Privacy notice
At ABB, respecting your data privacy rights is a top priority. This notice explains why and how we collect personal data about you, how we process such data, and what rights you have regarding your personal data.
Who controls your personal data
ABB Asea Brown Boveri Ltd and its subsidiary companies are responsible for your personal data. For applicable data protection law, the controller of your data will be the ABB affiliate which is providing services or communicating to you. Each such entity is regarded as an independent controller of your personal data, and this notice applies to all such companies.
Controllers located outside of the European Union (EU) have appointed a representative for EU data privacy matters. For details about your controller’s EU representative, please submit a request at
www.abb.com/privacy.
The personal data we collect about you and how we get it
We collect the following categories of personal data:
• The business contact information you share with us: name, title, job title, email address, business address, telephone number, mobile telephone number
• Additional information you provide to us in the course of our business relations, such as: interests in ABB products, marketing preferences, registration information provided at events, fairs, contract or order data, invoices, payments, business partner history, etc.
• Information your browser makes available when you visit an ABB website: IP address, the source of your site visit, time spent on the website or a particular page, links clicked, comments shared, browser type, date and time of visit, etc.
• To the extent necessary to fulfil our obligations, data obtained from publicly accessible sources or which are legitimately transmitted by other third parties (e.g. a credit agency): commercial register data, association register data, creditworthiness data.
What we use your personal data for
We use your personal data to:
• process and fulfill orders and keep you informed about the status of your or your company’s order;
• provide and administer our products and services;
• provide customer support and process, evaluate and respond to requests and inquiries;
• conduct and facilitate customer satisfaction surveys;
• conduct marketing and sales activities (including generating leads, pursuing marketing prospects, performing market research, determining and managing the effectiveness of our advertising and marketing campaigns and managing our brand);
• send you marketing communications (such as alerts, promotional materials, newsletters, etc.);
• perform data analytics (such as market research, trend analysis, financial analysis, and customer segmentation).
To provide you with tailored marketing communication and advertisement, we will use automated methods to build a profile based on data that we have obtained as described in this notice. You have the right to object to profiling activities by submitting a data subject request at
www.abb.com/privacy.
We only collect the personal data from you that we need for the above purposes. We may also anonymize your personal data, so it no longer identifies you and use it for various purposes, including the improvement of our services and testing our IT systems.
What happens if you do not provide us with the information we had asked you for or if you ask us to stop processing your information
Certain personal data is necessary to establish, conduct or terminate a business relationship with you. We need you to provide us with the personal data required for the fulfillment of contractual obligations or which we are legally obliged to collect. Without such personal data, we will not be able to establish, execute or terminate a contract with you. Also, we will be unable to take requested pre-contractual measures to enter into a contract with you or to establish and continue the business relationship you have asked for.
The legal basis on which we use your personal data
We use your personal data for the purposes described in this notice based on one of the following legal bases, as applicable:
• We may process your personal data for the fulfilment of contractual obligations resulting from contracts with you or your company, or as part of pre-contractual measures we have been asked to take;
• We may process your personal data on the basis of statutory requirements, for example, on the basis of tax or reporting obligations, cooperation obligations with authorities or statutory retention periods;
• We will ask your consent for the activities described in this privacy notice when required by applicable law, for example when we process your data for marketing purposes where we don’t have an existing business relationship with you or your company; or
• We will rely on our legitimate interests to process your personal data within the scope of the business relationship with you or your company. Our legitimate interests to collect and use the personal data for this purpose are management and furtherance of our business. You may obtain a copy of our assessment of why we may process your personal data for these interests by submitting a request at
www.abb.com/privacy.
How we share your personal data
We only share your personal data with other ABB affiliates or third parties as necessary for the purposes described in this notice. Where we share your personal data with a party outside of the EU, we always put safeguards in place to protect your personal data as described below.
| Recipient name or – for non-EU countries – recipient category |
Recipient location |
Purpose |
Safeguards in place to protect your personal data |
| ABB affiliates and subsidiaries |
See the list of ABB subsidiaries |
The purposes described in this privacy notice |
EU Model Clauses |
| ABB business partners, distributors, and agents |
EU and non-EU |
The purposes described in this privacy notice |
EU Model Clauses |
| Service providers |
EU and non-EU |
IT services, marketing agencies, payment processors, customer support providers working on ABB’s behalf |
EU Model Clauses and commercial contracts ensuring your data is only used to provide the services to ABB |
| Potential or actual acquirers of ABB businesses or assets |
EU and non-EU |
For the evaluation of the business or assets in question or for the purposes described in this privacy notice |
EU Model Clauses and commercial contracts ensuring your data is only used to evaluate ABB’s business or assets or for the purposes described herein |
| Recipients as required by applicable law or legal process, to law enforcement or government authorities, etc. |
EU and non-EU |
Where required by applicable law or a legitimate request by government authorities, or a valid legal requirement |
We will ensure, to the extent possible, that adequate protection is provided for your data when it is transferred out of the EU in these circumstances |
You may obtain a copy of the safeguards which we use to protect your personal data by submitting a request at www.abb.com/privacy.
How long we keep your personal data
We only keep your personal data for as long as necessary for the purposes described in this privacy notice, or until you notify us that you no longer wish to receive ABB marketing materials. After this time, we will securely delete your personal data, unless we are required to keep it in order to meet legal or regulatory obligations, or to resolve potential disputes.
Your data privacy rights
Depending on the jurisdiction in which you are located and in which your personal data is processed, you may have the following rights:
| Data privacy rights |
What it means |
| The right of data access |
You have a right to obtain a copy of the personal data we hold about you, subject to certain exceptions. |
| The right of data rectification |
You always have a right to ask for immediate correction of inaccurate or incomplete personal data. |
| The right of data erasure |
You have the right to request that personal data be erased when it is no longer needed, where applicable law obliges us to delete the data or the processing of it is unlawful. You may also ask us to erase personal data where you have withdrawn your consent or objected to the data processing. However, this is not a general right to data erasure – there are exceptions. |
| The right to restrict data processing |
You have the right to restrict the processing of your personal data in specific circumstances. Where that is the case, we may still store your information, but not use it further. |
| The right to data portability |
You have the right to receive your personal data in a structured, machine-readable format for your own purposes, or to request us to share it with a third party. |
| The right to object to the data processing |
You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data based on the legitimate interests, where your data privacy rights outweigh our reasoning for legitimate interests. |
You may request to enforce your data privacy rights at www.abb.com/privacy. In certain circumstances, we may need to restrict the above rights to safeguard the public interest (e.g., the prevention or detection of crime) or our business interests (e.g., the maintenance of legal privilege).
Contact and further information
If you have any questions about how we use your personal data or wish to make a complaint about how we handle it, you may contact our Group Data Protection Officer at
privacy@abb.com, or submit your complaint at
www.abb.com/privacy. Should you not be satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data against the law, you may also contact the Data Privacy Authority in your country of residence or work or where you believe an infringement of data privacy laws may have taken place.