Privacy Policy

The Swiss association (Verein) digitalswitzerland (hereinafter “digitalswitzerland” or “we” or “us”) is the responsible party for the processing of personal data collected through your use of our website https://digitalswitzerland.com/, https://digitaldays.swiss/, https://digitaldays.online/ https://lifelonglearning.ch/, https://herhack.ch/ and https://4t-dlt.digitalswitzerland.com/ as per the applicable data protection laws, in particular the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and – if applicable to your personal data – the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

digitalswitzerland takes your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy notice carefully as it contains important information on who we are and how and why we collect, store, use and share your personal data. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal data and how to contact us or relevant supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint.
We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal data about you. When we do so we are subject to the Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP), which applies to the processing of personal data in the context of the activities of an establishment of a controller or a processor in Switzerland. We are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.
By submitting any personally identifiable information to us, you consent and agree that we may collect, use and disclose such personally identifiable information in accordance with this Privacy Notice, and as permitted or required by law, and may disclose the information to a third party, such as business partners, or as otherwise authorised under applicable law.

PERSONAL DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

• We may collect and use the following personal data about you:
• Your name and contact information, including email address and telephone number, job title and company/organisation details
• Information to enable us to check and verify your identity, e.g. email address and telephone number
• Your activity across our different policy & working groups (attendance of meetings, contribution to various deliverables, emails sent to lists, etc.)
• In relation to specific projects, we may collect information including your nationality, geographical location such as city, region, or country; gender, age, sector of employment.
• Your responses to surveys, competitions and promotion of events.
• Any special requirements or points of interest you indicate during your registration to events.

HOW YOUR PERSONAL DATA IS COLLECTED

We collect most of this personal data directly from you—in person, by telephone, text or email and via our website. In particular, we may collect information in the following cases:

1. If you visit us through digitalswitzerland’s website available at https://www.digitalswitzerland.com (“Site”) or contact our staff members directly:

• We may collect your personal data when you contact us with individual questions via the contact form to be accessed on our Site or by contacting our staff directly through the email addresses provided on our Site.
• We may collect your personal data when you contact us for the registration of digitalswitzerland events, including our Community Talks, Digital Gipfel, breakfast meetings and other events related to the work of digitalswitzerland.
• We may collect information from cookies on our website. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our cookies policy below. In addition, we may collect, use and share anonymous data such as statistical information about the use of the Site.

2. If you are an external stakeholder seeking information about digitalswitzerland and our activities:

• We may collect your name and contact information, including but not limited to name, job title, business/email address and telephone number following the exchange of business cards or when you request orally or in writing to be added to our mailing list.
• We may use your details to contact you about digitalswitzerland’s activities, programmes and events and to organise such activities, programmes and events.

3. If you register as a representative of a member of digitalswitzerland for the digitalswitzerland member’s platform or to one of our distribution lists:

• We collect personal data – such as name, email/business address, job title, phone number, emails sent to lists, and password – from you if you are a representative of a digitalswitzerland member when registering to the digitalswitzerland member platform or participating in our work. We use this information to provide you with access to the digitalswitzerland member platform and to conduct our business.
• We may also use your details to contact you about digitalswitzerland activities, programmes and events and to organise such activities, programmes and events.

Your personal information is required to provide services to you. If you do not provide the personal information we ask for, it may delay or prevent us from providing services to you.

HOW AND WHY WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

Under data protection law, we can only process your personal information if we have a proper reason for doing so, e.g.:

• to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
• for the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract;
• for our legitimate interests or those of a third party. A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests; or
• where you have given consent such as in the case of specific projects where your data is shared for reporting purposes (e.g. guest lists at events) and for targeted communications. Any special category of personal data is only processed with your explicit consent.

We do not sell or otherwise disclose personal data we collect about you, except as described in this Privacy Notice or as we disclosed to you at the time the personal data is collected. Please contact us for a detailed overview of what we use your personal data for and our reasons for doing so.

PROMOTIONAL COMMUNICATIONS AND OPT-OUT

We may use your personal data to send you updates (by email, text message, telephone or post) about our services, including digitalswitzerland’s activities, programmes and events and to organise such activities, programmes and events.
We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal data for promotional and marketing purposes. This means we do not usually need your consent to send you promotional communications. However, where consent is needed, we will ask for this consent separately and clearly.
We will always treat your personal information with the utmost respect and never share it with other organisations for marketing purposes.
You have the right to opt-out of receiving promotional communications at any time by:

• contacting us at info@digitalswitzerland.com.
• using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails received via MailChimp and Hubspot.

We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you instruct us to provide further services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our operation.

WHO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL DATA WITH

We routinely share personal information with:

• third parties we use to help deliver our services to you (such as distribution mailing services, event mailing services);
• other third parties we use to help us run our organisation, e.g. marketing agencies or website hosts, third parties related to the employment of our staff etc.;
• third parties approved by you, e.g. social media sites you choose to link your account to or third-party payment providers;
• our banks in relation to our legal statutory obligations under Swiss law.

We only allow our service providers to handle your personal data if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal data. We also impose contractual obligations on service providers relating to ensure they can only use your personal data to provide services to us and to you. We may also share personal information with external auditors, e.g. in relation to accreditation and the audit of our accounts. We may also disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.

WHERE YOUR PERSONAL DATA IS HELD

Personal data may be held at our offices and those of our third-party agencies, service providers, representatives and agents as described above.
Some of these third parties may be based outside the European Union. To deliver services to you, it is sometimes necessary for us to share your personal data outside the EU, e.g.:

• with your and our service providers located outside the EU;
• if you are based outside the EU;
• with services providers used to provide services to our members’ legitimate interests

These transfers are subject to appropriate safeguards as outlined in Art 16 para 1 FADP. If you would like further information, please contact our Privacy Management Team.

HOW LONG YOUR PERSONAL DATA WILL BE KEPT

We will keep your personal data while you have an extranet account with us or we are providing services to you. Thereafter, we will keep your personal data for as long as is necessary:

• to respond to any questions, complaints or claims made by you or on your behalf;
• to show that we treated you fairly;
• to keep records required by law.

We will not retain your personal data for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this notice.

YOUR RIGHTS

Right of Information (Art. 25 FADP)	The right to be provided with a copy of your personal information (the right of access).
Rectification (Art. 32 para 1 FADP)	The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal information.
Deletion (Art. 30 & 31 FADP)	The (limited) right to require us to delete your personal information in certain situations.
Data portability (Art. 28 FADP)	The right to receive the personal information you provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or transmit that data to a third party in certain situations.
To object processing and to require restricted processing (Art. 32 para 2 FADP)	The right:To object at any time to your personal information being processed for direct marketing (including profiling);To object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information, e.g. processing carried out for the purpose of our legitimate interests.to require us to restrict processing of your personal information in certain circumstances, e.g. if you contest the accuracy of the data.

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, please contact us. If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please: email, call or write to our Privacy Management Team at info@digitalswitzerland.com.

KEEPING YOUR PERSONAL DATA SECURE

We have appropriate security measures to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed unlawfully. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to access it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE

This privacy notice was published on 31 August 2023. We may make periodic changes to this privacy notice. When we do, we will inform you via our website and email, respectively. All changes will be effective from that date. However, in the event that any modifications to this privacy notice materially alter your rights or obligations hereunder, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you of the change and, where required by applicable law or as we otherwise deem appropriate, to obtain your consent.

HOW TO CONTACT US

Please contact us and/or our Privacy Management Team by post, email or telephone if you have any questions about this privacy policy or the information we hold about you.
Our contact details:
digitalswitzerland
Heinrichstrasse 216
8005 Zürich
info@digitalswitzerland.com

Cookie Policy – Information we collect automatically

We use cookies to automatically collect information about website users when they navigate on our Site. Cookies are small text files placed on your web browser by websites that you visit while browsing the Internet. Cookies are widely used to help make websites work efficiently as well as to analyze traffic on websites. Cookies also allow websites to tailor information to individuals based on browsing preferences. You can enable, disable or delete cookies through your Internet browser. In order to do this, follow the instructions provided by your browser. However, if you choose to disable cookies, some features of our Site may not work properly.

What cookies do we use?

• Strictly necessary cookies. Some cookies are strictly necessary in order to enable you to browse on our Site and use its features.
• Performance cookies. We use Google Analytics cookies to collect information about the use of our Site, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. This helps us improve your browsing experience. Google Analytics analyses your interaction with our website and stores information about IP address, operating system, web browser, pages visited, demographics of the users, the device used, and where the visit originated. Google provides certain privacy options and choices in this regard, which are described here.

Social widgets

Our Site has buttons that link to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube. The providers of these third-party social widgets may set cookies to collect information regarding our Site users and their interactions with the social widgets. Please review the privacy policies of the social widget providers for more information.

digitalswitzerland – Privacy Notice – August 2023