TERMS OF USE, PRIVACY & COOKIE POLICIES, OTHER CONDITIONS

IMPORTANT: These terms of use, privacy policy and other conditions apply to all USERS – registered users, including individuals and firms, contributors of articles and videos, registered readers and unregistered visitors, who may access or use LEAD Digest through the website leaddigest.com or through any other alternative domain name that may be used in the future. The term USERS include not only registered -members, -firms and -customers, but also advertisers and casual visitors.

When a person or a firm sign-up or register OR make a contribution as an article or video OR post an advertisement or an announcement or rating or comment or review, they also automatically enter into a contract with LEAD Digest and its owners as per the following detailed Terms of Use.

By using any of the features including but not limited to browsing the contents, searching through databases, sourcing data or information, posting articles or videos, reserving/buying services through this website, exchanging ideas or opinions and transacting through this website in any manner, you (the user) agree to this detailed Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Cookie policy, and other terms and conditions associated with any other services or features associated with this website.

If you disagree with these Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, and other terms and conditions, in full or any part of these, you have the full control with you not to use this website and therefore you must not use this website and you can simply exit the website.

This website is currently a BETA VERSION and will go through updates, modifications and changes to the features, technology, business model and the terms of use, primarily to enhance quality and security. Some changes in the types and costs of membership or subscription, if any, may be needed to fine tune the business model based on market responses. The users are, therefore, advised that they may use this site at their own discretion, fully conscious of the possibilities of the aforesaid changes and accepting the associated costs and risks.

TERMS OF USE

1.0         Introduction

LEAD Digest is primarily a digital platform that tries to showcase excellence in leadership in what some do for humanity, what principles and human values were embedded in all what they do or did, how it helps better living on earth and whether it helps address some fundamental challenges associated with health, education, development and good governance. LEAD Digest gathers related information from (a) published materials (b) other reliable secondary sources and (c) personal interviews wherever possible. While we take the best efforts to verify such data and information that we collect ourselves, we have no means or authority to verify (due to our limitations as a private entity) the accuracy of data and information provided by the personalities and organizations whom we cover and those provided to us by  our contributors. LEAD Digest, its owners, associates and employees will not, in any manner, be responsible for any erroneous information inadvertently published in this website and for any consequences or damages thereof to anybody, caused by any such wrong data or information. LEAD Digest, its owners, associates and employees will remain completely and fully indemnified against any such unfortunate losses and damages to the users of such data or information. However, if any such error in data or information is brought to our notice with ample evidence, we will issue correction notification in the website or may even remove the content, if the situation demands so.

LEAD Digest, even as a weblog, has taken ample steps for website security, including hosting with a leading global hosting provider, which automatically and constantly checks for malware and other attacks. But even large and highly secure government and corporate IT infrastructures are sometimes hacked and data stolen. In the physical world too, even the best locks and security systems are sometimes broken and public money stolen. While using any website such as this that operates on a world-wide network, the threats are even more and rapidly evolving too! We, therefore, advise our users to store only very essential data under their profiles and also be aware and accept the associated risks while using this website.

You may use this website only if you agree with the above basic premise under which this website is developed and being managed.

These Terms of Use govern your use of this website. By using this website, you accept these Terms of Use in full, including the Privacy Policy and the Cookies Policy. If you disagree with these Terms of Use or any part of these Terms of Use, you must NOT use this website.

Your use of this website is also subject to our Privacy Policy and Cookies Policy, which cover how we collect, use and store your personal information.

2.0         Registered User / Subscribers / Contributors / Contacting us

When you register as a user in LEAD Digest or want to subscribe to LEAD Digest or contribute an article or video, or want to contact us through the Contact form, we ask you for certain personal data such as name, e-mail address, mobile number, your city and country, postal code, etc. (but NOT your full postal or locational address), with one or more of the following purpose: (a) to communicate back to you electronically (b) to generally identify the geographic region you belong to, within a global context,  but certainly NOT your exact postal or locational details (c) to ensure that our forms are actually filled by real persons and not machines/bots, and (c) verify the user by using e-mail verification or mobile OTPs. In the case of contributors, we also collect some additional data through standard forms as provided in the CONTRIBUTIONS page, again mainly for the purpose of ensuring that we are dealing with legitimate persons or organizations and their authentic works. The Copyright and Consent form is also used for this purpose.

2.1         Consent to store and use data (IMPORTANT): By registering, subscribing, contributing or contacting LEAD Digest as mentioned above, you give LEAD Digest the full consent to store all the data provided by you and display a few data (such as real name along with your contributions or username along with your ratings and comments) and shall keep LEAD Digest, its owners, associates and employees indemnified against any possible risks or losses on account of this.

2.2         Eligibility to register: To register, subscribe, contribute or contact us, you will have to use your REAL NAME for individuals and registered commercial name for firms and (b) you must be 18 years or older.

2.3         Real name and contacts: All information, including names, address, e-mail and contact numbers should be REAL. If any false information or fake accounts are detected at any point in time, such accounts and contributions made will be immediately deleted from LEAD Digest. In this case, we will not have any obligation to inform the fake account holder.

By providing these data and choosing to display them as explained earlier, you have read and understood the above and agree to our full Terms of Use , Privacy Policy  and Cookie Policy. If you do not agree to the storage of your data or to any of the above clauses under 2.0, this website is not suitable for you, and you shall not use this website.

3.0         Registered User

3.1         Some services provided by LEAD Digest is accessible only if you are a registered user. A user is anybody from the public who want to access the website and use the services, provided he or she is a REAL person or a firm, who is willing to register as a user with the REAL NAME, a suitable user name and a verifiable e-mail and/or mobile number as applicable from time to time. If any false information or fake accounts are detected at any point in time, such accounts will be immediately deleted from LEAD Digest, with or without intimating the account holder.

3.2         Consent to store data: LEAD Digest will store the data mentioned in clause 3.1 to provide you with continued service. If you do not agree to the storage of these data, you shall not register as a user and shall not use this site.

3.3         General conditions: All registered users should try their best to choose a strong and secure password, keep their password secure and confidential. The safety and security of your password is your responsibility and you shall change the passwords as often as possible. You shall not allow others to access your accounts.

3.4         You agree to only provide truthful profile information and other data/ information or any other content that does not violate the laws nor anyone’s intellectual property or other rights. LEAD Digest will have the full right NOT to allow certain contents to be published or REMOVE certain contents as required by law or otherwise considering its cultural and political sensitivities in certain regions.

3.5         Cancellation of Membership and deletion of accounts; FEE PAID will not be reimbursed.

A registered user, at any point in time, can delete their accounts. However, any fee paid will NOT be reimbursed under any circumstances.

4.0         License to use the website

Unless otherwise stated, LEAD Digest and its promoters (hereinafter referred to as ‘OWNER’ of this website throughout this document) own the intellectual property rights of the entire website, its user interface, business processes, and contents in the front and back ends.  All these intellectual property rights are reserved.

You may view and print pages from the website for your own personal use, subject to the restrictions set out below and elsewhere in these Terms of Use:

You must not:

• republish material from this website (including republication on another website);
• sell, rent or sub-license material from the website unless you are authorized by the OWNER in writing  to do so as a re-seller;
• show any material from the website in public;
• reproduce, duplicate, copy or otherwise exploit material on this website for a commercial purpose;
• edit or otherwise modify any material on the website; or
• redistribute material from this website

5.0         Acceptable use

You must not use this website in any way that causes, or may cause, damage to the website or impairment of the availability or accessibility of the website; or in any way which is unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful, or in connection with any unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful purpose or activity.

You must not use this website to copy, store, host, transmit, send, use, publish or distribute any material which consists of (or is linked to) any spyware, computer virus, Trojan horse, worm, keystroke logger, rootkit or any other malicious computer software that emerge.

You must not conduct any systematic or automated data collection activities (including without limitation scraping, data mining, data extraction and data harvesting) on or in relation to this website. You must not use this website to transmit or send unsolicited commercial or personal communications. You must not use this website for any purposes related to marketing without the OWNER’s express written consent.

6.0         Restricted access

Access to certain areas of this website is restricted. The OWNER of this website reserves the right to restrict access to certain areas of this website, or indeed this entire website, at the OWNER’s discretion.

If the OWNER provides you with a user ID and password to enable you to access restricted areas of this website or other content or services, you must ensure that the user ID and password are kept confidential and the owner will in no way be responsible for any misuse by a third party and the consequent damages of any kind. OWNER may disable your user ID and password in OWNER’s sole discretion without notice or explanation. In such a situation, you will not have any right to challenge the OWNER’s action.

7.0         User content

In these Terms of Use, “your user content” means material (including without limitation text, images, audio material, video material and audio-visual material) that you submit to this website, for whatever purpose.

You grant to the OWNER a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to display such content, adapt, republish, translate and distribute your user content in any existing or future media such as a mobile application or a video format or any other format.

Your user content must not be illegal or unlawful, must not infringe any third party’s legal rights, and must not be capable of giving rise to legal action whether against you or the OWNER or a third party (in each case under any applicable law). By submitting any content, you automatically certify that the content submitted by you does not violate any copyrights, ownership rights or any other legal rights. OWNER reserves the right to edit or remove any material submitted to this website, or stored on OWNER’S servers, or hosted or published upon this website.

You must not submit any user content to the website that is or has ever been the subject of any threatened or actual legal proceedings or other similar complaint.

Notwithstanding OWNER’S rights under these Terms of Use in relation to user content, the OWNER does not undertake to monitor or verify the authenticity of the submission of such content, or the publication of such content on this website. Any user who posts such unlawful material, including but not limited to pornography, derogatory contents, and contents promoting violence and hatred, will be solely responsible for such contents. The OWNER of this site, its associates and employees will not be responsible in any manner for any such acts (by the users) and will remain fully indemnified for any consequences. However, the OWNER of this site will have the right to block or delete any such content without assigning any reason.

For additional details on user content, also read  Terms & Conditions for Publishing.

8.0         No warranties

This website is provided “as is” without any representations or warranties, express or implied.  OWNER makes no representations or warranties in relation to this website or the information, materials and services provided through this website.

Without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing paragraph, OWNER does not warrant that:

• this website will be constantly available, or available at all; or
• the information on this website is complete, true, accurate or non-misleading.
• Nothing on this website constitutes, or is meant to constitute, advice of any kind.  If you require advice in relation to any legal, financial or medical matter you should consult an appropriate professional.

9.0       Limitations of liability

Data Security: We use encryption (HTTPS/TLS) to protect data transmitted to and from our site. However, no data transmission over the Internet is 100% secure. Therefore, leaddigest.com cannot guarantee full data security. You use this website at your own risk, and you are responsible for taking reasonable measures to secure your account.

The OWNER will not be liable to you (whether under the law of contract, the law of torts or otherwise) in relation to the contents of, or use of, or otherwise in connection with this website:

• for any direct loss by using any information or services provided through this website
• for any indirect, special or consequential loss; or
• for any business losses, loss of revenue, income, profits or anticipated savings, loss of contracts or business relationships, loss of reputation or goodwill, or loss or corruption of information or data.

The OWNER, which includes the website and the company and individuals that own and operate this website, and their officers are not responsible in any manner for any direct or indirect damages (financial, physical, mental or otherwise) occurred following any kind of information provided in this website. The OWNER and their employees are fully indemnified against any such claims.

10.0       Reasonableness

By using this website, you agree that the exclusions and limitations of liability set out in this Terms of Use are reasonable. If you do not think they are reasonable, you must not use this website.

11.0       Unenforceable provisions

If any provision of this website Terms of Use is, or is found to be, unenforceable under applicable laws of the land, that will not affect the enforceability of the other provisions of this Terms of Use.

12.0       Indemnity

You hereby indemnify the OWNER and their employees and undertake to keep the OWNER and their employees indemnified against any losses, damages, costs, liabilities and expenses (including without limitation of legal expenses and any amounts paid by OWNER to a third party in settlement of a claim or dispute on the advice of OWNER’S legal advisers) incurred or suffered by OWNER arising out of any breach by you of any provision of these Terms of Use or arising out of any claim that you have breached any provision of these Terms of Use.

13.0       Breaches of these Terms of Use

Without prejudice to OWNER’S other rights under these Terms of Use, if you breach these Terms of Use in any way, OWNER may take such action as OWNER deems appropriate to deal with the breach, including suspending your access to the website, prohibiting you from accessing the website, blocking computers using your IP address from accessing the website, and/or bringing court proceedings against you.

14.0       Variation

OWNER may revise these Terms of Use from time-to-time.  Revised Terms of Use will automatically apply to the use of this website from the date of the publication of the revised Terms of Use on this website.  Please check this page regularly to ensure you are familiar with the current version.

15.0       Assignment

OWNER may transfer, sub-contract or otherwise deal with OWNER’S rights and/or obligations under these Terms of Use without notifying you or obtaining your consent. You may not transfer, sub-contract or otherwise deal with your rights and/or obligations under these Terms of Use.

16.0       Entire agreement

These full Terms of Use together with documents if any submitted by you constitute the entire agreement between you and OWNER in relation to your use of this website and supersede all previous agreements in respect of your use of this website.

17.0       Law and jurisdiction

These Terms of Use will be governed by and construed in accordance with laws of India, and any disputes relating to these Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy detailed here will be subject to the jurisdiction of the courts of India and disputes if any will be settled only through the courts within the State of Kerala in India.

18.0     TERMS & CONDITIONS FOR PUBLISHING

In addition to the clauses under Section 7.0: User Content, relating to the materials you submit to this website, given below are the specific Terms & Conditions for Publishing that you agree as a user of this website.

18.1       The leadership story you propose shall essentially demonstrate high levels of commitment to improving quality of life, well-being, living conditions, environmental protection, socio-economic development, social and technology innovations that positively change the lives of human beings, etc. A mere success of being number one in certain business or being a highly popular personality wouldn’t meet the requirements to be published in LEAD.

18.2       Since the main objective of the CONTRIBUTE feature of LEAD is to bring to limelight people and organisations doing excellent work but remain unnoticed, article/video contributions directly or indirectly relating to political and business leaders who are already popular in the mainstream media will not be generally accepted.

18.3       You should certify that the proposed article/video is your original work and that you own the full copyright for the article and that you have obtained the required consent in the appropriate form from the person(s) or organisation(s) being covered. Please download and use the brief Copyright & Consent Declaration Form for this purpose.

18.4       In case, you are writing the article researching through various published articles, you shall provide all the necessary citations. LEAD Digest, however, do not prefer publishing such articles unless it is a story dug out from the past.

18.5       LEAD Digest’s decision to accept or reject an article is final and binding on the contributor and cannot be challenged in any manner.

18.6       Anybody submitting their article or video for publication in LEAD Digest will have to declare that it is the original work of the person or a team that includes the person submitting the material and that he/she/they own the full copyright of the article/video and have obtained the required consent in the appropriate form from the person(s) or organisation(s) being covered. He/she/they should also give their full consent to LEAD Digest to publish this article / video unconditionally. In the event of any dispute arising from any person or organisation with regard to the said article/video, the person and his/her team submitting the article/video will be fully responsible for settling such issues and LEAD Digest will not be a party in the dispute. He/she/they should agree to indemnify and hold harmless LEAD Digest, its owners and employees from any damage, expense and other legal or financial consequences for any such copyright or consent violation or any other kind of dispute or claims on account of the material submitted by us. For this purpose, they shall use the Copyright & Consent Declaration Form.

18.7       At any point in time, if anybody challenges the authenticity or copyright of the article contributed by you, or regarding the consent to cover the story from the person or organisation in question, LEAD will not be party to any such dispute. It will be fully your responsibility to deal with any such eventuality and LEAD, its owners and employees will remain fully indemnified against any legal or financial consequences. You should independently confront the challenge and settle the issue. In the event of such a dispute, we will immediately hide the content, until the issue is settled in your favour.

19.0    PRIVACY POLICY

19.1     Collection of your personal information

When you register as a user in LEAD Digest or want to subscribe to LEAD Digest or contribute an article or video, or want to contact us through the Contact form, we ask you for certain personal data such as name, e-mail address, mobile number, your city and country, postal code, etc. (but NOT your full postal or locational address).

It is possible that some information about your computer hardware and software is automatically collected by LEAD Digest. This information can include: your IP address, browser type, domain names, access times and referring Web site addresses. This information is used by LEAD Digest for the operation of the service, to maintain quality of the service and to obtain general statistics regarding use of the LEAD Digest website.

LEAD Digest is supported by way of advertisements received through Google AdSense, with links to the advertiser. In order to offer you better privacy, we have opted out of personalized ads and have chosen to have only non-personalized Google advertisement. Google defines non-personalized ads as ads that are not based on a user’s past behavior. They are targeted using contextual information, including coarse (such as city-level) geo-targeting based on current location, and content on the current site or app or current query terms. Within the provisions of Google AdSense, we have tried our best to filter out sensitive and apparently unreliable advertisements, and we will continue to do so through frequent monitoring. (Also, read section 21.0 fully for COMPLETE details)

However, please keep in mind that if you directly disclose personally identifiable information or personally sensitive data through LEAD Digest, this information may be collected and used by others unconnected with LEAD Digest. LEAD Digest encourages you to review the privacy statements of websites you choose to link to from LEAD DIGEST so that you can understand how those websites collect, use and share your information. LEAD DIGEST is not responsible for the privacy statements or other content on websites outside of LEAD Digest website. 

19.2     Use of your personal information​

LEAD Digest collect your personal data with one or more of the following purpose: (a) to communicate back to you electronically (b) to generally identify the geographic region you belong to, within a global context,  but certainly NOT your exact postal or locational details (c) to ensure that our forms are actually filled by real persons and not machines/bots, and (c) verify the user by using e-mail verification or mobile OTPs. In the case of contributors, we also collect some additional data through standard forms as provided in the CONTRIBUTIONS page, again mainly for the purpose of ensuring that we are dealing with legitimate persons or organizations and their authentic works. The Copyright and Consent form is also used for this purpose.

LEAD Digest collects and uses your personal information to operate the LEAD Digest web site and deliver the services you have requested. LEAD Digest also uses your personally identifiable information to inform you of other products or services available from LEAD DIGEST and its affiliates. LEAD Digest may also contact you via surveys to conduct research about your opinion of current services or of potential new services that may be offered.

LEAD Digest does not sell, rent or lease its customer lists to third parties. LEAD Digest may, from time to time, contact you on behalf of external business partners about a particular offering that may be of interest to you. In those cases, your unique personally identifiable information (e-mail, name, telephone number) is not transferred to the third party. In addition, LEAD Digest may share data with trusted partners to help us perform statistical analysis, send you email, provide customer support, or arrange for deliveries. All such third parties are prohibited from using your personal information except to provide these services to LEAD Digest, and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of your information.

LEAD Digest websites will disclose your personal information, without notice, only if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on LEAD Digest or its websites; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of LEAD Digest; and, (c) act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of LEAD Digest, or the public.

19.3     Security of your personal information

LEAD Digest secures your personal information from unauthorized access, use or disclosure. LEAD Digest secures the personally identifiable information you provide on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorized access, use or disclosure. When personal information (such as a credit card number) is transmitted to other web sites, it is protected through the use of encryption, such as the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol.

20.       USE OF COOKIES

LEAD Digest – website use “cookies” to help you personalize your online experience. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The purpose of a cookie is to tell the web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you personalize LEAD Digest – pages, or register with LEAD Digest – site or services, a cookie helps LEAD Digest – to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. This simplifies the process of recording your personal information, such as billing addresses, shipping addresses, and so on. When you return to the same LEAD Digest – website, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the features that you customized.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by visiting the Cookie Policy page . Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting as well to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the website.

21.0     IMPORTANT Note on advertisements and weblinks appearing in LEAD Digest

LEAD Digest is supported by way of advertisements received through Google AdSense, with links to the advertiser. In order to offer you better privacy, we have opted out of personalized ads and have chosen to have only non-personalized Google advertisements. Google defines non-personalized ads as ads that are not based on a user’s past behavior. They are targeted using contextual information, including coarse (such as city-level) geo-targeting based on current location, and content on the current site or app or current query terms. 

Within the provisions of Google AdSense, we have tried our best to filter out sensitive and apparently unreliable advertisements, and we will continue to do so through frequent monitoring. However, there is no way we can ensure the reliability of these advertisements, advertisers and their claims about products and services, appearing here through a global network from all around the world.  We also cannot assure the security and privacy levels associated with connecting to websites linked to those advertisements. The users are fully responsible for making their own judgements on all the aforesaid aspects with regard to any advertisement or other external weblinks appearing on LEAD Digest, before clicking and connecting to the respective websites.  LEAD Digest, its owners, associates and employees will remain completely and fully indemnified against any such unfortunate losses and damages to the users on account of the above. 

Further, LEAD Digest encourages you to review the privacy statements of websites you choose to link to from LEAD DIGEST so that you can understand how those websites collect, use and share your information. LEAD DIGEST is not responsible for the privacy, security, content or any other aspect relating to websites outside of LEAD Digest . 

22.0     Changes to this statement

LEAD Digest will occasionally update this entire statement or part of it to reflect company and customer feedback. LEAD Digest encourages you to periodically review this Terms of Use , Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy to be informed of the changes.