Privacy Policy
This Website www.thegossipstore.co.in is an internet-based platform and is owned and operated by The Gossip Store having communication address of Gossip Store, Injambakkam, Chennai – 600115, India (“We”, “us”, “our”, “The Gossip Store”). The Gossip Store through its Website (“Website”) offers apparel-related products to its consumers(“Services”).
This Privacy Policy (“Policy”) contains the manner and details in which The Gossip Store controls and owns the Website and collects stores, and uses the Personal Information that you, the reader of this Policy ("User", "you", "your") provide to us and the steps we take to protect it..
We respect the privacy of our Users and are committed to protecting it as required by applicable law. With a view to offer an enriching and holistic internet experience to our Users, we offer a vast repository of Services.
Additionally, please also refer to and read our Terms of Service (“Terms”) available on our website. This Policy and the Terms are to be read together and form part of a single understanding.
By accessing and using the Website, you agree that you have read and understood this Policy and You accept and consent to the privacy practices (and any uses and disclosures of information) that are described in this Policy. Your continued use of this Website shall confirm that you have provided your unconditional consent and conform to the terms of this Policy as regards collecting, maintaining, using, processing, and disclosing your personal and other information in accordance with this Policy. If you do not agree to accept the terms of this Policy (including any referenced policies or guidelines), you are requested to terminate the use of the Website immediately.
This Policy is published in accordance with Rule 3(1) of the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011 and Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011 which requires publishing of a Privacy Policy for the collection, use, storage and transfer of sensitive personal data or information.
Introduction
The Website through this Policy is designed to safeguard the privacy of everyone who visits our Website, be it a User or a Registered Member. The Website uses the Personal and non personal Information of a User or a Registered Member to provide apparel related products to its consumers. The Gossip Store is not involved in selling your Personal Information or the results of the Services chosen by you, without your express consent.
What is the aim of this Policy?
This Policy represents the manner in which The Gossip Store collects, stores, shares and uses all or any information provided by a User while availing of our Services which includes Personal and Non Personal information.
The specific aims with which this Policy is designed are:
To help you understand the type and exact nature of the information collected by us; and
To explain the reason for collecting such information shared by you, the manner in which it is stored and utilised, and your rights in relation to such collection, storage, and usage.
What Information do we collect?
The “Information” provided by you to The Gossip Store or collected from you by The Gossip Store may consist of “Personal Information” and “Non-Personal Information”.
For effective and optimal utilisation of our Services, The Gossip Store and/or third parties, including but not limited to our business partners, advertising networks, analytics, or search information providers may collect the following information;
information supplied by Users; and
information which is automatically tracked during the User's navigation on the Website.
Such information shall include any information that can be used to identify, locate, or contact you. It includes and is not limited to your name, physical address, email address, telephone/ mobile number, gender, date of birth, username, password and other identifying information. It also includes other information that may be associated with your Personal Information, such as your location, IP address, preferences, or interests, purchase history, your financial information such as bank account information or credit card or debit card or other payment instrument details including one-time password (“Personal Information”).
How do we use the Personal Information collected?
The Personal Information may be collected in various ways including during the course of you availing certain services offered on the Website. Such instances include but are not limited to making an online purchase, participating in any online survey or contest, communicating with Company’s customer service by phone, email or otherwise or posting user reviews on the items available on the Website.
We may receive Personal information about you from third parties too, such as social media services, commercially available sources. If you access Website through a social media service or connect a service on Website to a social media service, the information we collect may include your user name associated with that social media service, any information or content the social media service has the right to share with us, such as your profile picture, email address or friends list, and any information you have made public in connection with that social media service. When you access the Website or otherwise deal with the Company through social media services or when you connect any Website to social media services, you are authorizing Company to collect, store, and use and retain such information and content in accordance with this Privacy Policy
Your Personal Information can be used by us for, but not limited to, the following purposes:
To provide a user-friendly browsing experience;
To personalise your services;
To respond to your concerns, inquiries or address your requests for information about the various services we offer;
For research purposes in order to enhance our marketing and promotional efforts;
To conduct surveys to analyse data and improve the quality of our content and Services;
To add features on the Website that are suited to the needs of its Users and Registered Members;
To keep you posted on our marketing communication, latest announcements, and upcoming events, including confirmations, security alerts, support and administrative messages. If You do not want to be on Our mailing list, you can opt-out at any time by writing to us at thegossipstorehelp@gmail.com;
To collect Non-Personal Identifiable Information (“NPII”) about our Users with an aim to improve the features and functionality of the Website. We may analyse trends through aggregated demographic and psychographic offers to users. NPII information may include your geographic location, type of browser, type of telecom or internet service provider, duration of your stay on the website and other NPII.
We may also share this NPII with our partners to allow them to assist us in delivering tailored advertisements, promotions, deals, discounts, and other offers to you when you use our Services;
Your Information will be kept confidential to the maximum possible extent and in accordance with the provisions set out herein.
Use of Cookies
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small text file that is placed on the hard drive of your computer by a web page server. Cookies contain information that can later be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.
Use of cookies: In order to enhance the overall experience of our Users, We use “cookies” or similar electronic tools to collect information about You. These cookies help us in understanding the User's individual interests using the identified computer and also understand the traffic on our website. A cookie is incapable of automatically accessing your hard drive and storing your Personal Information unless you supply such information. Limited information about your computer including your IP address, name of the domain host from which you access the internet, date and time you accessed the website is also stored automatically by The Gossip Store’s web servers when you visit the Website. This information is used by us to deliver our web pages to Users upon request, to design our website to the need and liking of our Users, to get a statistical estimate of our visitors within the Website. You can erase or choose to block these cookies from your computer. You can configure your computer’s browser to alert you when we attempt to send you a cookie with an option to accept or refuse the cookie. If you have turned cookies off, you may be prevented from using certain features of the Website.
Sharing Personal Information – We share your personal information with service providers to help us provide better services. For example, we use Shopify to power our online store. You can read more about how Shopify uses your personal information here: https://www.shopify.com/legal/privacy.
We may share your personal information to comply with applicable laws and regulations to respond to subpoena, search warrant and other lawful request for information we receive or to protect our rights.
Email communication:
By registering your email address with us, you agree to receive email communication from us, entities specifically authorized by The Gossip Store and other Users. You also agree and acknowledge that when you use our referral program for referring someone, we may send emails to such person referred by you. We also access and store such information relating to your contacts to send invitations and other promotions to them periodically.
How do we protect Your Data?
We employ the best possible security measures, including but not limited to internal reviews of data collection, storage, and security policies and implementation of the strongest encryption and physical security measures to prevent unauthorised access to or alteration, disclosure, or destruction of Personal Information belonging to a User. While We endeavour to leave no stone unturned when it comes to data protection and security, We admit that no measure of security, no matter how sophisticated, is impenetrable and hence We cannot guarantee the protection of the Personal Information collected and stored by us nor the possibility of non-interception of data while it is being transmitted to us by a User over the Internet.
Your registered account created with us is protected using a username and password (“Login Information”) known only to you at the time of registration of the account and such Login Information should not be shared with anyone else. Any unauthorised use of the Login Information shall be treated as a breach of the terms of this Policy and may lead to suspension of the concerned account. Further, it shall be your duty to inform us about any suspected unauthorised use of your Login Information without any unreasonable delay.
Notwithstanding anything contained in this Privacy Policy or elsewhere, we shall not be held responsible for any loss, damage or misuse of your Information, if such loss, damage or misuse is attributable to a Force Majeure Event. A “Force Majeure Event” shall mean any event that is beyond our reasonable control and shall include, without limitation, sabotage, fire, flood, explosion, acts of God, civil commotion, strikes or industrial action of any kind, riots, insurrection, war, acts of government, computer hacking, unauthorized access to computer data and storage device, computer crashes, breach of security and encryption, etc. In the event of any breach of your Personal Information, the Company will, without unreasonable delay, notify you of it by email or fax and take appropriate measures in compliance with the provisions of applicable laws.
Advertising
The Company uses some third parties to administer a limited set of advertisements on our Website and portals. During this process, none of your Personal Information is leaked. However, aggregate profile information, such as user community, may be used in the selection of advertising to make sure that it has relevance to the user. On some banner ads, an embedded pixel may be present, and while it does not associate with a cookie or other personal profile information, it may return session connection information that allows advertisers to better determine how many individual users have clicked on the ad banner. We do not disclose your Personal Information to third parties for their marketing and advertising purposes.
Links to third-party platforms.
Our Website may contain links to other websites or social media platforms which are governed by their privacy policies over which we have no control and any User accessing such website or platform using such links, shall, once they leave our servers, be governed by the terms of the privacy policy of the concerned website or platform. We take no responsibility for the privacy practice or the contents of such a website or platform.
Access to and correction of Personal Information and denial of access in certain situations.
You shall have the right to access your Personal Information, collected by us including but not limited to the history of your transactions, chats, consultations, etc., and account balance at any time through the Website. However, such access may be denied by us in certain circumstances set out in this Policy, including where: (a) providing access would be unlawful and/ or (b) We are required or authorised to do so by or under Indian law or a court/ tribunal order; and/or where giving access would be likely to prejudice enforcement related activities by or on behalf of an enforcement body.
You shall also have the opportunity to have such Personal Information corrected and updated at any time if you believe that such Personal Information is inaccurate, incomplete, or not up-to-date and we may periodically contact you to seek an update on any material change in such information.
Withdrawal of Consent
All Personal Information provided to the Company by you have been voluntarily provided by you. You are entitled to withdraw your consent for use of your Personal Information by emailing a specific request to help@thegossipstore.co.in. However, please note that withdrawal of consent will not be retrospective in nature and shall be applicable prospectively.
(Please note - the exercise of any such right shall prevent you from taking full advantage of the entire scope of features and Services offered through the Website and We reserve the right not to provide you with our Services.)
Retention and Deletion of Personal Information
Retention: The information provided to us by the User or a Registered Member may be retained by us to give effect to the objective for which it was collected or to effectively provide the Services to our Users. Further, We may, even after the termination or deletion of the account of a User, continue to retain such information if it is reasonably necessary to comply with legal obligations, meet regulatory requirements, resolve disputes between Users, prevent fraud, or for any other use.
Deletion: Unless legally allowed or mandated to store such Personal Information, upon receiving a request at help@thegossipstore.co.in, We will delete all your Personal Information or anonymize it so that such data is no longer identifiable to you as an individual.
Changes to the Policy
This Policy may get updated from time to time pursuant to changes in applicable law, the scope of our Services, or otherwise. The date mentioned at the top of this Policy shall reflect the date on which the Policy was last revised. We may or may not inform the Users of any material amendments to this Policy by posting the updated Policy on our Website. We encourage you to review this Policy regularly for any such changes. Your continued use of the Services will be subject to the then current Policy.
Limitation of Liability and Changes to Privacy Policy
This Policy represents merely a description of The Gossip Store’s operations regarding a User’s Personal Information. This Policy is neither intended to nor does it create any legal rights in favour of the User or in favour of any other person.
Protection of Children
If you are a User under the age of eighteen years (“Child User”), please ensure that you have adequate consent from your parent or guardian to access the Website in accordance with the present Policy. If you are the parent or guardian of a Child User, please advise your child of the risks of posting Personal Information on our Website or other online services, and be informed that any information posted may be used by third parties without restriction. Notwithstanding anything contained herein, We shall always presume that every User has adequate consent and free will to access our Website and to enter into a legally enforceable contract with Us.
We also reserve the right to remove, at our sole discretion, any content or material posted by a User which may be of defamatory or sexual nature or offensive to other Users in any manner, and take appropriate legal action against such User in accordance with our Terms.
Severability And Exclusion
We have taken every effort to ensure that this Policy adheres to the applicable laws. The invalidity or unenforceability of any part of this Policy shall not prejudice or affect the validity or enforceability of the remainder of this Policy. This Policy does not apply to any information other than the Personal Information collected by us through the Website. This Privacy Policy shall be inapplicable to any unsolicited information you provide us through the Website or through any other means or through public channels. This includes, but is not limited to, information posted in any public areas of the Website. All unsolicited information shall be deemed to be non-confidential and We shall be free to use and/ or disclose such unsolicited information without any limitations.
Applicable Law and Dispute Resolution:
This Policy shall be governed by and construed in accordance with Indian laws. All disputes under this Policy shall be referred exclusively to courts in Chennai India. Any dispute or claim arising out of or relating to this Policy including the determination of the scope or applicability of this Policy, or any information provided thereof, shall be resolved through arbitration conducted by a sole arbitrator appointed by mutual consent of the User or Registered Member and the Website. The venue of the arbitration shall be Chennai and the language of such arbitral proceedings and award rendered shall be English. The award delivered pursuant to such arbitral proceedings shall be final and binding on the parties to the dispute.
Important Disclaimer
Although The Gossip Store provides full security and secrecy to your Personal Information, we urge you to be careful with sharing of your Personal Information with any third party claiming to be related to The Gossip Store on separate emails/phone calls etc. The Gossip Store disclaims any and all liabilities towards any such claims that have arisen due to your own negligence or willful misconduct and the Gossip Store takes no responsibility of the same.
Grievance Redressal
In case of any complaints or grievances, please contact us by sending your complaint to help@thegossipstore.co.in containing the following information:
Your name, address, contact number, and email address
description of the complaint with a clear identification of the Users’ Content in relation to which such complaint is being made
an acknowledgement by you that all information contained in the complaint is true and accurate.
On receiving the complaint, We reserve the right to investigate and/or take such actions as We may deem appropriate. We may also reach out to you to seek further clarification or assistance with the investigation, or verify the statements made in your complaint and you acknowledge that your timely assistance with the investigation would facilitate the swift redressal of the same.