressed, to any non-designated person in this regard.

This document is an electronic record in terms of Information Technology Act, 2000 and rules there under as applicable and the amended provisions pertaining to electronic records in various statutes as amended by the Information Technology Act, 2000