Privacy Policy

National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), is committed to protecting personally-identifiable information that we handle in the course of providing our authentication-related services ("Personal Information"). This Privacy Policy describes our information-handling practices. This Privacy Policy applies only to information relating to those NIOS services (the "Services") that are provided via the www.nos.org or www.nios.ac.in Internet web sites (the "Web Sites"), as described in the applicable Certificate Policy Statement. This policy describes:

• What Personal Information we collect in offering and providing the Services;
• How we use and to whom we disclose Personal Information;
• Your choices concerning our uses of Personal Information;
• The security measures we use to protect Personal Information;
• Your rights to correct and update Personal Information; and
• How you can contact us about Personal Information.

INFORMATION COLLECTION & USE
NIOS is the sole owner of the Personal Information collected through our Web Sites or in connection with the Services.

Data Collected from non-Registered Users

You may visit the Web Sites without providing any Personal Information.

Data Collected from Registered Users

We need to collect Personal Information such as name, phone number, email address, state, and country in order for you to register for Services or to respond to your requests for information that you may submit to us through the Web Site. We use this information to process your requests, to administer the Services in which you have expressed interest, and to provide information to you relating to our Services. You may have the option to provide additional demographic information (such as job title, corporation affiliation, geographic location, or other data) through the Web Sites. We use this information to analyze interest in the Web Site and to improve the information we make available through the Web Sites.

Data Collected through Referrals

We provide a mechanism for you to refer other persons whom you believe may be interested in our Services. In such cases, we will send the referral a one-time email inviting him or her to visit our Web Site. We maintain this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email and for tracking the success of our referral program, but will not send further unsolicited communications.

We engage third party services such as TechTarget and KnowledgeStorm to identify potential users of our Services. These services employ their own mechanisms to enable individuals to opt out of email distribution lists.

External Links

Our Web Site may contain links to other sites that are not owned or controlled by NIOS t. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites that you may access from our Web Site. We encourage you to be aware when you leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every Web site that collects personally identifiable information.

Automated Web Site Tracking

When you visit one of our Web Sites, statistics about your visit are automatically collected. This information does not identify you personally, but rather identifies information about a visit to the Web Site. This information may include how many people visit the Web Site, the user's Internet Protocol (IP) address, which pages are visited, from which domains our visitors come and which types of browsers these persons use. We use these statistics about your visit for aggregate, analytical purposes only, to help us improve the performance and effectiveness of our Web Site.

Cookies

A cookie is a small text file that is stored on a user's computer for record-keeping purposes. We use cookies on our Web Sites. We do/do not link the information we store in cookies to any Personal Information you submit through our Web Sites. We use both session cookies and permanent cookies. A session cookie expires when you close you browser. A permanent cookie remains on your hard drive for an extended period of time. You may decline to accept cookies or may remove permanent cookies by following directions provided in your Internet browser's "help" file.

We use temporary cookies to help your browser navigate our Web Site, to determine which visitors reach our Web Site from sites of our business partners, and to record during a user's session that the user is properly authenticated. We use permanent cookies to recall your information to save you time in filling out forms and/or revisiting our Web Site and to determine which visitors to our Web Sites have visited them before and if so, for what purposes.

If you reject cookies, you may still generally access the informational material on our Web Sites, but you may be unable to obtain some of our Services or access some portions of our Web Sites.

Certificate Application Information

In order to issue digital certificates and provide our Services, we must collect and maintain Personal Information about prospective Certificate Holders. Our information requirements may vary according to the type of Service being requested, as provided in the applicable service agreements, enrollment forms, and/or certificate applications. This information may include name; corporate affiliation; job title; postal address; telephone numbers; email address; gender; date of birth; dates of employment; and driver's license, passport or other government-issued identification documents numbers. We use this information to document and verify the identities or persons to whom we issue certificates or provide Services. We require documentation establishing that certificate applicants have expressly consented to the use of their Personal Information in connection with our Services.

Subscriber Information

We must also collect Personal Information from officers and other representatives of companies that subscribe to our Services and designate authorized Certificate Holders. This information may include name; corporate affiliation; job title; postal address; years at address; telephone numbers; email address; state license status and license numbers; Dun & Bradstreet number; credit card and bank account number and related billing and payment information; and IP addresses. We use this information to administer our Services, contact you in connection with your account, and to provide information about the Services or other offerings that we believe may be of interest to you.


INFORMATION SHARING AND DISCLOSURE

Aggregate Information

We share non-identifiable aggregated demographic information about our user base with third parties, such as our marketing partners and advertisers. This information does not contain Personal Information and is not used to identify or contact individual users.

Personal Information

We disclose Personal Information for the following purposes:

• To our contractors, agents, service providers, and affiliated companies (i.e., parents and subsidiaries) for purposes of responding to customer requests; providing requested Services; validating the identity of subscribers and certificate applicants; maintaining and operating our Web Sites, systems, and equipment; billing and collection; distributing marketing and informational materials; and internal management and administration of our business, provided that these recipients are not permitted to use or disclose the information for other purposes..
• To other third parties, as we determine to be reasonable and appropriate to comply with legal requirements; to obtain required governmental authorizations; to assert or defend our legal rights, enforce our agreements, prevent or respond to suspected fraud, or protect the health, safety, or legal rights of others; to cooperate with law enforcement authorities; to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process; or in connection with an actual or prospective transaction involving the assets related to one or more of the Services to which such Personal Information pertains; in the event of such a transaction, we will announce any change in ownership or control of your Personal Information on our Web Site before the transfer takes effect and will provide an opportunity to decline to permit the transfer to occur.

Without limiting the foregoing, these disclosures may include the following:

• Providing, revoking, or renewing the Services. We may provide the information you have submitted to us to an independent business partner or service provider (either within or outside the United States) so that the business partner or service provider can contact you to provide support relating to the Services. To confirm whether any entity is one of our authorized business partners or service providers, please contact us at the address provided below.
• Facilitating supplemental services associated with a certificate. Some certificates may come with additional third-party services or products. In these cases, we will forward some or all of the Personal Information in your certificate application to third party providers so that they can provide you with the service or product and follow up with you directly regarding their service or product.

Certificate Information

All information that you provide us that forms the content of a certificate will be "published" in a repository that can be accessed by third parties. No person should have any expectation of privacy in the contents of a certificate.

International Data Transfer

We maintain and process Personal Information in the United States. Accordingly, information obtained elsewhere will be transferred to, maintained in, and processed in, and under the laws of, the United States. By subscribing to one of our Services, you must consent to such transfer and processing of your information in the United States.


SECURITY

We consider the protection of all personal information we receive from our Web Site visitors, Subscribers, Relying Parties, and Certificate Holders as a core responsibility. We have security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse, and alteration of Personal Information. As with any transmission over the Internet, however, there is always some element of risk involved in sending personal information. In order to try to minimize this risk, we encrypt information that you submit to us electronically when submitting requests or ordering certificates.

We implement data security safeguards based upon generally accepted industry standards to protect your Personal Information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, alteration, or loss. Nonetheless, no data security techniques are 100% effective, and we cannot guarantee its security.


PRIVACY POLICY CHANGES

If we decide to change this Privacy Policy, we will post the revised Privacy Policy on our Web Site. We may change this Privacy Policy at any time without prior notice. If we make material revisions to this Policy that change the ways in which we use or disclose previously collected Personal Information, we will post a notice on our Web Site and, if appropriate, by email.