Privacy Policy

1. Background

The website www.safe2choose.org and associated Counselling Services (“the Website”) are a free of cost service provided to women considering medical abortion.

The Company understands and values the privacy of everyone who visits Our Website and will only collect and use information in ways that are useful to you and in a manner consistent with your rights and our obligations under the laws applicable to the Company, the Website and the Counselling Services.

This Policy applies to any and all data collected by us in relation to your use of Our Website. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully and ensure that you understand it. Your acceptance of Our Privacy Policy is deemed to occur upon your first use of Our Website. If you do not accept and agree with this Privacy Policy, you must stop using Our Website immediately.

This Privacy Policy is consistent with the standards laid down by European Union General Data Protection Regulations, proposed data protection guidelines relating to health and other sensitive personal information in the Republic of India etc.

Terms not defined herein shall have the meanings assigned to them in the Terms of Service.

2. This policy covers

This Privacy Policy applies only to your use of Our Website and collection, storage, use and processing of your personal information. It does not extend to any websites that are linked to Our Website (whether we provide those links or whether they are shared by other users). We have no control over how your data is collected, stored or used by other websites and we advise you to check the privacy policies of any such websites before providing any data to them.

3. Data We Collect

Some data will be collected automatically by Our Website, other data will only be collected if you voluntarily submit it and consent to us using it for the online chat and counselling purposes with our designated counsellors and empanelled medical practitioners and doctors.

We strive to provide anonymised Counselling Services by limiting collection of information that can be used to personally identify you. While our Online live Chat sessions achieve this by automatically anonymising you, access to Counselling Services over email will necessarily involve collection and storage of your email-address and any other personal information you provide voluntarily.

Depending upon your use of Our Website, we may collect some or all of the following data:

Data which may be collected automatically

  1. IP address (automatically collected)
  2. Web browser type and version (automatically collected)
  3. Operating system (automatically collected)
  4. A list of URLs starting with a referring Website, your activity on Our Website(automatically collected)

From “Online chat & counselling service”, we collect the following data

– What personal data do we ask for?

  1. Name, Email and Contact Information only if follow-up Counselling sessions are required.
  2. Medical History
  3. Vital Records
  4. Country, State, City and Age (coming soon)

– Why do we want your personal data?

  • To provide online counselling service or to meet any statutory obligations that we may be subject to.

– Can you withdraw your permission?

4. How Do We Use Your Data?

1. We limit the collection of personally identifiable information like name, email-address, contact information etc, as far as possible. However, if such personal data is collected, it is only used to contact you for follow-up Counselling sessions, to collect feedback regarding Our services or to provide you with follow-up information regarding your Counselling session. We do not share your data with anyone other than our Counsellors, empanelled doctors and medical practitioners and our affiliates who assist us with providing Counselling Services to you and only if such information is required to be shared to provide the Counselling Services to you. We do not use your personal information like name, email-address or contact information to market any goods or services to you including our own Services.

2. All data provided by your or collected by us is stored securely in accordance with strict standards laid down by laws and regulations as mentioned above. While storing your data, we de-identify the data so that your health data or records of chat-sessions or email exchanges are separately stored from your names, email-addresses or other personally identifiable information. We use your data to provide the best possible services to you. This includes:

  1. Providing and managing your access to Our Website
  2. Personalising and tailoring your experience on Our Website
  3. Providing our counselling services to you
  4. Responding to communications from you
  5. Analysing your use of Our Website [and gathering feedback] to enable us to continually improve Our Website and your user experience.

3. With your explicit permission and also where permitted by law, we may also use your data for research purposes which may include contacting you via email. We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that we fully protect your rights and comply with our obligations applicable laws and regulations while doing so. Whenever, we use your information for research purposes, we use anonymised information in form of statistics and this information cannot be used to link you personally with the medical information and other information provided by you.

4. We will ensure that your personal data is used lawfully, fairly, and transparently, without adversely affecting your rights. We will only your personal data if at least one of the following basis applies:

  1. You have given consent to the use of your personal data for one or more specific purposes;
  2. Use of your personal data is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject;
  3. Use of your personal data is necessary to protect the vital interests of you or of another natural person;

5. How and Where Do We Store Your Data?

1. As such, we retain the data provided by you, data collected by us including the records of Online Counselling sessions through the live chat feature or email exchanges unless the user specifically requests its deletion. In any event, these records are stored in a de-identified format so that the health information and chat records cannot be linked to the users personally. Further, we conduct an annual review to ascertain whether we need to keep your data. Your data will be deleted if we no longer need it in accordance with the terms of our Policy. In some cases, we may need to save records of this data if required under applicable laws and regulations.

2. Some or all of your data may be stored or transferred outside of the European Economic Area (“the EEA”) (The EEA consists of all EU member states, plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein). You are deemed to accept and agree to this by using Our Website and submitting information to us. If we do store or transfer data outside the EEA, We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that your data is treated as safely and securely as it would be within the EEA and under the GDPR. Such steps may include, but not be limited to, the use of legally binding contractual terms between us and any third parties we engage. The safeguards used are:

  1. Data is securely transferred via SSL encrypted protocol,
  2. Data is stored securely in encrypted SSLlabs A/A+ rated TLS transport servers located in Canada

3. If required under any local laws applicable to us, we will store copies of your personal information on a server in your local jurisdiction.

4. Notwithstanding the security measures that we take, it is important to remember that the transmission of data via the internet may not be completely secure and that you are advised to take suitable precautions when transmitting data to us via the internet.

6. Do We Share Your Data?

  1. We may share your personal data with our parent company and its subsidiaries (i.e. our affiliates) provided such data sharing complies with this Privacy Policy. Such personal data may be shared in one of two scenarios: (i) sharing of data is required for providing the Counselling Services to you or (ii) sharing of data is for research purposes in which case; only aggregated and anonymised data is shared.
  2. We may contract with third parties to provide you efficient services. These may include search engine facilities, Google analytics, advertising and marketing, survey, on line chat tool etc. In some cases, the third parties may require access to some or all of your data. Where any of your data is required for such a purpose, we will take your consent and take all reasonable steps to ensure that your data will be handled safely, securely, and in accordance with your rights, our obligations, and the obligations of the third party under the law. We currently contract with:
Party Name: Purpose: Data Disclosed:
Google Analytics Get statistics about the impact and the audience Google has its own page for that detail: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6318039?hl=en
Zendesk Give real time counseling Email, Name and all the messages between the user and the counselor
  1. We may compile statistics about the use of Our Website including data on traffic, usage patterns and other information. All such data will be anonymised and will not include any personally identifiable information about our users. We may from time to time share such data with third parties. Data will only be shared and used within the bounds of the applicable laws and regulations.
  2. In certain circumstances we may be legally required to share certain data held by Us, which may include your personal information, for example, where We are involved in legal proceedings, where We are complying with the requirements of legislation, a court order, or a governmental authority. We do not require any further consent from you in order to share your data in such circumstances and will comply as required with any legally binding request that is made of us.

7. Security

We employ appropriate technical and standard security procedures and processes to safeguard the confidentiality of users’ personal information. Our employees, agents and associates, do everything in their reasonable control to protect your information.

Any of our employees or agents mainly our counsellors and empanelled medical practitioners & doctors to provide counselling support may have access to or maintains sensitive personal information, have entered into confidentiality agreements in order to ensure the privacy of such user information prior to sharing that information with them. Internally, access to all users’ information is restricted to those who need access in order to fulfill their job responsibilities and have entered into confidentiality agreement.

8. How Can You Control Your Data?

When you submit information via Our Website, you may be given options to restrict our use of your data. We aim to give you strong controls on our use of your data.

9. Right to Withhold and Withdraw Information

You may access certain areas of Our Website without providing any data at all. However, to use all features and functions available on Our Website you may be required to submit or allow for the collection of certain data.

You may withdraw your consent for us to use your personal data at any time by contacting us using the details set out and we will delete your data from Our systems. However, you acknowledge this may limit our ability to provide the best possible Counseling services to you.

10. How Can You Access Your Data?

You have the legal right to ask for a copy of any of your personal data held by us. Please contact Us for more details at privacy@safe2choose.org

11. Do we use Cookies?

Our Website does not place and access Cookies on your computer or device. For your security and privacy, we have carefully chosen not to use Cookies to ensure that your privacy is protected and respected at all times.

However, Our Website uses analytics services provided by Google Analytics to collect and analyse usage statistics, enabling us to better understand how people use Our Website. Our use of them does not pose any risk to your privacy or your safe use of Our website, it does enable Us to continually improve Our Website, maki

12. Linked Websites

This Website may contain links to other websites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other websites. We encourage users to be aware when they leave this Website and to read the privacy statements of each website they visit that collects personal information. While we carefully choose the websites to link to, this Privacy Notice applies solely to information collected on our own Website.

13. Contacting Us

If you have any questions about Our Website or this Privacy Policy, please contact us by email at privacy@safe2choose.org. Please ensure that your query is clear, particularly if it is a request for information about the data we hold about you.

14. Changes to Our Privacy Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy as we may deem necessary from time to time, or as may be required by law. Any changes will be immediately posted on Our Website and you will be deemed to have accepted the terms of the Privacy Policy on your first use of Our Website following the alterations. We recommend that you check this page regularly to keep up-to-date.

You acknowledge that it may not be possible due to our de-identification and anonymization policies to give you advance notice of changes in our Privacy Policy to you. However, in case a change in our Privacy Policy will have a direct impact on how we store and use your personal data, it will be our endeavour to update you regarding the changes in our Privacy Policy and give you an opportunity to request deletion of your data prior to the changes coming into effect.