Privacy Policy of RTDS e.U.

Last updated: 30 October 2020

1. SCOPE AND CONTACT

RTDS e.U. is a consulting company based in Vienna, Austria and is specialised on the development of proposals for publicly funded collaborative research and development projects and related services.

RTDS e.U. is the owner of the brand RTDS-Group (EU Trade Mark No. 012873543). This brand covers the following services defined according to the International Classification of Goods and Services established by the Nice Agreement 1957.

  • 35 : commercial administration of the licensing of the goods and services of others; dissemination of advertising matter; outsourcing services [business assistance]; professional business consultancy; business management consultancy; advisory services for business management; business management assistance; business information; commercial administration of the licensing of the goods and services of others; business investigations; public relations; writing of publicity texts; marketing; marketing research; marketing studies.
  • 41: Arranging and conducting of colloquiums; arranging and conducting of conferences; arranging and conducting of congresses; film production, other than advertising films; layout services, other than for advertising purposes; organization of exhibitions for cultural or educational purposes; scriptwriting services; writing of texts, other than publicity texts; arranging and conducting of seminars; arranging and conducting of symposiums; teaching / educational services / instruction services; arranging and conducting of workshops [training]; EXCLUDING Education and training services in the fields of computer hardware and computer software relating to computer simulation of power systems.
  • 45: Intellectual property consultancy; licensing of intellectual property; copyright management; legal research; mediation; monitoring intellectual property rights for legal advisory purposes; on-line social networking services; registration of domain names [legal services].

In accordance to the Data Processing Agreement (DPA) between RTDS. e.U. and RTDS Association, the latter, has is authorized to use the aforementioned trademark.

The brand RTDS Group is currently made up of two legal entities for profit (RTDS e.U.) and non-profit (RTDS Association) activities. A DPA defined the scope of the contractual obligations concerning data protection issues for the handling of personal data as required for the operation of both organisations.

This Privacy Policy is issued on behalf of RTDS e.U. When we mention “we”, “us” or “our” in this Privacy Policy, we are referring only to RTDS e.U. responsible for processing your personal data (being the “data controller”) for the aforementioned list of services covers under the RTDS-Group Trademark.

This Privacy Policy applies to personal data collected by RTDS e.U. on its website (www.rtds-group.com) which link to this Privacy Policy, via registration forms, job applications, surveys, competition entries, at events, or if you contact us (online, by post, telephone or social media).

The aim of this Privacy Policy is to tell you how we will use any personal data we collect or you provide to us. Please read it carefully before you proceed.

Your privacy is very important to us and this Privacy Policy sets out how we will process your personal data and what rights you have in respect of your own personal data. We will securely store and process personal data which you have provided to us.

This Privacy Policy has the purpose to describe how your personal data is processed and the lawful basis on which this is carried out.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or your rights in respect of your personal data, please contact us at compliance@rtds-group.com

2. WHAT PERSONAL DATA DO WE COLLECT?

You do not have to give us any personal data in order to browse our website.

However, if you wish to register on our website, subscribe to a service, register to events, request further information, contact us, apply for jobs, complete any surveys or provide content for inclusion on our website (e.g. blogs or other online forums) we will collect certain data, including personal data.  The data we collect may include:

  • title, name, address, business phone number(s), email address and gender;
  • employment details, such as your current role and responsibilities, experience, seniority and education;
  • information about your organisation and the industry that you work in;
  • areas of interest which you have notified us about, as well as what we can infer from your engagement with our services;
  • your CV;
  • your updates preferences;
  • any data recoverable from social networking sites, where permission from you has been obtained;
  • any other information that you submit to us.

We may receive the above information directly from you or from your colleague or corporate contact who registers for a subscription or event on your behalf. Please note that not all of the information we request is mandatory.

Device and browsing data: we may automatically collect information about any website that you came from or are going to. We also collect information about the pages of our website which you visit, the links you click on, IP addresses, the type of browser you use and the times you access our website. Some of this information is aggregated and is not used to identify you, but we also use analytics software on our website which allows us to link information about your use of our website back to you, where you have logged into your account. We may observe your use of our website, whether you open emails we have sent to you and/or events that you attend. We may infer and derive certain information from these observations such as what additional brands, subscriptions and events you or a user similar to you may be interested in.  This information will be used for our communications and marketing purposes.

Cookies: We use cookies to collect information about you online. Please read our “Cookies Policy” for further information on the cookies we use and how you can enable/disable them.

Financial Information: In addition, we will keep a record of any financial transaction you make with us.

Filming, recording and photography: Upon your consent, we may photograph, film, live stream or record our interactions in which case we may process information such as your voice and image to support the implementation of the communication strategies in compliance with our service contracts.

3. HOW WILL YOUR PERSONAL DATA BE USED AND SHARED?

In accordance with data protection legislation, we will only process your personal data where we have a lawful basis for doing so e.g. (i) where it is necessary for the performance of a contract we have with you; (ii) where you have provided your consent; (iii) where it is necessary for us to comply with a legal obligation that we are subject to; or (iv) where it is in our (or a third party’s) legitimate interests and such interests are not overridden by your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms.

The personal data we collect allows us to:

  • provide the services you have ordered or signed-up to (necessary for a contract);
  • administer our website (such as access controls) and provide customer services (legitimate interests, of us and our customers, to ensure a good quality of service and security);
  • notify you of key information in relation to your subscription or any events you are attending (necessary for a contract and legitimate interests, of our customers, to ensure they are up to date with necessary information);
  • gather information to form statistical and trend analysis including to monitor user demographic (legitimate interests, of us, so we can better understand and improve our services, events and marketing practices);
  • monitor your use of our services and attendance at events, as well as your responses to targeted direct marketing emails, in order to build up customer profiles (including through use of analytics software) (legitimate interests, of us, to help us identify content and marketing materials which will be of interest to you and other customers like you);
  • communicate with you including responding to your enquiries (necessary for a contract, or consent);
  • contact you to seek your feedback (legitimate interests, of us, in helping us improve);
  • meet legal, regulatory and compliance requirements (necessary to comply with our legal obligations);
  • aggregate information about you with other users (legitimate interests, of us, to better understand what services our users will be interested in);
  • verify your identity and details of your payment method or credit card amount (where payments are required) (necessary to comply with our legal obligations);

Where we have informed you that we will do so (such as during the registration process to our website/website services and events (as applicable)) we may from time to time contact you by email, SMS, telephone or post about our services that may be of interest to you.

RTDS e.U. may share your data with our partner company:

RTDS Association: We may share your registration information (including name, job title and contact details) with RTDS Association for communication purposes, but we will only do this where you have provided consent for us to do so and according to the scope of the Data Processing Agreement between RTDS e.U and RTDS Association.

RTDS e.U. may share your data with Other Third Parties

We may also share your registration information with other third parties as required to comply with contractual obligations and/or only with your consent.

Your employer: Where your personal data has been provided to us to meet the request of your employer as part of a wider corporate subscription (i.e. your employer enters in a contract with RTDS e.U. where you are a listed contact employee). We may share information about your use of the service with your employer (legitimate interests, of your employer, so they can understand how their staff are contributing to the purpose of the contracted services).

Service providers: We may employ the services of third-party service providers, including (but not limited to) technology platforms, file storing, to help us in certain areas such as website hosting, maintenance, the operation of events and customer relationship management, including to track our marketing efforts. In some cases, the third party may receive your personal data (legitimate interests, of us, for service efficiency and to benefit from third party expertise). However, at all times, we will control and be responsible for the use of your personal data and we will endeavour to ensure that our service providers are bound by contractual obligations to only process your personal data in accordance with our instructions.

Aggregate information: As mentioned above, we may use aggregated information so we can administer and improve our website, analyse trends and gather broad demographic information and detect suspicious or fraudulent transactions. We may pass this information to third parties. In most cases this information will be anonymized, meaning that you will not be able to be identified from it.

Surveys: If you complete a survey, unless we inform you otherwise, your answers will be aggregated and anonymized for research and analysis purposes. However, if you choose to provide any information in your response to a survey which identifies you (e.g. name, job title), we may be able to identify you from this. If you choose to submit your email address to enter into any prize associated with the survey, this will be used to administer the prize only and will not be linked to your survey responses (necessary for a contract). We may share your responses in an aggregated and anonymized form with third parties carrying out research relating to the topics covered in the survey or, if the survey relates to your use of one of our subscription products, and this forms part of a corporate subscription taken out by your employer for you and other employees, we may share information provided in your survey responses about your use of the subscription with your employer (legitimate interests, for research purposes). If you have included information about yourself in your survey responses (e.g. name, job title), third parties or your employer (as appropriate) may be able to identify you from this.

Other: We process personal data about individuals who feature in our publications, content and services, including information we have researched from publicly available sources (legitimate interests and for journalistic purposes).

We also use publicly available sources to research prospective customers in order to send them marketing information about products and services relevant to them (legitimate interests, to grow our business).

If you are submitting personal data on behalf of another or are submitting personal data which may be used publicly on our products, you should only do so where you have the consent of the individual and it will be your responsibility to ensure that the individual is made aware of this Privacy Policy and our processing of their personal data.

Administration of justice: We may occasionally be required by law, court order or governmental authority, public R&D funding agencies to disclose certain types of personal data (necessary to comply with a legal obligation, or for legitimate interests in connection with a legal claim against us).  Examples of the type of situation where this would occur would be:

  • in the administration of justice; or
  • where we have to defend ourselves legally.

Opting-out If at any point you would like to opt-out of receiving any communications from us, or would like to change the channels that we use to contact you, please email us, stating your preferences.

4. TRANSFER OF PERSONAL INFORMATION OUTSIDE THE EEA

We may transfer some of your personal data to Non-EEA countries such as the New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, as some of the project partners of RTDS Group are located in these jurisdictions.

We will not transfer personal data to a third country outside of the EEA that does not provide adequate protection of personal data unless appropriate safeguards are applied or the transfer otherwise takes place in accordance with applicable data protection legislation.

5. THIRD PARTY LINKS

Our site may contain links to other website over which we have no control. We are not responsible for privacy policies or practices of another website to which you choose to link from this site. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of those other website so you can understand how they collect, use and share your personal information.

6. STORAGE AND SECURITY

We have implemented reasonable technical and organisational measures designed to store and secure your personal data from accidental loss and from unauthorised access, use, alteration or disclosure. However, the Internet is an open system and we cannot guarantee that unauthorised third parties will never be able to defeat those measures or use your personal information for improper purposes.

7. YOUR RIGHTS

Under certain circumstances, by law, you have the following rights in relation to your personal data:

  • a right of access to your personal data held by us;
  • a right to receive your personal data in machine-readable format;
  • a right to object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on legitimate interests (or those of a third party) for a particular purpose and you believe your circumstances mean you are unjustifiably prejudiced by this processing and where we do not have compelling legitimate interests to override such objection;
  • a right to object to decisions being taken by automated means which significantly affects you.
  • where we have sought your consent to use your personal data for a particular purpose, a right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can do that by the methods set out in this Privacy Policy or by any other method we inform you of when seeking your consent;
  • a right in certain circumstances to have personal data rectified, blocked, erased or destroyed; and
  • a right to complain to your data protection supervisory authority.

These rights can be exercised by contacting us at compliance@rtds-group.com. In order to protect you, we reserve the right to verify your identity before processing any such request.

If you are unsure about your rights you can contact the Austrian data protection supervisory authority. However, we would kindly ask you to contact us before doing so.

You may review, correct, update or change your personal information at any time by contacting us.

8. RETENTION

Your personal data will be retained as long as necessary to fulfil legitimate purpose(s). If you or your employer have a contractual relationship with us, any personal data relating to you will be retained as long as necessary to enable us to fulfil our obligations relating to that contractual relationship.

If you consent to data processing as defined herein, we store your personal data until you withdraw your consent or once the personal data is no longer necessary for achieving the purpose of the processing.