Privacy policy

This policy explains what personal data PhD Desk collects, why, how long we keep it, and the rights you have over it. PhD Desk is operated by Saaira Technologies, No. 16 A/2, Mead Street, WCC Road, Nagercoil, Kanyakumari District, Tamil Nadu, India (“we”, “us”). We process personal data in line with India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the rules made under it.

What we collect

• Enquiry details you give us through the consultation form, phone, email or WhatsApp: your name, email address, phone number, the service you’re interested in, your PhD stage and any message you write.
• Technical details sent with the form: the page you submitted it from, your IP address and your browser’s user-agent string. We use these only to detect spam and abuse.
• Research material you choose to share with us during a consultation or engagement: chapters, papers, data, code and reviewer comments.
• Billing details needed to invoice you, if you engage us.

We do not ask for, and ask you not to send, sensitive personal data about research participants unless it has been anonymised. If your data includes identifiable participant information, tell us first so we can agree how it will be handled.

Why we use it

• To reply to your enquiry and give you a quote, on the basis of your consent given when you submit the form.
• To carry out work you have engaged us for, and to invoice you.
• To meet legal obligations, such as keeping tax records.

We do not sell your data, share it with marketers, or add you to mailing lists. We do not use your research material for any purpose other than your project, and we never reuse it in anyone else’s work.

Who can see it

Only the people working on your enquiry or project: our coordinators and the subject reviewer, editor, analyst or developer assigned to you, all bound by confidentiality obligations. Our website host and email provider process data on our behalf to run those services. We will disclose data to authorities only where the law requires it.

How long we keep it

• Enquiries that don’t become engagements: deleted within 12 months of our last contact.
• Research material: kept for the engagement and up to 90 days after it ends, so we can handle follow-up revisions, or deleted sooner if you ask.
• Invoices and billing records: kept for as long as tax law requires.

Cookies and analytics

This website does not set advertising or tracking cookies. If we enable Google Analytics, it loads only after you first interact with a page and sets cookies to measure visits in aggregate; you can block it with your browser’s privacy settings or an extension, and the site will work normally.

Free tools. Our free tools run in your browser. What you type into them (a DOI, an ISSN, your admission date, your answers) is not sent to our server and is not stored. We record only that a tool was used, copied from, downloaded from or printed, or showed an error, with the page, the page you first landed on, the referring site, your IP address and browser type, so we can see which tools are useful. The citation generator sends the DOI you enter to Crossref (crossref.org) to look up the reference; Crossref’s own privacy policy applies to that request. The thesis template builder loads a document library from cdn.jsdelivr.net when you download a template, so that service sees your IP address; your choice of university isn’t sent with it.

AI tools. Five of our free tools (viva question predictor, research title helper, reviewer comment explainer, research question sharpener and abstract feedback) send the text you paste to OpenAI, which generates the feedback. We don’t store your text. To avoid charging twice for the same request, we keep the AI’s answer for up to two days. Because an answer can quote parts of your text, it is stored encrypted with a key made from your text, so it can only be read by someone who already has that text. We count how many AI checks each IP address uses per day to apply the free limit. OpenAI processes the text under its own terms and privacy policy.

Your rights

You can ask us to tell you what personal data we hold about you, to correct or update it, or to erase it. You can also withdraw consent at any time, which stops further processing (it does not affect processing already done). To do any of these, email us at info@saairatechnologies.com. We will respond within 30 days.

Grievances

If you have a concern about how we handle your data, contact our grievance officer at info@saairatechnologies.com or by post at the address above. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

Security

We restrict access to personal data and research material to the people who need it, store enquiry records outside the public web directory, and use encrypted connections (HTTPS) for this website. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data, we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires.

Changes to this policy

We will update this page if our practices change, and change the date at the top. The terms of service cover the rest of our relationship with you.