Privacy Policy — VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS

1. Who We Are

VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS ("VI", "we", "our") is a sole proprietorship based in Deverkovil, Calicut District, Kerala, India. We publish and sell our own books, online courses, study guides and study materials, and we run the Book Shop, where independent authors and publishers sell their own books, at victoriainstitutions.com. This Privacy Policy explains what personal data we collect, why, who we share it with, and the choices you have. We handle personal data in line with Indian law, including the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

2. Data We Collect

From buyers and students:

Name, email address and password — at registration. Passwords are stored only in scrambled (hashed) form. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name and email address from Google.
Purchase history — what you bought, when, and your access records.
The devices signed in to your account — to apply the two-device limit.
Your town, if you choose it or arrive from one of our town pages — used to credit the local Agent of your town.
Payment records — the amount, date, status and reference of each payment. Payments are processed by the payment gateway; we never see or store your card or bank account details.

From authors and publishers in the Book Shop:

Legal name, pen name, email address, country and password — at registration. Authors in India also give a mobile number, verified by a one-time SMS code.
Seller details — seller name, postal address and phone number. These are shown publicly on your book pages, as the law requires.
Your books — the text, pictures, covers, descriptions and prices you enter in the Book Builder.
Your declaration — when you pay the setup fee we record the declaration you made, its date and time, your IP address, and a fingerprint (hash) of the book as submitted.
Payment details — for authors abroad, the PayPal email address to which buyers pay. We never ask for or store your payment account passwords.
Sales and statements — the sales of your books, your monthly statements and your payments of VI's share.

From people who use the "Write to the author" form:

Your email address (verified by a one-time code) and your message. We keep a copy of each complaint.

Automatically:

IP address, browser type and device information — for security, to prevent misuse, and to limit repeated sign-in attempts.
Simple counts of page visits, kept on our own server.

What we do not collect: we do not collect copies of identity documents such as Aadhaar, PAN or passports, and we do not store card numbers or bank passwords.

3. How We Use Your Data

To create and run your account, verify your email address and mobile number, and keep your account secure.
To give you access to what you have bought, and to keep a record of purchases.
For authors: to build, check, place and sell your books; to show the seller details the law requires; to prepare monthly statements; and to send you notices about your books and statements.
To credit the local Agent of your town with their share of earnings.
To answer your questions and complaints.
To meet our legal, tax and accounting duties, and to respond to lawful requests from authorities.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not use it for advertising.

4. Who We Share It With

Payment gateways (such as PayU, Cashfree and PayPal) — to process payments. They handle your payment details under their own privacy policies.
Authors and publishers — when you buy a Book Shop book, you pay the author's own payment account, so the author's payment gateway processes your payment. When you use the "Write to the author" form, your message and email address are sent to the author so that they can reply.
The public — authors' seller details, pen names and book pages are public. The author's verified email address is printed on the book's copyright page.
Automated checking service — the text and pictures of books submitted to the Book Shop are sent to a third-party artificial-intelligence service (Anthropic's Claude) for the automated check. Only the book's content is sent for this purpose.
Service providers — our web hosting provider, and the providers that send our emails and SMS one-time codes, process data only to provide those services to us.
Google — only if you choose "Sign in with Google".
Our local Agents — receive records of their earnings from sales and fees in their town.
Authorities — when the law requires it, for example in answer to a court order or a lawful request from a government agency.

5. Cookies and Browser Storage

A sign-in cookie keeps you signed in. It is needed for the site to work.
A town cookie remembers the town you first came from, for about 13 months, so that the right local Agent is credited.
Your browser remembers reader settings, such as text size and your place in a book. These stay on your device.

We do not use advertising or tracking cookies.

6. Security and Storage

Your data is stored on the servers of our web hosting provider. We protect it with encrypted connections (HTTPS), hashed passwords and one-time codes, limits on repeated sign-in attempts, and restricted access to our administration pages. No system on the internet is completely secure, but we work to keep your data safe and will inform you and the authorities, as the law requires, if a data breach affects you.

7. How Long We Keep Data

Account data — for as long as your account is open. If you ask us to delete your account, we delete or anonymise its data, except what we must keep by law.
Payment, sales, statement and tax records — for as long as tax and accounting laws require.
Authors' declarations and book records, and copies of complaints — for as long as they may be needed to answer a legal claim or complaint.

8. Your Rights

You may ask us to:

tell you what personal data we hold about you and how we use it;
correct or update your data;
delete your data, except what we must keep by law;
withdraw a consent you have given — this may mean that we can no longer provide a service to you.

You may also name a person to exercise these rights on your behalf in case of death or incapacity. To make a request, write to our Grievance Officer (section 10). If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

9. Children

If you are under 18, a parent or guardian must create and manage the account for you, and their consent is needed for us to process your data. We do not knowingly collect data from children without such consent, and we do not track or target children with advertising.

10. Grievance Officer

Grievance Officer: The Proprietor, VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS
Address: Deverkovil, Calicut District, Kerala, India
Email: admn@victoriainstitutions.com
Phone: +91 96561 00722

We acknowledge complaints within 24 hours and aim to resolve them within 15 days.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The effective date at the top of this page shows the latest revision. Important changes will be announced on this website.