Privacy Policy

AMRITA VIRTUAL ACADEMY - PRIVACY POLICY
(Go to Terms of Use)

Effective October 6, 2021

M.A.Center is committed to safeguarding the privacy of its on-line users' Personal information. Please read the following policy to understand the rules and procedures followed by M.A.Center in handling Personal information provided to us over the Internet or by use of our websites (the “Services”). For residents from the European Economic Area, M.A.Center is the data controller responsible for your information. If you have further questions regarding our privacy policy please contact us via email at [email protected].

What information does M.A.Center collect?

When information identifies or is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with you or your household, we refer to it as “Personal Information.”

M.A.Center collects the Personal information from:

You directly when you contact us and voluntarily provide information to us, such as when giving a donation or registering for a retreat.
Affiliated Amma organizations (satsangs and centers) that have your permission to share your Personal information.
Tracking technologies that monitor how you interact with the Services.

Personal information may include the following categories:

Identifiers/Contact Information: your name, shipping/mailing address, telephone number, fax number, email address, username and password.
Commercial Information: Credit or debit card account number, retreat registration and donation preferences.
Internet/Electronic Activity: Information regarding your interaction(s) with the Services.

We also work with various types of data that are de-identified or aggregated, and not reasonably capable of being associated with, or reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with you or your household. This data is not Personal Information.

How M.A.Center Uses Your Personal Information

M.A.Center uses Personal Information in accordance with applicable data protection laws and this Privacy Policy. We will have a lawful basis for processing your information if:

We need to process your information to provide you with products or services that you have requested;
You have consented to such processing;
We have a legitimate interest for processing your data, such as analytics, fraud prevention, improving the Site and our business; and/or
We are legally required to process it.

Such processing may include:

To provide you with information about the activities of Amma, M.A. Center and our affiliates, including by sending you our e-newsletters.
To provide the Services to you, including completing your orders, donations, and retreat registrations, managing your account, and contacting you about the status of your orders, donations and retreat registrations.
To prevent, detect, and fight fraud or other illegal or unauthorized activities, such as to address fraud or alleged unlawful activity, assist law enforcement, and protect the security and integrity of the Services.
To ensure legal compliance, such as to comply with legal requirements, enforce or exercise our rights or those of third parties, complete due diligence and required disclosures for corporate acquisitions and sales, and address problems with the Services or our business.

When We Disclose Personal Information

We may share Personal Information, as follows:

With our affiliated entities: M.A. Center does exchange Personal information with various affiliated Amma organizations (satsangs and centers) in the U.S. and abroad so that they can contact people on the mailing list about Amma programs and events. M.A. Center's mailing list, including the Personal information we receive through the Internet, is never shared with any commercial organizations and is never sold, rented or given to unrelated third parties.
With our service providers: We use service providers to help us operate and improve the Services, such as for data hosting and maintenance, analytics, customer care, marketing, payment processing, order fulfillment, and security operations.
For corporate transactions: We may transfer your Personal Information if we are involved, whether in whole or in part, in a merger, sale, acquisition, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, bankruptcy, or other change of ownership or control. If another entity acquires us or any of our assets, information we have collected about you may be transferred to such entity. In addition, if any bankruptcy or reorganization proceeding is brought by or against us, such information may be considered an asset of ours and may be sold or transferred to third parties.

Should such a sale or transfer occur, we will use reasonable efforts to try to require that the transferee use Personal Information provided through the Services in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Policy.
Legal obligations; Safety: We may access and disclose your Personal Information to respond to subpoenas, judicial processes, or government requests and investigations, in connection with an investigation on matters related to public safety, or as permitted or otherwise required by law. We may disclose your Personal Information to protect the security of our Services, servers, network systems, and databases.
To enforce legal rights: We may also share Personal Information (a) if disclosure would mitigate our liability in an actual or threatened lawsuit; (b) as necessary to protect our legal rights and those of our users, business partners, or other interested parties; (c) to enforce our agreements with you; and (d) to investigate, prevent, or take other action regarding suspected illegal activity, fraud, or other wrongdoing.
With your consent or at your request: We also may share your information as disclosed to you at the time of collection.
Where required by law: M.A. Center will disclose Personal information to third parties if we believe in good faith that the law requires us to do so.

When You Disclose Personal Information

M.A. Center provides a travel exchange bulletin board and a Facebook page and other social media channels. M.A. Center does not and has no obligation to monitor these social media channels or bulletin/chat boards. If you use or chat boards or social media channels, please be aware that any Personal information you submit there can be read, collected, or used by other users of these chat boars/social media channels, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the Personal information you choose to submit to these chat boards and/or social media channels.

Right to Control and Correct Personal information

Individuals who wish to register online for Amma retreats are asked to open an “account” in which they provide a username and password. Individuals can access their account to change that information during open registration time simply by clicking on “Register online” link. Please contact us at [email protected] at any other time to change that information.
Individuals who wish to receive information about M.A. Center activities via the E-newsletter provide name and email address. Individuals can change the information at any time by accessing their account themselves. For this, log into lists.ammagroups.org, then enter the email address. Choose 'Forgot Password' if password is not available, and a new password will be emailed to the given email address. Follow the instructions in the email to access the account and update it. Or email us at [email protected], to update your preferences. You may also opt-out of marketing emails by following the instructions on the footer of each email.
Individuals who purchase goods or services from the bookstore or who give donations are asked to supply their Personal information at each transaction. Individuals may be able to change the transaction information before it has been processed by emailing us at [email protected]. We may not be able to correct or delete information shared with third parties.

Your EU Privacy Rights

Under the European Union General Data Protection Regulation, residents of the EU have certain rights regarding Personal Information:

• Right to access your information: You have the right to confirm whether and how we use your Personal Information, why we use it, how long we keep it, and who we share it with. You also have the right to request a free copy of what we have.

• Right to have your information shared: You have the right to request that we export, in a structured, commonly used, machine readable, and interoperable format, and transmit to another controller, your information.

• Right to rectify your information: If you believe that we hold Personal Information about you that is inaccurate, misleading, or incomplete, you have the right to request that we correct that information in our records.

• Right to request that we remove your information: You have the right to request that we remove your Personal Information from our records.

• Right to request that we limit use of your information: You also have the right to request that our use of your Personal Information be restricted.

• Right to withdraw consent: Where you provide consent to our use of your Personal Information, you can withdraw your consent at any time.

• Right to complain to a supervisory authority: Where you are unhappy with how we treat or handle your Personal Information, you have the right to make a complaint to the data protection supervisory authority in your home country. For example, if you live in the United Kingdom, you would contact the Information Commissioner’s Office.

If you are an EU resident and would like to exercise any of your rights described above and submit a request, contact us at [email protected]. We will respond to all legitimate requests within one month. We may sometimes request additional information from you. Please note that we may not be able to fulfill your request under certain circumstances, such as when it is necessary to keep your information to complete an order or meet a legal obligation. If we cannot fulfill the request, we will notify you of the reasons why.

If you disagree with our resolution of your request, you have the right to make a complaint to the supervisory authority in your country. You may also seek to enforce this right through a judicial remedy.

How We Protect Your Personal Information

1. M.A.Center uses a secure server with 128 bit encryption to assure the security of the data being transmitted to M.A.Center. M.A.Center's database is protected from unauthorized access by a series of highly sophisticated software protection programs.

2. M.A.Center secures the Personal information, including credit card numbers, received from individuals who make online purchases from M.A. Center. Our secure server software provides protection for your Personal information. We encrypt all of your Personal information, including credit card number, name, and address, so that it cannot be read as the information travels over the Internet. This data is used only to confirm our existing records. Sensitive data is also encrypted while being stored on our server.

3. M.A. Center limits access to your Personal information to those persons that are required to fulfill the requests for information, services or products. Your Personal information is password protected with access only to those selected and authorized persons.

4. M.A. Center provides links to affiliated entities. These sites operate independently of M.A. Center. M.A. Center is not responsible for the privacy, terms of use or other policies of any other website.

How We Use Cookies

1. M.A.Center does use cookies to store information. A cookie is a small amount of data that is sent to your browser from a web server and stored in your computer's hard drive.

2. M.A.Center gives the option to the user to store their personal preferences as cookies. These cookies are for your convenience only, and are not used for any other purpose.

3. However, M.A.Center uses cookies to track the items you place in your shopping cart during a single shopping session. Therefore your browser must accept cookies if you wish to shop at our online bookstore: The Amma Shop. These cookies identify your computer and contain no Personal Information.

4. Some web browsers (including Safari, Internet Explorer, Edge, Firefox, and Chrome) incorporate a “Do Not Track” (“DNT”) or similar feature that signals to websites that a user does not want to have their online activity and behavior tracked. Not all browsers offer a DNT option, and DNT signals are not yet uniform. Many website operators, including M.A.Center, do not respond to DNT requests or headers from some or all Internet browsers.

Consent to International Transfers

M.A.Center is a global organization and we, or our service providers, may process, transfer and store information about our users on servers located in a number of countries, including the United States. As a result, your Personal Information may be subject to data protection and other laws that may differ from your country of residence. Your Personal Information may be disclosed in response to inquiries or requests from government authorities or to respond to judicial process in the countries in which we operate. By using the Services, or by providing us with any information, you consent to the collection, processing, maintenance and transfer of such information in and to the United States and to other applicable territories in which the privacy laws may not be as comprehensive as, or equivalent to, those in the country where you reside and/or are a citizen with the use of safeguards as required under applicable law.

How We Retain Your Personal Information

We will retain your Personal Information consistent with applicable law and our retention policies. Such retention may include satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. We also may aggregate or de-identify the information so that it no longer identifies you, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Amendment of Policy

M.A. Center reserves the right to amend this Privacy Policy any time. Such changes will appear on the website in the form of a revised and newly dated Privacy Policy. M.A. Center will post the changes on this page and indicate at the bottom of this page the date these terms were last revised. Our current policy was amended October 6, 2021.