1. Who is responsible for the processing of your personal data?
This Virtual Event Privacy Notice (the "Notice") applies to the ABB Group of companies, which means ABB Ltd, Switzerland and each entity in which ABB Ltd, Switzerland, directly or indirectly, has a majority holding or owns or controls the majority of voting rights. The ABB company that is communicating with you (referred to as "ABB" or "We"), is responsible for the processing of your personal data and controls how it is used, in accordance with this Notice. Other subsidiary companies of ABB may also receive and process your personal data, either in the capacity of controller or processor and this Notice applies equally to them.
2. The types of information we collect and use?
We collect and use personal data that concerns you in connection with the virtual event. We may collect the following categories of personal data:
- Contact information you share with us to register and communicate in the course of the event such as first and last name (including what name you indicate to appear on your virtual account), business or personal email address, business or personal mobile phone number, your assistant name and email address, IP address, device identifier data (if applicable, for example mobile device ID/PC ID, tracking analytics data, cookies).
In case you provide the personal data of the third party (i.e., you assistant), upon receipt of such personal data, it shall be deemed that you represent that you have all the legitimate rights to disclose and share those personal data to us to process pursuant to this Notice.
- Additional information you provide to us for invoicing, such as: business address, nationality, credit card number or other proof of payment and the national identification card information (in case you request for the personal tax invoice).
- Media assets such as photographs, videos and recordings undertaken in the course of the event. Such assets will never focus on you directly, but rather to showcase impressions of the event itself, except in case the specific close-up shot will be taken where the explicit consent will be required.
3. Why we use your personal data?
We may use your personal data as described above for the following purposes:
- for the provision of your attendance to the virtual event and related services, including in particular (i) to register your attendance to virtual events and forums; (ii) to provide you with information and services associated with the virtual event; (iii) to provide and facilitate a personal virtual event experience; (iv) conduct and facilitate event satisfaction surveys;
- for the performance of our legal obligations in particular for the tax and accounting purposes, to collect and process your additional information you provide to us for invoicing for the tax and accounting purposes; and
- for our legitimate interests to process your personal data within the scope of the employment or business relationship we have with you, including in particular: (i) to create media assets (photographs, videos and recordings) to showcase event impressions and store those assets in our brand database; (ii) to produce content for articles and publications about the virtual event; and (iii) to publish photographs taken at the virtual event on ABB channels, third party channels and social media channels.
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.
We collect only the personal data from you that we need for the purposes described above. For statistical purposes, improvement of our services and testing of our IT systems we use as much as reasonably possible anonymized data. This means that these data can no longer (in)directly identify you or single you out as an individual.
4. 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?
Where it concerns processing operations related to our virtual event that you intend to participate in, ABB will not be able to adequately establish or conduct a business relationship with you or your company and generally perform the purposes described above without certain personal data. Although we cannot obligate you to share your personal data with us, please note that this then may have consequences which could affect the business relationship in a negative manner, such as not being able to register your attendance to the virtual event or to respond to any request you have asked for.
5. How long we keep your personal data
Based on mandatory legislation, in particular the personal data protection law, ABB must keep certain personal data for a minimum period of time and not keep personal data in an identifiable form for any longer than is necessary for the purpose for which the personal data is being processed. We only keep your personal data that we have collected in the course of the event registration for 2 years; provided that (i) the personal data included in the publication shall be processed and retained for the period of time that is necessary without excessively intruding your privacy rights for the period of 5 years or until you withdraw your consent (as the case may be); and (ii) the personal data required for tax and invoicing purposes will be retained for the period of time required under the applicable tax and accounting laws. Through the setting of IT applications and policies we would ensure that our keeping of your personal data is deleted when we no longer need it.
For more information regarding specific retention periods that apply to your personal data, please submit a request at www.abb.com/privacy.
6. Parties we share your personal data with (in and outside the EU and EEA or outside the country where the ABB company that controls your data is located)
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 an affiliate or third party so that it is transferred to or becomes accessible from outside the European Union (“EU”) and the European Economic Area ("EEA") or outside the country where the ABB company that controls your data is located, we always put adequate safeguards in place to protect your personal data. Examples of these safeguards are an adequacy decision of the European Commission, Standard Contractual Clauses. We have taken additional measures for the transfer of data from within to outside the EU, EEA and outside the country where the ABB company that controls your data is located to protect your personal data. If you would like an overview of the safeguards which are in place, please submit a request at www.abb.com/privacy.
In particular, we only share your personal data to the following third parties for the following specific purposes and activities: (i) ABB affiliates and subsidiaries; (ii) our business partners, distributors and agents as applicable and required for the performance of our business; (iii) the service providers, such as IT services and independent agents working on our behalf as required and necessary for delivery of the virtual event; (iv) potential and actual acquirers of our businesses or assets for the evaluation of the business or assets in question or executing the transformation/merger of the companies; and (v) other recipient that we are required by applicable law or legal process, to law enforcement or government authorities where required by applicable law or a legitimate request by government authorities, or a valid legal requirement.
7. Your data privacy rights
ABB respects your statutory rights under the applicable laws that You may have over your personal data as follows: (a) the right correct any error in your personal data or update it; (b) the right to access your personal data and receive a copy of your personal data that ABB hold, (c) the right to delete your personal data that ABB no longer have a lawful ground to use; (d) the right to port your personal data to a new supplier (if applicable); (e) the right to object to the processing of your personal data based on the legitimate interests grounds; (f) the right to suspend the use of your personal by ABB whilst a complaint or during Your right to object or delete is being investigated, or (g) the right to withdraw consent, whenever ABB have asked for your consent for processing of your personal data.
Please note that the rights described above are not absolute, and that your request cannot always be met entirely. For example, sometimes we cannot delete or restrict the processing of your personal data as we may have legal obligations or contractual obligations to keep certain such personal data.
You may request to enforce your data privacy rights at www.abb.com/privacy.
8. Contact and further information
If you want make use of any of your other rights mentioned above or if you have any questions or concerns about how ABB processes your personal data, please 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 have the right to file a complaint with the Data Privacy Authority in your country of residence or work, or seek a remedy through the courts where you believe an infringement of data privacy laws may have taken place.
9. Updates to this document
This Privacy Notice may be updated from time to time as a result of required developments. In case of such updates, we will undertake necessary actions to inform you about them depending on the importance of changes done. If and where required by applicable laws we will also ask for your consent to any material Privacy Notice changes describing our up-to-date practices.
Please check the “date of publication” to see when this Privacy Notice was updated.
Date of publication: March 5th 2024