By accessing or using the QPLUS CONSULT (hereafter also referred to as ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’) website or the QPLUS CONSULT branded sites, you agree to our website ‘Terms and Conditions of Use’. If you don’t agree with our policies, your choice is to not use our website or provide us with your information. Please review this Privacy Policy to stay informed about QPLUS CONSULT’s policies regarding the Personal Data we collect.If you have any other question regarding our Privacy Policy or your rights, please don’t hesitate to contact our global General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) responsible at QPLUS CONSULT via info@qplusconsult.com.
2 WHAT KIND OF PERSONAL DATA IS COLLECTED AND PROCESSED?
3 HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED?
4 FOR WHAT PURPOSE IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA BEING PROCESSED AND HOW LONG IS IT RETAINED?
6 WHO HAS ACCESS TO YOUR PERSONAL DATE?
7 HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA SECURED?
9 DISCLOSURE TO THIRD COUNTRIES
12 PHOTOGRAPHY, AUDIO AND VIDEO RECORDING AT EVENTS
14 CREDIT CARD ACCOUNT INFORMATION
15 LINKS TO NON-QPLUS CONSULT WEBSITES
16 COOKIES AND TRACKING TECHNOLOGY
1 INTRODUCTION
QPLUS CONSULT respects the privacy of all of its employees, costumers, contractors and service providers. That’s why we abide by privacy laws. This means that your Personal Data is safe with us and won’t be abused. QPLUS CONSULT acts as data Controller, thereby determining the purposes and means of the Processing of Personal Data. This Privacy Policy explains what kind of Personal Data QPLUS CONSULT collects, for which purposes, and clarifies your rights as Data Subject.
During the Processing of Personal Data, QPLUS CONSULT conforms to the requirements of the applicable data protection legislation (European law: General Data Protection Regulation or ‘GDPR’, and National law: the Law on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data). This means that QPLUS CONSULT:
- clearly specifies the purposes before Processing Personal Data (by means of this Privacy Policy);
- limits its collection of Personal Data to the Personal Data strictly required for its legitimate purposes;
- first asks for explicit permission (i.e. consent) to Process your Personal Data if your permission is required;
- takes appropriate security measures to protect your Personal Data. QPLUS CONSULT demands the same level of appropriate measures from Third Parties who process Personal Data on its behalf (i.e. Controller – Processor relationship);
- respects your right to inspect, correct or delete your personal data held by QPLUS CONSULT (see section 10).
2 WHAT KIND OF PERSONAL DATA IS COLLECTED AND PROCESSED?
The Personal Data that QPLUS CONSULT collects, and how it is Processed, depends on the service you require when visiting our website (and landing pages) or contacting us on- or offline. QPLUS CONSULT collects mainly following Personal Data: name and surname, phone number, mobile number, (business) e-mail address, fax number, home address, title, company or organization (and VAT number), participation details (from events, online subscriptions and/or meetings), IP-address, cookie ID and surfing behaviour, credit card information (if applicable), location data (GPS) and other personal information (e.g. pictures and videos).
3 HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED?
3.1 Directly From You
QPLUS CONSULT collects Personal Data i) via the QPLUS CONSULT website and QPLUS CONSULT branded sites including the QPLUS CONSULT Communities, QPLUS CONSULT Learning Center and QPLUS CONSULT Forum websites, ii) during communication between you and QPLUS CONSULT via e-mail, telephone, social media, event registrations and other means, and iii) during events and seminars (e.g. via photo and/or recording equipment).
The QPLUS CONSULT website will prompt you to voluntarily provide Personal Data if and when it is needed by QPLUS CONSULT to provide a service or conduct a transaction that you have requested, such as registering as a member to gain access to members-only areas of the website or the personalized features of the website, ordering publications or registering for courses and webinars, downloading QPLUS CONSULT products, accessing your area to request participation in an educational program, submitting information, joining a QPLUS CONSULT Community, making an awards nomination entry, making contributions to QPLUS CONSULT and communicating with QPLUS CONSULT through e-mail.
You may also go to a QPLUS CONSULT Landing page form where we collect other personal information and preferences to better tailor your preferences. This information can include both checkboxes and free form entries where you describe the services you would like to receive from QPLUS CONSULT.
Our website is intended for adults, such as our members. QPLUS CONSULT does not knowingly collect any personal information from children under the age of 13. Please contact QPLUS CONSULT at info@qplusconsult.com if you suspect that QPLUS CONSULT has collected any such information.
3.2 Automatically Collected Information On Our Website
The QPLUS CONSULT website automatically collects certain internet usage information from its visitors, such as the name of your internet service provider and the Internet Protocol (IP) address through which you access the internet, the date and time you access the QPLUS CONSULT website, the pages that you view while browsing the website, browser types and versions, geographic information, device use, and the internet address of any third party website from which you linked directly to our website. This information is used to help improve the QPLUS CONSULT website, personalize your experience, analyse trends and administer the website. All guests to the website can use the open portions anonymously. We may track the number of users who visit areas of the website for internal use, but this tracking will not identify users.
4 FOR WHAT PURPOSE IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA BEING PROCESSED AND HOW LONG IS IT RETAINED?
QPLUS CONSULT retains your Personal Data not longer than strictly necessary to realise the purpose(s) for which the data was collected. Every retention periods starts on the first day of the second month of the first quarter following the day when the Personal Data was collected.
4.1 Contact Form And Subscription Based Channels
You can use QPLUS CONSULT’s online Contact Form to ask us questions or to place a request.To do so, we need your name and surname, IP-address, e-mail address and phone number. This information is retained until we are sure that you are satisfied with our response plus one year. Thereby allowing easily access to the information in case of following questions occur. Furthermore, it may help us to train our customer service team.
QPLUS CONSULT also has Subscription based channels to inform those interested in our products and/or services. Each e-mail sent via these channels contains a link to unsubscribe yourself from our newsletter. Your e-mail address is only added to our list of subscribers with your permission. We store this information up to three months after you cancel your subscription.
4.2 Handling Your Order
We will use your Personal Data when handling your order, rendering our services and/or delivering our products (in according with contractual obligations towards you). For this purpose, we may use your payment details, phone number, e-mail address and IP-address. We store this information until your order has been completed and five years thereafter (legal retention period).
4.3 Promotion, Updates And Other Notifications
Other than the advertisements on the website, we can inform you about new products or services, upcoming events, programs and other notifications by regular mail (post), e-mail, via social media and/or per phone. You can object against this promotional communication at all times. Every hard copy letter contains instructions on how to do this. Every e-mail contains a link for unsubscription. On social media, you can block us or use the cancellation option. You can also inform us via telephone.
4.4 Statistics And Profiling
QPLUS CONSULT keeps statistics on the use of our website using Google Analytics and Hotjar (see section 16). These statistics help us to research, develop and improve QPLUS CONSULT’s programs, products, services and content, including QPLUS CONSULT’s website (e.g. only showing information that is relevant to you). The data is anonymize before it is saved. To do so, the last eight numbers of your IP-address are masked. We don’t provide this data to other Google services or parties. We may combine Personal Data to get to know more about you. This is always restricted to the information you have shared with us. If you don’t want us to use your Personal Data for these statistics, please let us know or simply turn off the Functional Cookies in our Cookie settings.
For this purpose, we use your IP and e-mail address. We are obliged to store this information for two years.
4.5 Marketing
At QPLUS CONSULT, we like to stay on top of marketing. That’s why we like to recruit new customers, lecturers for our events, experts for our inspirational sessions or new colleagues. We process their Personal Data in order to stay in contact with them. This Personal Data includes any preference which you can change at any time using the ‘e-mail preferences to’ link in every e-mail.
4.6 Location data
If necessary, we may collect your location data (GPS). If that is the case, you will be asked to grant consent beforehand.This location data and other data can also be stored and processed by the provider of the navigation/mapping software, such as Google Maps, and the data could also be used by, for example, Google or Apple itself. We have no control over their actions. We recommend that you read the applicable privacy statement of the provider in question.
5 LEGAL BASIS
The data protection laws set out a number of different reasons for which we may collect and process your personal data, including:
(a) Consent: In specific situations, we can collect and process your data with your consent. For example, when you tick a box to attend a Solution Provider webinar. When collecting your personal data, we always make clear to you which data is necessary in connection with a particular service.
(b) Contractual obligations: In certain circumstances, we need your personal data to comply with our contractual obligations. For example, if you register for an event, we collect your name to print your conference badge and your address to issue an invoice or receipt for the registration fee.
(c) Legal compliance: If the law requires us to, we may need to collect and process your data. For example, we can pass on details of people involved in fraud or other criminal activities affecting QPLUS CONSULT to law enforcement.
(d) Legitimate interest: In specific situations, we process your data to pursue our legitimate interests in a way which might reasonably be expected as part of running our business and which does not materially impact your rights, freedom or interests. For example, we will use information about QPLUS CONSULT events you attended and QPLUS CONSULT resources you accessed to send you personalized offers. We will also use your address details to send you direct marketing information, telling you about products and services that we think might interest you.
6 WHO HAS ACCESS TO YOUR PERSONAL DATE?
Following persons and organisations can have access to your Personal Data:
- QPLUS CONSULT’s employees, if their function/job description requires it;
- third parties under restricted conditions (see section 8);
- relevant authorities, if imposed by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with legal process, to protect the rights of QPLUS CONSULT and its website or, in certain circumstances, to protect the health, safety or welfare of QPLUS CONSULT or its employees, users of QPLUS CONSULT’s products and services or members of the public.
7 HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA SECURED?
The security of personal information is important to QPLUS CONSULT, and QPLUS CONSULT employs various security measures and procedures to protect you against the unauthorized access, improper use, or loss of information that is collected through the QPLUS CONSULT website and other means. QPLUS CONSULT secures access to all transactional areas of the QPLUS CONSULT website using ‘https’ technology. Credit card information is stored encrypted within our association management system.
The security measures further include firewalls and other software and hardware protecting QPLUS CONSULT’s sites and data from intrusion. QPLUS CONSULT also controls access to its network by requiring credentials for users. QPLUS CONSULT has standard procedures for granting and revoking credentials. QPLUS CONSULT enforces rules for length of passwords and characters included, and requires users to change their passwords on a regular schedule. Within the applications storing personal information, users are placed into security groups that limit their access to the information associated with performing their job functions.
However, those providing personal information to QPLUS CONSULT should keep in mind that the QPLUS CONSULT website, network, and information management system are run on software, hardware and networks, any component of which may, from time to time, require maintenance or experience problems or breaches of security. No method of transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage is one hundred percent secure and we cannot guarantee its absolute security. Users of the website are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of their username and password and are responsible for any unauthorized use.
8 DISCLOSURE TO THIRD PARTIES
QPLUS CONSULT will not sell, rent, exchange, publish or otherwise share your Personal Data with any third party except as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy.
We collaborate with other companies and organisations (i.e. third parties) that may receive your Personal Datato provide services for QPLUS CONSULT’s, such as:
- website hosting;
- IT service providers;
- software service providers;
- packaging;
- payment services;
- mailing;
- customer service functions;
- online learning;
- job listings;
- podcasts;
- news aggregation;
- online community platforms;
- customer surveys;
- conference management partners;
- housing services.
QPLUS CONSULT will only transfer the Personal Data that is strictly necessary to perform the requested service. Also, third parties are required to maintain the confidentiality of such data and are prohibited to use that data for any other purpose than the requested service. Third parties can be located in- or outside the European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) and Switzerland. For information about the protection mechanisms in place for Personal Data transfers to third parties located outside this region, see section 9‘Disclosure to Third Countries’.
QPLUS CONSULT constantly strives to provide members and registered users of the QPLUS CONSULT’s websites with up-to-date webinars and white papers that are relevant for them and allow staying abreast of the latest developments. While these webinars and white papers are provided at no charge to the members and registered users, producing and providing them can be costly. QPLUS CONSULT invites third parties to create or pay for the creation or provision of such webinars and white papers in exchange for being allowed to contact members and registered users who registered for the webinar or downloaded the white paper with messages asking to consider use of their products or services. This is needed for QPLUS CONSULT to offer webinars and white papers at no charge, which is QPLUS CONSULT’s legitimate interest to further its mission.
Member names and business contact information are made available to other members in QPLUS CONSULT’s online communities to the extent the user agrees to share this information in privacy settings they control. QPLUS CONSULT’s Communities are online forums that enable members to interact and form cross-disciplinary teams as they share information, raise concerns, mentor one another, and publish their shared work accomplishing more as a group than any one person could alone. If you have a QPLUS CONSULT account, you can view the Communities privacy settings here (login required).
QPLUS CONSULT may also include contact information in attendee lists distributed to other attendees, speakers, or exhibitors of this QPLUS CONSULT event. This information is only provided for use at the event.
QPLUS CONSULT may further disclose your personal information to the relevant authority if required to do so by law, or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with legal process, to protect the rights of QPLUS CONSULT and its website or, in certain circumstances, to protect the health, safety or welfare of QPLUS CONSULT or its employees, users of QPLUS CONSULT’s products and services or members of the public.
9 DISCLOSURE TO THIRD COUNTRIES
Personal Data collected in Switzerland and/or inside the EU/EEA, will only be transferred to third countries (i.e. countries that have not been recognized by both the European Commission and the Swiss Federal Data Protection Commissioner as providing an adequate level of data protection), on the basis of Standard Contractual Clauses adopted by the European Commission conform GDPR legislation.
10 RIGHTS OF THE DATA SUBJECT
- you have the right to request a copy from QPLUS CONSULT of what Personal Data is held about you;
- you have the right to request rectification or erasure of your Personal Data;
- you have the right to request a restriction of, or objection against the processing of your Personal Data;
- you have the right to request a transfer of your Personal Data, that is held by QPLUS CONSULT, to a third party;
- you have the right not to be subject to automated decision making;
- you have the right to opt-out from direct marketing of QPLUS CONSULT (either through specific channels, or all channels). Please note that some non-marketing communications, such as product download and sales transactions, are not subject to general opt-out;
- you have the right to lodge a complaint with the competent supervisory authority (www.be) if you are under the impression that i) a data breach has occurred in the context of your use of the QPLUS CONSULT website or QPLUS CONSULT’s services, or ii) European and/or national privacy legislations are violated.
Members and other customers have the option to determine how they receive their various communications from QPLUS CONSULT (i.e. whether they prefer to receive communications at their home e-mail address rather than their work e-mail address, etc.). After registration, members can change how they wish to receive their membership benefits and other customers can change how they wish to receive communications from QPLUS CONSULT, through the ‘My Subscriptions’ feature of their customer account area.
For all your questions regarding your rights, and for rights request, please send an e-mail with the subject line: ‘GDPR rights’ to info@qplusconsult.com.
11 USER CONTRIBUTION
You also may provide information to be published or displayed on QPLUS CONSULT discussion boards, online forums, online communities, or other public areas of the website, or transmitted to other uses of the website or third parties (collectively, ‘User Contributions’). You provide User Contributions and transmit them to others at your own risk. We cannot control the actions of other users of the website with whom you may choose to share your User Contributions. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that your User Contributions will not be viewed by unauthorized persons.
12 PHOTOGRAPHY, AUDIO AND VIDEO RECORDING AT EVENTS
If you attend a QPLUS CONSULT event, we may take photographs of you at the event. We may also make video and audio recordings of events (both face to face and online) that may include your participation in the event, including your image, questions, and comments. QPLUS CONSULT uses photography and recorded video and audio to promote our events and to make them available for later use to support QPLUS CONSULT’s mission to improve health and well-being worldwide by promoting the exchange of vital information and issues related to healthcare products, technologies and services. Events go by extremely quickly. Attendees, speakers and exhibitors cannot attend all sessions and discussions. Photography and recordings are essential to allow attendees, speakers and exhibitors to learn from sessions and discussions they couldn’t attend, capture the energy and atmosphere outside the official sessions, and allow persons who could not attend to view what was transpired and learn from the event.
13 TWITTER WALLS
Tweets are public by default. At QPLUS CONSULT events, QPLUS CONSULT may operate a Twitter wall that displays relevant Tweets by event attendees, speakers, or exhibitors. QPLUS CONSULT encourages using event specific hashtags so that relevant Tweets appear on the Twitter wall. Attendees, speakers or exhibitors might not use the event specific hashtags because they do not remember them when sending a Tweet, because of the 140 character limitation, or because it is inconvenient to use them repeatedly when communications evolve between a number of participants or split into different sub-topics. QPLUS CONSULT has a legitimate interest, however, to catch and display on its Twitter wall all relevant Tweets, discussions and interactions connected to the event and the event’s subject matter, regardless whether not they contain the event specific hashtags. This is important to further QPLUS CONSULT’s mission and inform attendees about current trends and upcoming developments. For this reason, QPLUS CONSULT may use your personal information to search for the Twitter handles of attendees, speakers, or exhibitors and ensure that their public Tweets sent by these Twitter handles and related to the QPLUS CONSULT event or its subject matter are displayed on QPLUS CONSULT’s Twitter wall.
14 CREDIT CARD ACCOUNT INFORMATION
QPLUS CONSULT does not use or disclose credit card account information provided by customers except as described in section 8‘Disclosures To Third Parties’ section of this Privacy Policy. We submit only the information needed to obtain payment to the appropriate clearinghouse. Credit card information is stored encrypted within our association management system.
15 LINKS TO NON-QPLUS CONSULT WEBSITES
This Privacy Policy does not apply to any other website not affiliated with QPLUS CONSULT, and QPLUS CONSULT is not responsible for content and privacy concerns involving non-QPLUS CONSULT websites. Although the QPLUS CONSULT website or e-mails sent by QPLUS CONSULT link to other internet websites, QPLUS CONSULT takes no responsibility for the content or information contained on those other websites and does not exert any editorial or other control over those other websites, including their privacy practices. We recommend that you review the privacy practices of such other websites and make your own conclusions regarding the adequacy of their practices.
The QPLUS CONSULT website may include social media features such as the Facebook like button, widgets or interactive mini-programs that run on our website. These features may collect your IP address, browsing information and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Your data will only be transferred to the social media providers if you are logged in with your profile on the corresponding social network. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policies of the parties providing them.
If this makes you uncomfortable, you can switch off this function at our Cookie settings.
16 COOKIES AND TRACKING TECHNOLOGY
Our online service makes use of cookies. Cookies are small files in which we can store information, so that you do not have to fill out that information again. We can also use them to see whether you are visiting us again.
The first time you visit our online service, we will show you a notification explaining our cookies and ask for your permission for the use of these cookies. You have the ability to accept or decline QPLUS CONSULT’s use of cookies in the website by modifying your web browser setting. However, to use the members-only areas or personalized features and in order for QPLUS CONSULT to be able to correctly process the services in the members-only area, your browser must be set to accept cookies.
You can disable the use of cookies through your browser setting at the Cookie settings, but some parts of our website may not work properly as a result of that.We made arrangements with other parties who place cookies through our website. Nevertheless, we cannot fully control what they are doing with their cookies, so please read their privacy statements as well.
You can find the following types of cookies on our website:
| Website Statistics | We use Google Analytics and Hotjar to track visitors on our website and to get reports about how visitors use the website. See below sections. |
| Functional Cookies | WordPress uses a cookie during your visit to our website to check if your browser supports cookies. These cookies are used to optimise your visit and keep track of your personal preferences. |
| Social Media and Video Tools | We use services of other companies for some plugins. We have come to an agreement with these other companies about the function and use of their cookies. Nevertheless, we cannot fully control what they are doing with their cookies, so we advise you to read their privacy statements as well. The following companies have placed their cookie on our website: Vimeo, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. |
| Hubspot Cookies | We use Hubspot to safely collect, save and use your personal data and contact preferences you have provided to us. We also use cookies to ensure the proper functioning of our website and to keep your personal preferences up-to-date. We have come to a strict data processing agreement with Hubspot. They are allowed to keep track of the following data: name and surname, telephone number, e-mail address, participation details (from events, online subscriptions and/or meetings), IP-address, social ID and cookie ID. |
| Hotjar | We use Hotjar to track visitors on our website and to get reports about how visitors use the website. We have come to a strict data processing agreement and we do anonymize the IP-addresses. We also use Hotjar to conduct anonymous surveys on our website. |
| Google Analytics | The QPLUS CONSULT’s websites 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 analyse how users use the site, to track visitors on our website and to get reports about how visitors use the website. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. In case of activation of the IP anonymization, Google will truncate/anonymize the last octet of the IP address for Member States of the European Union as well as for other parties to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases, the full IP address is sent to and shortened by Google servers in the USA. On behalf of the website provider Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage to the website provider. 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. Furthermore you can prevent Google’s collection and use of data (cookies and IP address) by downloading and installing the browser plug-in available under https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en-GB. |
Some web browsers may transmit ‘do not track’ signals to the websites with which the browser communicates. There is no standard that governs what, if anything, websites should do when they receive these signals. We do not currently take action in response to these signals. We may revise this policy if and when a standard for responding to these signals is established.
If you receive emails from QPLUS CONSULT, and you follow links within those emails to our website, you will be identified due to the code within the links and your interactions with our site will be recorded in our marketing system.
17 AMENDMENTS
It is possible that this Privacy Policy becomes subject to an update. For example as a result of newly implemented company services or new European or national legislation, potentially altering the way QPLUS CONSULT Processes your Personal Data. If the content of our Privacy Policy is adapted, we will post a notice of those changes on our home page so our users are always aware of what Personal Data we collect, how we process it, and under what circumstances (if any) we disclose it. The Effective Date below will be altered accordingly.
We encourage you to periodically review this page and the website’s home page for the latest information on our privacy practice. Use of the website after notification of the changes to the Privacy Policy constitutes your acceptance of the changed Privacy Policy.
18 QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS
If you have any question regarding our Privacy Policy, your rights as Data Subject or suspect that QPLUS CONSULT has handled your Personal Data in a manner that does not comply with this Privacy Policy, please contact us at info@qplusconsult.com.
Effective date: 23 May 2019