Sandes is an Open source driven, Secure, Cloud enabled and Indigenous platform developed by National Informatics Centre, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) for instant messaging.
This Privacy Policy governs the purpose, Collection, Notice & Storage details, process of personal information collected and use of Sandes by its users. The information provided through the Sandes may not have any legal sanctity and is for general reference only, unless otherwise specified. When a user uses Sandes, some information is collected from and about the user. The Sandes is committed to protecting the security of this information and safeguarding the user’s privacy. This Privacy Policy sets out the details of the information collected, the manner in which it is collected, by whom as well as the purposes for which it will be used. At registration, a user is consenting to accept the terms of this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy may be revised from time to time and users will be notified of any future change(s) in privacy policy which user should accept for continuing availing of the services of the Sandes.
The registration information provided by user such as
email/phone number including country code, name and gender is collected by
Government of India and stored on Government Infrastructure. This information
is being used to identify the user by the Sandes. In addition, optional
information like profile photo, occupation details, date of birth, residential
details and status provided by the user, UID Token received from UIDAI for
Aadhaar authentication (if done by the user) request and Aadhaar verification status,
are also collected and stored. Sandes does not store/share the Aadhaar
number/VID provided by the user.
The user’s messages are End-to-End encrypted and are stored on their own devices. The Sandes does not retain the user’s messages on Server unless any message is not delivered immediately. The Sandes stores undelivered encrypted messages for 30 days and delivers it as and when the user is connected. If a message is still undelivered after 30 days, it is deleted from the server of Sandes.
User may provide Sandes team with information related to their use of Sandes Services, including copies of their messages, so that the technical support for troubleshooting may be provided to them. For example, the user may send Sandes team an email with information relating to Sandes performance or other technical issues related to the Sandes.
The Sandes collects metadata about each message which
includes the sender’s Identity, the receiver’s Identity, the date, time and size of instant or group messages, audio and video
calling date, time and duration. The log files, crash reports, user’s service
settings, online status, last seen status and date of last updation
of profile by user and invitation related details are also stored. Device and
Connection Information - The Sandes collects user’s device specific information
like hardware model, operating system, Sandes version, language preference,
time zone and device identifiers. The Sandes also collects internet service
provider as connection information.
Users can use the account information provided by the other users to identify them. Apart from this, date of birth of a user is used by the Sandes to verify that the registered user is at least 18 years old. The Sandes uses the personal details for registration of the user.
Usage and Log Information is being used by the Sandes to improve the Sandes services, handle RTI queries and queries received from law enforcement agencies
Device and connection information is collected for support to the user having device specific or service provider specific issues.
The Sandes does examination of any suspicious activity or violations of its Terms of Use, to ensure that its services are being used fairly.
A user’s information (Name, Profile photo, Email id, Mobile No and Occupation Detail) is made available to all other registered users if the user is in their contact list. The information captured at the time of registration is also available to organization administrator (In case of Government User) to which the user belongs and to the Sandes as well.
Organization Administrator may restrict the display of Email Id, Organization name and designation of members of that Organization. No other information is shared by the Sandes with the Organization administrator.
No messages are accessed/shared by the Sandes. Only the information as provided in section1 is used as described in section 2. Other users with whom a user communicates on the Sandes may store or reshare the user’s information with anyone. The Sandes has applied standard technical, administrative and organizational security features to protect the information. Data is stored on secured Govt. infrastructure and is encrypted while in transit.
User may receive communication from external IT applications integrated with the Sandes. Please note that when a user uses any external IT application integrated with the Sandes, the terms and conditions, privacy policies and other rules and regulations of the respective applications will govern the use of these services.
A registered user has the right to access his/her profile at
any time to add, remove or modify the information the user has provided except
for email id or mobile number used by the user for registration. A user has the
right to delete the Sandes, but the data residing with the Sandes will be
deleted as per the prevailing policies of Government of India. The user has to follow the Information Technology Act, 2000, its
amendments and Rules published.
All messages are End-to-End encrypted for ensuring secure
communication. The Sandes does not sell or share any personally identifiable
information volunteered on the Sandes to any third party (public/private),
except covered under law enforcement/court matter. Any information provided to
the Sandes will be protected from unauthorized access, alteration, or
destruction to the best of the efforts of NIC.
In case of a threat to the Sandes is observed or is informed
by Order of Court or Government Agency/Competent Authority for a user account,
the account may be deactivated immediately. Subsequent to
deactivation, the concerned user and the organization of user (if organization
detail is available) shall be informed. Deactivated account may be reactivated
on the recommendation of Court Order/Government Agency/Competent Authority. The
User may be deactivated for not following the Information Technology Act, 2000,
its amendments and Rules published.
Before using the services of the Sandes, the user should
accept the Privacy Policy. The user will be notified of any future change(s) in
privacy policy which user should accept for continuing availing of the services
of the Sandes. User will be asked to allow/deny permissions to the Sandes for
enabling certain features such as taking picture and recording the video,
recording the audio, accessing the contacts, making
and managing phone calls, accessing photos, media and files on user’s device.
By giving permission, user allows the Sandes to access and provide these
features to the user. While giving permission for accessing the contacts, user
confirms that user is authorized to provide the information of contacts in
user’s phonebook. If a user has any concern in relation to the Privacy Policy,
the user should address these to email support-sandes[at]nic.in.
These Terms govern your use of the application for mobile
and handheld devices (Sandes) and the services provided there under. Please
read these terms and conditions (Terms) carefully before you download install
or use the Sandes. You must use our Services according to our Terms and
policies. If we disable your account for a violation of our Terms, you will not
create another account without our permission. You must access and use our
Services only for legal, authorized, and acceptable purposes. You agree that
you will only use the App in good faith and will not provide false or
misleading information about yourself. You will not use or assist others in
using our Services for following
1.
Transmit
or share any information that infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other proprietary right or right of the Sandes.
2.
Transmit
or share any information that is grossly harmful, harassing, racially,
threatening, intimidating, blasphemous defamatory, obscene, pornographic,
paedophilic, libellous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially,
ethnically objectionable, disparaging, relating or
encouraging money laundering or gambling, or otherwise unlawful in any manner
whatever
3.
Transmit
or share any information that harm minors in any way
4.
Activities
to gain or attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Services or related
systems or networks or to defeat, avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate
or otherwise circumvent any software protection or monitoring mechanisms of the
Services.
5.
Activities
which interfere with or disrupt the integrity or performance of our Services.
6.
Transmit
or share any information that violates any law for the time being in force
7.
Transmit
or share any information that impersonate another person
8.
Transmit
or share any information that contains software viruses
or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or
limit the functionality of any computer resource
9.
Activities
which threatens the unity, integrity, defence,
security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states, or
public order or causes incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence
or prevents investigation of any offence or is insulting any other nation
10.
Transmit
or share falsehoods, misrepresentations, or misleading statements.
11.
Activities
which involve sending illegal or impermissible communications such as bulk
messaging, auto-messaging, auto-dialing, and the like
or any non-personal use of our Services unless otherwise authorized by us.
12.
Activities
which access, use, copy, adapt, modify, prepare derivative works based upon,
distribute, license, sublicense, transfer, display, perform, or otherwise
exploit our Services in impermissible or unauthorized manners, or in ways that
burden, impair, or harm us, our Services, systems, our users, or others.
13.
Activities
in which you or through automated means for reverse engineer, decompile, hack,
disable, interfere with, disassemble, modify, copy, translate or disrupt the
features, functionality, integrity or performance of
the Services
14.
Activities
for creating accounts for our Services through unauthorized or automated means.
15.
Activities
to collect the information of or about our users in any impermissible or
unauthorized manner.
16.
Activities
which involve selling, reselling, renting, or charging for our Services, distributing or making our Services available over a network
where they could be used by multiple devices at the same time.
17.
Activities
which access, search or create accounts for the Services by any means other
than our publicly supported interfaces
18.
Activities
which place any advertisements within the Sandes in unauthorized manner
19.
Activities
which use contact or other user information obtained from the Services
(including email addresses) to contact Authorized Users outside of the Services
without their express permission or authority, or to create or distribute
mailing lists or other collections of contact or user profile information for
Authorized Users for use outside of the Services
20.
Activities
which deceives or misleads the addressee about the
origin of the message or knowingly and intentionally communicates any
information which is patently false or misleading in nature but may reasonably
be perceived as a fact
Any breach to this User Agreement and Terms of Use may be reported to Grievance officer of National Informatics Centre, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
You hereby consent to the collection and use of your personal information for the provision of the Sandes Services. The details of the personal information collected and the manner in which it collected and by whom as well as the purposes for which it will be used is more fully set out in our privacy policy which is available here. You are free to choose not to provide this information at any time by deleting your account and removing the Sandes from your mobile or handheld device, however, should you do so, you acknowledge that you will no longer be able to avail of the Services.
You are responsible for keeping your device and your account safe and secure. You should not transfer or otherwise provide access to an account designated for you to another person. You must promptly notify us if you become aware of or reasonably suspect any illegal or unauthorized activity or a security breach involving your accounts, including any loss, theft or unauthorized disclosure or use of a username, password or account. We will make best efforts to ensure that the Sandes and the Services perform well but will not be liable for the failure of the Sandes or the Services at any point of time. You can report any defects or bugs in the App or the Services to support-sandes[at]nic.in.
Your Sandes account can be deleted at any moment using the Sandes app>Account>Delete Account. Your unsent messages and any other information that no longer require to run our business are erased from our systems when you delete your Sandes account. For example, deleting your account would remove your profile picture, account information, and data from any Sandes groups. Please be aware that your information can be kept for a longer amount of time if you choose to just remove Sandes from your device without utilizing our in-app delete account option.
These Terms shall be governed by Government of India rules.