How we obtain your information
We obtain your information through a variety of means, including by direct contact on our website, at or by your registering for our meetings and programs, by your calling or emailing us, by your speaking to one of our members, and where you otherwise volunteer it to us.
Personal information – We and our service providers may collect personal information in a variety of ways, including:
- Through Our Websites or E-Mailing Us: We may collect Personal Information through the websites, e.g., when you register for an SOS event, program or talk or contact us, subscribe to our email newsletter, download content (e.g. audio, video or literature), or send us an email.
- Offline: We may collect Personal Information from you offline, such as when you attend one of our events, programs or talks, during phone calls with our volunteers, or when you directly speak to one of our members.
- Through You: Our service providers and processors may collect information such as your location or your preferred means of communication when you voluntarily provide it.
Automatically collected information – We and our service providers may collect other information in a variety of ways, including:
- Through Your Browser or Device: Certain information is collected by most browsers or automatically through your device such as computer type (Example Windows or Macintosh), screen resolution, operating system name and version, device manufacturer and model, language, Internet browser type and version, and the name and version of the Sites you are using.
- Through Links: In order to operate our services, we keep track of how you interact with links across our services. This includes links in emails we send you and links on the website.
- Through Cookies, Pixel Tags and Other Similar Technologies: A cookie is a small piece of data that is stored on your computer or mobile device to enable SOS to give you a better website experience and operate our services we offer on our website. Pixel tag is a small block of code on a webpage that allow websites to do things like read and place cookies. The resulting connection can include information such as the person’s IP address, the time the person viewed the pixel and the type of browser being used.
- Like many websites, we also use cookies, pixel tags and similar technologies to collect additional website usage data to operate our services and to remember and analyze how visitors use our website, what pages they visit, the region they are in, and how we can better reach people like our visitors to get our messages and information to them, including when they search on the web for services or information of the kind or type that we offer.
- By Aggregating Information: Aggregated Personal Information does not personally identify you or any other user of our website. For example, we may aggregate Personal Information to calculate the percentage of our users from a particular region.
Purposes for which we use your information:
We may use your personal information for the following purposes:
- Providing you with access to the information, services, spiritual messages in various media, and support you asked for or want to know from SOS;
- Sending you communications about services, meditation sessions, events, programs, talks, children’s activities, Veggie Fest, projects we are undertaking, charitable endeavors, and uplifting messages in the field of spirituality;
- Registering you for attendance at and/or arrangements for, an SOS event, activity or program;
- Answering your questions about SOS and what it offers;
- We may also use your personal information for other purposes which we specifically notify you about and, where appropriate, obtain your consent.
- Unless you are a member, we do not solicit or accept donations or offer to sell anything other than occasional purchases of books, CD’s, DVD’s and similar items about SOS if you visit our bookstore and choose to make a purchase. Accordingly, the only financial information from nonmembers we receive is payment information used by us and our service providers to process occasional purchases from our bookstore.
- Automatically collected information obtained through your browser or device, links, cookies and pixel tags is used to deliver a better website user experience and give us information to help us improve our ability to reach you and others with messages and information about SOS.
If you are a member, there is more information about you that we obtain and other purposes for which we use it. As noted above, the SOS privacy disclosure for members is on the SOS website for its members at sangat.sos.org.
Who we may share your information with
We will not sell your personal information to third parties or share it with other charities or religious organizations.
We may share your data within SOS and with its affiliated organizations.
We may sometimes share your information with our trusted service providers who perform services and functions on our behalf to support our interactions with you, including, for example, cloud computing services, email outreach service providers, website administrators, search engine and social media platforms, and as mentioned previously, payment processors when a visitor makes a purchase from an SOS bookstore.
We may also have to disclose your information in order to comply with a legal obligation imposed on us.
Where we will store your information
Your information may be stored by us or transferred and stored outside SOS’s own computers, for example on website host servers.
Some or all of your data may be stored or transferred outside of your country of domicile. You accept and agree to this by using our website and submitting information to us. If we do store or transfer data outside of your country of domicile, we will take reasonable steps to ensure that your data is treated as safely and securely as it would be within your country of domicile.
Data security is important to us and to protect your data we have put in place reasonable procedures to safeguard data collected through our website. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we maintain precautions for the protection for your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site.
Cookies
Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognizes that cookie. Cookies are widely used because they allow a website to recognize a user’s device and therefore allow enhanced functionality.
You can find out more information about cookies at: www.allaboutcookies.org
Like many websites, we use cookies and similar technologies to collect additional website usage data and to operate our services. Cookies and other similar technologies may be used to collect other information, like statistical data on the use of our website and its functioning. We do so to monitor and improve our website information messages to you and to facilitate your ability to navigate through our website, and to allow us to share and make available our web pages to people like you who may be interested in our spiritual, healthy lifestyle, vegetarian and ethical living messages and programs via social media platforms such as Google and Facebook.
We may use third parties to provide information about us on other websites that may be of interest to you and people like you or who have similar interests in spirituality, meditation or our events and programs, based on information collected about your use of our websites and other websites. To do so, these companies may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser (including through the use of pixel tags and web beacons).
By continuing to use the SOS website, you agree to the placement of these cookies and similar technologies.
Our cookies may be session cookies (temporary cookies that identify and track users within our websites, applications or services which are deleted when you close your browser or leave your session in the application or service) or persistent cookies (cookies which enable our websites, applications or services to “remember” who you are and to remember your preferences within our websites, applications or services and which will stay on your computer or device after you close your browser or leave your session with us).
Your rights
If you are an EU resident or in cases where applicable country or state law requires them, you have a number of rights under data protection laws. These include the right to:
- Access a copy of the information we hold about you
- Rectify errors in information we hold about you
- Have the information we hold about you erased in certain circumstances
- Restrict the processing of your information
- Object to your information being used for direct marketing
- Transfer the information we hold about you to another entity
- Withdraw any consent you have provided
