What the Forum publishes, what may be done with it, and the limits of what it can be held to. Short, and meant to be read.
Read, copy and implement the standards freely, with attribution. Do not claim the Forum has certified, approved or endorsed you unless it has said so in writing. Nothing here is legal advice, and nothing here carries regulatory force.
This website is published by DPDPA Forum, a Section 8 non-profit company incorporated under the Companies Act, 2013, CIN U85499MH2026NPL470552. In these terms, "the Forum" means that company; "this site" means every page under the Forum's domain; and "you" means any person who accesses it.
Accessing this site accepts these terms. Nothing further is asked of you, no acknowledgement, no account, no cookie consent, because the site sets no cookies. If you do not accept these terms, do not use the site.
These terms are read together with the Privacy notice. Separate written terms govern membership, education programmes and Conclave attendance; where they conflict with these terms, those terms prevail for that engagement.
Everything published on this site, standards, frameworks, commentary, clause-level interpretation, reflects the Forum's reading of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the rules under it. It is not a statement of law and carries no regulatory force.
The Forum is not a regulator, is not a government body, and has no affiliation with the Government of India, the Data Protection Board of India, or any ministry. It has no power to adjudicate, penalise, exempt or authorise anything.
Nothing on this site is legal advice, and reading it creates no advocate–client relationship. Adopting a Forum standard is not compliance with the Act and is no defence to proceedings under it. Take your own advice on your own facts.
Standards are published freely; that is a founding commitment, not a marketing position. The Forum grants a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to read, reproduce, quote, translate and implement any standard or guidance published on this site, including within a commercial organisation, on these conditions:
The licence in this clause covers published standards and guidance only. It does not extend to the Forum's name and marks (clause 5), to the design of this site, or to material identified as belonging to a third party.
The name "DPDPA Forum", the monogram, and the credential seal are the Forum's marks and are not covered by clause 4. They may be used only:
Reproducing the seal without a current issued credential, or holding out as certified, accredited, empanelled or approved by the Forum where it has not said so in writing, is a misrepresentation. The Forum will pursue it, and will publish a correction where the misrepresentation was public.
The Forum endorses no product, service, tool or supplier, accepts no fee to name one, and names none in its standards. Where a technique is described, it is described generically. Any claim that the Forum recommends a particular vendor is false, whoever makes it.
Where you send the Forum a comment on a draft, a proposal, or any other contribution, you grant it a non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable licence to reproduce that material and to incorporate it into a published standard or consultation record, with attribution to you unless you ask otherwise. You keep ownership of what you send.
Send nothing confidential and nothing you are not free to license on those terms. The Forum treats no unsolicited material as confidential and gives no undertaking to keep it so. Personal data within such material is handled under the Privacy notice.
You must not: attempt to gain unauthorised access to this site or its infrastructure; interfere with its availability; place automated load on it beyond ordinary reading; impersonate the Forum, an officer, a member or a working group; represent an unofficial copy of this site as official; or use this site to do anything unlawful under a law in force in India.
Automated retrieval for indexing, archiving or research is permitted at a courteous rate.
Where this site links to statutory text, a government page, or another external source, it does so for reference. The Forum does not control that material, is not responsible for it, and does not endorse it by linking. A link to a legal source is not a warranty that the source is current, the authoritative version is the one published by the authority concerned.
This site is provided as it stands. The Forum gives no warranty that it will be uninterrupted, that it is free of error, or that any document on it is current at the moment of reading. Standards are versioned and dated precisely so that a reader can establish what was in force when.
Where a page marks something as not yet published, in drafting, or under consultation, that statement is the position and should not be read as a commitment to a date.
To the extent permitted by law, the Forum, its directors, officers and contributors are not liable for any loss arising from reliance on anything published on this site, including regulatory penalty, business loss, or loss of data. Reliance on a Forum standard is a decision taken by the person relying on it.
Nothing in this clause limits liability that cannot be limited under a law in force, including liability for fraud.
These terms are governed by the laws of India. The courts at Mumbai, Maharashtra have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them or from the use of this site.
If a provision of these terms is held unenforceable, the remainder stands.
These terms are versioned. A revision takes effect on publication and applies to use of the site from that point; the version in force is the one shown at the head of this page.
DPDPA Forum, at the registered office recorded against CIN U85499MH2026NPL470552 on the register of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.