Privacy Policy

Who we are

The Swiss Telugu NRI Communityis the organisation responsible for your personal data (the "data controller"). For any privacy question or request, contact us at swisstelugunriforum@gmail.com.

What we collect

When you join the community or register for an event, we collect the information you provide: names, contact details (mobile/WhatsApp number and email), city and canton, family member details (including children's names and age group for event planning), food preferences, and your communication consent choices.

How we use it

• To manage community membership and event registrations.
• To plan events (catering, capacity, attendee lists).
• To contact you about events and announcements — only through the channels you opted in to.
• To reconcile event payments made by bank transfer.

Why we are allowed to process your data

We process your personal data on the following bases:

• To provide our services — managing your membership and event registrations is necessary to give you what you signed up for.
• Your consent — we send email or WhatsApp messages only to the channels you opted in to, and you can withdraw that consent at any time.
• Legal obligations — we keep certain financial records for as long as Swiss law requires.

We collect children's details only as part of a parent or guardian's household registration, and rely on that adult's consent. If a child's data was provided without your consent, contact us and we will remove it.

How long we keep it

• Membership and profile data — we keep this for as long as it helps us run the community. We do not set a fixed deletion date; the association reviews this data from time to time and may delete it when it is no longer needed, or at your request.
• Payment and event registration records — we are required by Swiss law to keep accounting records (generally for ten years), so we retain these for that period before deleting them.

Because of these legal retention rules, when you ask us to delete your data we remove your profile and contact details but may need to keep financial records until the required period has passed.

How we protect it

• Family and member data is never shown publicly on this website.
• Children's information is used only for event planning and is never publicly visible.
• Personal data is accessible only to authorised community administrators through a secure, login-protected area.
• We store only the data we need to run the community.

Who else handles your data

We use a small number of trusted service providers to run this website on our behalf. They process your data only on our instructions:

• Supabase — database and login accounts.
• Vercel — website hosting.

Some providers may store data on servers outside Switzerland or the EU. Where they do, they are required to provide an adequate level of protection (for example, through standard contractual clauses). We do not sell your data or share it with anyone for advertising.

Cookies

We use cookies only to keep you logged in to the member and admin areas. These are strictly necessary for the site to work — we do not use any advertising, analytics, or tracking cookies.

Your rights

You can ask us at any time to:

• see a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
• correct anything that is wrong or out of date;
• delete your data (subject to the legal retention rules above);
• receive your data in a portable format;
• stop email or WhatsApp messages, or otherwise object to how we use your data.

To exercise any of these, or to update your communication preferences, contact us at swisstelugunriforum@gmail.com. We will respond as soon as we can.

Complaints

If you are concerned about how we handle your data, please contact us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) at www.edoeb.admin.ch.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. If we make a significant change, we will let members know through our usual channels.