Commitment to Data Privacy Protection

Protecting the security and privacy of your personal data is important to PROFIBUS Nutzerorganisation e.V. (PNO); therefore, we conduct our business in compliance with applicable laws on data privacy protection and data security. We hope the policy outlined below will help you understand what data PNO may collect, how PNO uses and safeguards that data and with whom we may share it.

Personal Data

Through this, PNO will not collect any personal data about you (e.g. your name, address, telephone number or e-mail address), unless you voluntarily choose to provide us with it (e.g. by registration, survey), respectively, provide your consent, or unless otherwise permitted by applicable laws and regulations for the protection of your personal data.

Purpose of Use

When you do provide us with personal data, we usually use it to respond to your inquiry, process your order, or provide you access to specific information or offers. Also, to support our customer relationship with you:

• we may store and process personal data and share it with our worldwide regional PI Associations (RPAs) to better understand your business needs and how we can improve our products and services; or
• we (or a third party on our behalf) may use personal data to contact you about a PNO offer in support of your business needs or to conduct online surveys to understand better our customers’ needs.

We do not sell or otherwise market your personal data to third parties, except to regional PI Associations (RPAs) of the PI umbrella organization.

Purpose Limitation

PNO will collect, use or disclose personal data supplied by you online only for the purposes disclosed to you, unless the disclosure:

• is a use of the personal data for any additional purpose that is directly related to the original purpose for which the personal data was collected,
• is necessary to prepare, negotiate, and perform a contract with you.

Communications or Utilization Data

Through your use of telecommunications services to access the this website or mobile app, your communications data (e.g. Internet Protocol address) or utilization data (e.g. information on the beginning, end, and extent of each access, and information on the telecommunications services you accessed) are technically generated and could conceivably relate to personal data. To the extent that there is a compelling necessity, the collection, processing, and use of your communications or utilization data will occur and will be performed in accordance with the applicable data privacy protection legal framework.

Non-Personal Data Collected Automatically

When you access this website or mobile app, we may automatically (i.e., not by registration) collect non-personal data (e.g. type of Internet browser and operating system used, domain name of the Web site from which you came, number of visits, average time spent, pages viewed). We may use this data and share it with our worldwide affiliates to monitor the attractiveness of our Web sites and improve their performance or content.

“Cookies” – Information Stored Automatically on Your Computer

During your visit on this website, we may store some data on your computer in the form of a cookie to automatically recognize your PC the next time you visit and to ensure you stay logged in during your visit. If you do not wish to receive cookies, please configure your Internet browser to erase all cookies from your computer’s hard drive, block all cookies, or to receive a warning before a cookie is stored.

Newsletter

If you would like to receive the official newsletter, we will need your valid email address as well as information for verifying that you are the owner of the given email address, and that the owner agrees with the receipt of the newsletter. Further data will not be collected. When subscribing to the newsletter your email address will be used for own information and advertising purposes until you unsubscribe from the newsletter again. By registering for an event, your data will be stored and you will automatically receive the official PI newsletter. Your agreement for storing the data, the email address as well as for using this information to send out the newsletter can be revoked by you at any time.

Social Plugins

With the help of so called social plugins, content and articles from this website or mobile app can be easily shared on social networks like Facebook, Xing, Twitter or Google+. Therefore corresponding social plugins of those services – like the “recommend” button of Facebook – haven been embedded on our web sites. Thereby PNO would like to consider the data and privacy protection through the 2-click method in a special way. What exactly does this mean?

Basically social plugins lead to the fact that every visitor of a web site is registered by those services with their IP address and their further activities on the Internet are logged. This already even happens if the user does not click one of these buttons.

To prevent this, PNO uses the 2-click method, by which data only will be transferred with the agreement of the user. This means that any buttons embedded on this website or mobile app are not activated by default and therefore also do not provide any data to other services automatically. Only if the user clicks on one of those buttons, will they then activate them and therefore allow the data transmission. With a second click, content can be shared immediately. If the user is already logged in to the social networks of Facebook or Google+, this transmission will happen without opening a further window. With Twitter, a popup window will appear where the text to tweet can be rewritten. This means that users are able to post content to social networks, without forcing them to create complete surfing profiles. With the 2-click method, PNO takes the visitor’s privacy interests into account as far as it is possible in accordance with the current state of the art.

Google Analytics privacy policy

This website and mobile app use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”).  Google Analytics uses cookies, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website or mobile app analyze how users interact. The information generated by the cookies about your use (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website or mobile app, compiling reports on activity for their operators, and providing other services relating to activity and Internet usage.

Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.  You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website or mobile app.  By using this website or mobile app, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.

Security

To protect your personal data against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss or alteration and against unauthorized disclosure or access, PNO uses technical and organizational security measures.