Legal

Privacy Notice

The short version

There is nothing for you to sign up to, no advertising or analytics trackers, and no cookies set in your browser. The site does not store anything you type into it. The booking planner works entirely inside your own browser and, when you press Confirm on WhatsApp, it simply opens WhatsApp with a message already written out for you. You choose whether to send it.

Who is responsible for your information

Carmel Dental Clinic, Vellimadukunnu, is the data fiduciary for the information described in this notice.

What this website collects

Nothing, by default

Browsing this site sends nothing to us. There is no contact form that posts to a server, no newsletter list, no analytics script, no advertising pixel and no cookie banner — because, as a visitor, there are no cookies of ours to consent to.

The clinic does have a private page for editing its own website content, which sets a cookie for whoever is signed in. That page is for clinic staff, it is not linked from anywhere on this site, and nothing a visitor does can reach it. It sets no cookie in a visitor's browser.

The booking planner

The four-step planner on the home page asks you for a treatment, a preferred day and time, your name, your phone number, and optionally a short note about what is bothering you. All of that stays in your browser's memory while you use the page. It is not transmitted anywhere, and it disappears when you close the tab.

When you press Confirm on WhatsApp, the website opens WhatsApp with those details pre-written into a draft message addressed to the clinic. Nothing has been sent at that point. The message reaches us only if you press send in WhatsApp yourself. From that moment the message is handled by WhatsApp under Meta's own privacy policy, and by us as an appointment request.

Server logs

This site is hosted on Vercel. Like any web host, their servers keep short-lived technical logs — IP address, browser type, the page requested and the time — which exist to deliver the page and to defend against attacks and abuse. We do not use these logs to identify or profile visitors.

Third parties that load on this page

One, and only if you scroll far enough to reach it.

• Google Maps — the map in the “Visit us” section is an embedded Google Map. It is set to load only when you scroll down to it, so if you never reach that section it never loads. When it does load, Google receives your IP address and may set its own cookies in your browser under Google's privacy policy, not ours.

Nothing else on this site is fetched from another company. The typefaces were previously loaded from Google Fonts, which disclosed every visitor's IP address to Google on every page view. They are now served from this site's own domain, so that transfer no longer takes place at all.

Links out to Google Maps, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are ordinary links. Once you follow one, you are on that company's service and their privacy policy applies.

Information you give us at the clinic

This notice covers the website. Your dental records — medical history, clinical notes, radiographs, treatment plans and billing — are created and kept at the clinic as part of your care, separately from this website, and are treated as confidential patient information. Ask us at the front desk if you would like a copy of your own records.

How long anything is kept

• Website: nothing you do as a visitor is stored, so there is nothing to retain or delete.
• Website content: the text and photographs shown on these pages are held in the clinic's content store, along with a log of who changed what and when. That log identifies staff by a one-way hash, not by name or address.
• WhatsApp appointment messages: kept in the clinic's WhatsApp account while they are needed to arrange and follow up on your visit.
• Host server logs: retained by Vercel for a short technical period under their own policy.
• Clinical records: kept at the clinic for as long as professional and legal obligations require.

Your rights

Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, you may ask us to:

• tell you what personal data of yours we hold and what we have done with it;
• correct anything inaccurate, or complete anything incomplete;
• erase personal data we no longer need for the purpose it was given, subject to any record-keeping we are legally required to observe;
• nominate another person to exercise these rights on your behalf if you are unable to;
• raise a grievance about how your information has been handled.

To exercise any of these, call the clinic on 086675 68344, message us on WhatsApp, or speak to the front desk in person. We will respond as quickly as we reasonably can. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may escalate the matter to the Data Protection Board of India.

Children

We treat children, and the site is written for the parent or guardian who books for them. Please make appointment requests for a child yourself rather than having the child do it.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS only, with strict transport security enforced.

The website holds no patient data at all. What it does store is the clinic's own published content — treatment descriptions, staff details and photographs — which is material intended to be public anyway. There is no patient database behind this site, so there is no patient database to breach. Appointment requests are not saved here; they travel through WhatsApp to the clinic and live in the clinic's own records.

The page used to edit that content is protected by a password stored only as a slow one-way hash, locks out repeated failed attempts, and records every sign-in. Information shared with us over WhatsApp or at the clinic is handled by our staff on a need-to-know basis.

Changes to this notice

If how we handle information changes, we will update this page and change the “last updated” date at the top. Material changes will be reflected here before they take effect.