Privacy Notice

1.    Why this Privacy Notice?

This is the Privacy Notice of Advanced Power Solutions NV (“APS”, “we” or “us”).

We attach great importance to your privacy and privacy protection. We therefore take all appropriate measures to protect your personal data in accordance with the applicable data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).

This Privacy Notice applies to the processing of your personal data by APS in the context of our services, devices, products, websites or applications that refer to or link to the Privacy Notice (collectively, our "Services"). The Privacy Notice applies to and will apply whether you access our Services using a computer, mobile phone, tablet, TV, or other device.

This Privacy Notice will tell you which personal data we process, how, why and what rights you have in this respect, with whom your data can be shared with etc. We try to inform you in a transparent way.

2.    Who is responsible for processing your data?

We (APS). We are the so-called ‘data controller’. This means that we determine the purposes and means of the processing and are responsible for the lawful processing of your data in the context of our Services.

3.    How to contact us?

Advanced Power Solutions NV      
Nieuwe Gentsesteenweg 21      
1702 Groot-Bijgaarden Belgium 
Registered No. 0414.688.361
(company registration number)

Email: [info@ap.solutions]

4.    What is personal data?

For the purposes of this Privacy Notice, personal data consists of any information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual (such as you). For example, information which identifies you may be your name, address, telephone number, photographs, payment details, a specific Advanced Power Solutions product/device identification number that you purchased, location data, an online identifier (e.g. cookies and your IP address), etc. Information which does not identify you on its own but that we link to you also qualifies as personal data.

5.    What personal data does APS collect about you?

A.    Personal data you provide directly about yourself         

Some Services we offer enable/require you to process your personal data as follows.

• When you create an APS account on our websites, applications           
  When you create an APS account on an APS website or application, we ask you to provide certain personal data, such as your first name, last name, email address and country of residence. The required specific information may vary on the Service you have chosen.
• When you register a product or device with APS    
  If you choose to register the relevant product or device with us in order to enable certain features or benefit from any extended warranty or promotion. In order to register your product or device we may collect personal data, such as your name, address, phone number, email address and information about the APS product or device you own, such as its serial numbers (or other product/device identifier) and the date of purchase.
• When you communicate with APS       
  When you contact us or interact with our customer support representatives via email, live chat, telephone or in person, we may collect personal data, such as your name, mailing address, phone number, email address and contact preferences; and we may also collect information about the APS products or devices you own, such as their serial numbers and date of purchase. We also may create logs/reports that are useful in diagnosing product, Service or application performance related issues, and capture information relating to the issue. We use this information to provide you with customer and product support. We may access your 'My APS' Account, or other relevant APS accounts, in order to provide you with the necessary assistance or support you require or have requested. We may also record and review your conversations with our customer support representatives (e.g. when you contact us by telephone), for training and complaints handling, and also to review any information you have provided in response to a voluntary customer survey(s). We will only record and/or review your conversations with us where we are permitted to do so by applicable laws and we will tell you that we are doing so at the start of the conversation at the latest.
• Message boards and forums      
  Some APS websites and applications have message boards, forums, bulletin boards, chat functionality, blogs, and similar features ("Community Postings") through which you can post information, messages and other materials. When you disclose any personal data through such Services we recommend you to be very careful as this may become public information and be available to visitors to our websites and to the general public. In order to participate in Community Postings we collect certain personal data, which includes your name, username, password, email address and contact details (e.g. email address, telephone number) and in certain cases product information such as model and serial number and any other information that you decide to communicate on such Community Postings.
• Promotions, games, prize draws and competitions 
  If you enter into sweepstakes, contests, online games, prize draws, competitions or online promotions, e.g. cash back ("Activities"), we may use the personal data you provide to administer the Activities which includes, your first name, last name, address, email address and country of residence.
• Subscriptions and newsletters  
  Where you subscribe to our promotional communications and newsletters we will collect personal data from you including your email address, first name and last name. We will only provide such subscription services to you in accordance with applicable laws and where you have expressly requested us to do so.
• When you upload personal data to an APS website or online application
  In addition to the above, we may collect such other personal data that you provide by uploading content (e.g. videos or photos) onto our websites or online applications. In such cases, the following personal data may be collected in order to publish the content on our websites or online applications: your name, email address, invoicing details as proof of evidence (e.g. for some online promotions) and any personal data in the content that you choose to upload. Where we collect such content we will only do so in accordance with applicable laws and not use such personal data for any other purposes than the purposes explained in this Privacy Notice.

B.    Information about your use of the Services         
We may collect information about your use of our Services through software on your APS device/product and other means, or your use of our online applications. For example, we may collect:

• Device/product information such as your hardware model, the MAC address of the device’s wireless network interface and the mobile phone number used by the device in case you contact APS mobile network information, your mobile operating system, the type of mobile browser you use, time zone setting, and other unique device identifiers, IP address, operating system details, and settings of the device you use to access the Services.
• Log information- such as the time and duration of your use of the Service, search query terms you enter through the Services, and any information stored in cookies that we have set on your device (such as your pc, mobile phone or tablet) or our application.
• Location information- such as your product or device’s GPS signal or information about nearby WiFi access points and cell towers that may be transmitted to us when you use certain Services. Some of our location-enabled Services require your Personal Information for the feature to work. If you wish to use the particular feature, you will be asked to consent to your data being used for this purpose at the time of data collection. You can withdraw your consent at any time by altering the settings in your device/product.
• Voice information - such as recordings of your voice that we make and may store on our servers when you use voice commands.
• Other information - about your use of the Services, such as the online applications you use, the websites you visit, and how you interact with content offered through our Services.

C.    Personal Information from third party sources   
We may receive personal data from third parties (i.e. other companies) as follows:

• Information from publicly available sources 
  We may receive or process personal data about you from publicly available sources, provided the receipt of such information is in accordance with applicable laws, which we may combine with other information we receive from or about you.
• When you login to account with your social media credentials  
  We also may receive information about you from social networking sites when you choose to connect with those sites.        
  APS Account allows you to sign up and log in using your Facebook, YouTube (or other social network) account. If you do so, you allow Facebook (or other social network providers) to share certain personal data from your Facebook account with us. This personal data includes your name, general location, a link to your Facebook profile, your time zone, your profile picture, your "likes" and your list of "friends". This personal data is collected by Facebook, as controller, is provided to us and becomes subject to this Privacy Notice.           
  We recommend that you become familiar with Facebook functioning so as to know how you can control your Personal Data and its sharing by Facebook with us using any privacy setting in your Facebook account.

6.    On which legal basis can we process your personal data?

We are not allowed to process your personal data if we cannot rely on a valid legal ground. Therefore we will only process your personal data on one or more of the following legal grounds:

• we have obtained your prior, informed and unambiguous consent;
• the processing is necessary to perform our contractual obligations towards you or to take pre-contractual steps at your request;
• the processing is necessary to comply with our legal or regulatory obligations;
• the processing is necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another natural person;
• or the processing is necessary for our legitimate interests except where they are overridden by your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms. 

Examples of such 'legitimate interests' include:

• to benefit from cost-effective services (e.g. we may opt to use certain platforms offered by suppliers);
  • to protect the security of our IT systems, architecture and networks; and
  • to meet our corporate and social responsibility objectives.

The applicable legal basis is indicated per purpose below in section 4.

7.    Why and on which basis do we process your personal data?

We may process your personal data for the following purposes:

• Create an Account/Log in on our Websites, Applications – to enable you to create a profile on our websites, applications, and to enable you to log in to such websites, and applications. 

Legal basis: this processing is done in the context of the preparation and/or execution a contract we have with you or on the basis of our legitimate (commercial) interests which, in this perspective, outweigh your (privacy) rights (as you can reasonably except such processing).

• Registering products/devices - to register you or your device or product for any of our Services.

Legal basis: our contract or our legitimate (commercial) interests.

• Provide our Services - to provide our Services or any specific feature that you request, including to enable us to fulfil our obligations under any contract with you (such as, any product or device warranty).

Legal basis: our contract or our legitimate (commercial) interests.

• Surveys – to ask for your opinions or comments on our Services and to conduct other surveys.

Legal basis: our legitimate (commercial) interests.

• Customised and Targeting Content - to provide customised content and make recommendations based on your past activities on our Services. We may use your personal data to more effectively target our Services, content, recommendations, advertisements and communications (more information on this can be found in our Cookie Policy).

Legal basis: your consent.

• Direct marketing activities - to provide you with newsletters and other communications by post, email, telephone and/or text message (SMS).

Legal basis: if you are a customer or user, APS relies on its legitimate interests. If you are not we require your prior consent for any unsolicited commercial messages and/or processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes.

Please note that you can, at any time and free of charge, object to the processing of your data for direct marketing purposes.

(See sections 8 and 11 below.)

• Profiling – to make predictions about your interests and provide you with direct marketing on that basis.

Legal basis: our legitimate (commercial) interests.

(See also section 11 below.)

• Advertising - for advertising, such as providing customised advertisements and sponsored content and sending you promotional communications.

Legal basis: if you are a customer or user, APS relies on its legitimate interests. If you are not we require your prior consent for any unsolicited commercial messages and/or processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes.

(See also section 11 below.)

• Analysis Purposes - for assessment and analysis of our market, customers, products, devices and other Services (including asking you for your opinions on our products and services and carrying out customer surveys).

Legal basis: our legitimate (commercial) interests.

• Statistics – to create anonymous, aggregated statistics about the use of our Services. This anonymised data may be shared with third parties.      
   
• Service Improvement – to develop and improve new and existing Advanced Power Solutions products and Services, recommendations, advertisements and other communications and learn more about your preferences.

Legal basis: our legitimate (commercial) interests.

• Customer Support Services - to provide customer support services for your device or product, or to deal with any other support queries you may have (such as complaint handling).

Legal basis: our contract or legitimate (commercial) interests.

• Business Purposes - for business monitoring and internal record keeping.

Legal basis: our contract or legitimate (commercial) interests.

• Publish your comments – where you upload product or device reviews, comments or content to our websites or applications, or where you have responded to a voluntary survey, we may link to, publish or publicize your comments including in our own advertisements.

Legal basis: our legitimate (commercial) interests.

• Security – to protect our customers (e.g. to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of our Services); to operate and maintain the security of our Services (e.g. to prevent or stop an attack on our systems or networks); or to protect the rights or property of Advanced Power Solutions, including enforcing any terms or agreements governing the use of our Services.

Legal basis: our legitimate (commercial) interests.

• Legal Obligations - to comply with our legal obligations under European Member States laws or under European Union law or any other applicable legislation.

Legal basis: complying with legal obligations.

• Competitions and Promotions - to conduct Activities and record your participation thereto, as permitted by law as well as to provide your personal data to our partners and sponsors of such Activities.

Legal basis: our legitimate (commercial) interests.

• Training – for staff training and quality assurance purposes, particularly in relation to our customer support representatives.

Legal basis: our legitimate (commercial) interests.

• Updates - to communicate with you, including communicating with you about your account, profiles or transactions with us, giving you important information about your products, devices, application or other Services, sending you notices about any material changes to our Privacy Notice.

Legal basis: our contract or legitimate (commercial) interests.

• Combining personal data – to combine personal data we collect from you, for example to allow us to provide better support services and more personalised content.

Legal basis: if you are a customer or user, APS relies on its legitimate interests. If you are not we require your prior consent for any unsolicited personalized commercial messages and/or processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes.

• Corporate Transaction – to manage corporate transactions involving our company including reorganisation, merger, transfer, sale, joint venture, assignment or other disposition of all or any portion of Advanced Power Solutions business, assets or stock, including, without limitation, in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceeding.

Legal basis: our legitimate (commercial) interests.

8.    To whom and where do we disclose your Personal Information?

We will not disclose your personal data to third parties for their own independent marketing or business purposes without your consent. However, we may disclose your personal data to the following entities for the purposes indicated below:         

A. Third party recipients of your personal data

• Advanced Power Solutions Affiliates  
  We may need to transfer your personal data to other Advanced Power Solutions Affiliates to provide the Services you require or any other services/assistance you request. All Advanced Power Solutions Affiliates are required to follow the privacy practices set forth in this Privacy Notice.
• Selected Partners  
  We may share your personal data with our carefully selected business partners, including wireless carriers. These partners may use your personal data to provide you with APS Services you request (such as, video content), make predictions about your interests and may provide you with promotional materials, advertisements and other materials.
• Service Providers  
  We use third party service providers to help us to administer certain activities and services on our behalf, such as fulfilling your purchases and delivering products, administering Activities, processing credit card payments, sending postal mail and emails, sending text messages (SMS), providing advertisements, analysing usage of our Services, tracking effectiveness of our marketing campaigns, allowing users to connect to their social network, providing fraud checking services and customer support services. We may share personal data about you with such third party service providers solely for the purpose of enabling them to perform services on our behalf and they will operate only in accordance with our instructions. Here are examples of third-party service providers we use:
• Email Service Providers – Cloud services from e.g. Eloqua by Oracle are used to assist us in sending emails to you in accordance with your marketing preferences;
• Analytics Service Providers – analytics providers are used to assist us in understanding the usage of our products/devices and other Services, to enable us to improve our Services. The analytics providers we currently use are Google Analytics. For further information see our Cookie Policy.
• Social Network Providers            
  We may provide your personal data, such as your email address, to certain social networking providers so that they can help us display advertisements about our Services on your social network pages. We will only share your personal data with social networking providers in accordance with your marketing preferences and any applicable laws.
• Third parties when required by Law or to protect our Services or business
  We will disclose your personal data to comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies; to protect our customers (e.g. to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of our Services); to operate and maintain the security of our Services (e.g. to prevent or stop an attack on our systems or networks); or to protect the rights or property of Advanced Power Solutions, including enforcing any terms or agreements governing the use of our Services.
• Anonymous statistics      
  We prepare and develop anonymous, aggregate or generic data and statistics for various reasons (as indicated in this Privacy Notice). As this data is anonymous (i.e. you cannot be identified from it) we do not consider this information to be person al data. As such, we may share it with any third party (such as our Affiliates, partners, advertisers or otherwise).
• Other parties with your consent or at your direction          
  We may share personal data about you with third parties when you consent to or request such sharing explicitly.

A number of APS Services give you the option and ability to upload and share certain personal data, such as, messages, photos, videos and other content. Any personal data that you choose to upload and share on a publicly accessible profile may be viewed and accessed by others. As such, you should always exercise caution when using such APS Services.

B.    International transfers of your personal data       
The personal data that we collect from you are only stored and processed within the European Economic Area ("EEA").

Where we would transfer your personal data outside the EEA, we will ensure that suitable safeguards such as appropriate transfer agreements and mechanisms (such as the EU Model Clauses) are in place and any required additional measures to help ensure that our third party service providers provide an adequate level of protection to your personal data. You may request additional information in this respect and obtain a copy of the relevant safeguards upon request through sending a request to the contact indicated in the Contact Us/Further Information section of this Privacy Notice, below.

9.    What do we do to keep your personal data secure?

A.    General    
APS have put in place appropriate physical and technical (security) measures to protect the personal data we collect in connection with our Services. These measures take into account:

• the state of the art of the technology;
• the costs of its implementation;
• the nature of the data; and
• the risk of the processing.

The purpose thereof is to protect against accidental or unlawful destruction or alteration, accidental loss, unauthorized disclosure or access and against other unlawful forms of processing.

However, please note that although we take appropriate steps to protect your Personal Information, no website, product, device, online application or transmission of data, computer system or wireless connection is completely secure and therefore we cannot guarantee the 100% security of your personal data.

B.    Encryption         
All personal data you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password that enables you to access certain Services, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential and we ask you not to share your password with anyone.

C.    Other security measures       
Information security, including the protection of personal data, is organized in a global Advanced Power Solutions Program called “Information Security Management” (ISM). The related aim, standards and implementation measures are organized in globally valid policy, standards and guidelines. All central European IT systems are externally assessed and fall under the information security management rules applicable under the ISO 27001 certification. The program in all its parts follow a strong yearly PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) approach to secure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of all data (including your personal data) for the whole information lifecycle from collection to destruction of such data.

D.    Using social media and forum features    
Certain Services include social networking, chat room or forum features. You should ensure that when using these features that you do not submit any personal data that you do not want to be seen, collected or used by other users.

10.    What are your rights and how can you exercise them?

A.    What are your rights? 
APS will collect, store and process your personal data in accordance with your rights under any applicable data protection laws. Your rights under the GDPR include the right to access a copy of your personal data, the right to request the correction or the update of any inaccurate personal data and the right to object to the processing of your personal data under the conditions set out in applicable law. At any time you have the right to object to the processing of your data for direct marketing purposes. You also have the right to request the erasure of your personal data and, where you have consented to the processing of your personal data, you have the right to withdraw such consent at any time (without this withdrawal affecting the lawfulness of the processing prior to such withdrawal). In addition, you also have the right to data portability in certain cases. This is the right to request the return of the personal data you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and to request the transmission of such personal data to a third party, without hindrance from us and subject to your own confidentiality obligations.

B.    Exercising your rights 
If you wish to exercise any of the above rights, please contact us by using any of the communication means below in the Contact Us/Further Information section of this Privacy Notice.

In doing so, you must identify yourself. If we have any reason to doubt your identity, we may ask you for additional information necessary to verify and confirm your identity. Generally, we will request a copy of your identity card in order to verify who is actually making the request. Please ensure that any information or data not required for the verification and confirmation of your identity is blacked out or otherwise removed or rendered illegible.

C.    Complaints         
If you are not satisfied with how we process your personal data, you may contact us using any of the communication means below in the Contact Us/Further Information section of this Privacy Notice or alternatively you may file a complaint with the competent supervisory authority, in addition to your rights outlined above.

In Belgium the competent supervisory authority is the Data Protection Authority (Drukpersstraat 35, 1000 Brussels - T: +32(0)2 274 48 00 - E: contact@apd-gba.be).

11.    Data Retention – how long do we store/keep your personal data?

We will retain your personal data for the period necessary to fulfil the purposes for which your personal data has been collected as outlined in this Privacy Notice unless a longer retention period is required by law. When your personal data is no longer required for the purpose it was collected or as required by applicable law, it will be deleted and/or returned to you in accordance with applicable law.

The retention period for your personal data may vary depending on the purposes of the processing and our legal obligations. E.g. we will keep your data in the context of the performance of our Services for a maximum of 10 years after the termination of the contract. We will have to keep certain accounting and tax documents (if any) for 7 years. For other categories of data and purposes, specific or legal retention periods may apply.

In any case, as a general rule, we do not keep your data longer than necessary.

12.    Third-party links 

Our websites, applications and Services may contain links to other third party websites or services that are not operated by APS, and our websites or your products, services and/or devices may contain applications that you can download from third parties. These linked sites and applications are not under APS control and as such, we are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any linked websites and online applications. If you choose to use any third party websites or applications, any personal data collected by the third party’s website or application will be subject to any existing privacy policy of that third party. We strongly recommend that you take the time to review the privacy policies of any third parties to which you provide personal data.

13.    Cookies

A.    What are cookies?       
APS, as well as certain other third parties that provide content, advertising, or other functionality on our Services, may use cookies and other technologies in certain areas of our Services. Cookies are small tracking codes that can be read by a web server in the domain that put the cookie on your hard drive. We may use cookies to store your preferences and settings, help you with signing in, provide targeted ads, and analyse site operations. Please note that you can modify your browser so that it notifies you when cookies are sent to it. If you do not want to receive cookies, you may also refuse cookies altogether by activating the relevant settings on your browser. Please note that if you choose to refuse all the cookies, some features of the Services may not be accessible to you or not work properly. Finally, you can also delete cookies that have already been sent.

B.    Further information on cookies        
For further information on what cookies are, how APS and other third parties use them, and for details of how cookies can be disabled, please see our Cookie Policy.

14.    Your choices (e.g. marketing related emails or otherwise)

We and other Advanced Power Solutions Affiliates may use your personal data (such as your contact details (e.g. first name, last name, address, email address, telephone number)) to send you marketing-related correspondence by post, email, telephone and/or text message (such as SMS) related to APS products, devices and other Services in accordance with your email and contact preferences or as you otherwise agree to.        
When you purchase APS products, Services or devices, contact our customer support representatives, create an account or profile for one of our Services, or subscribe to one of our Services, you may be given the opportunity to opt-in to (or where permitted by applicable law, opt-out of) the receiving of such marketing-related correspondence.
We do not share personal data with third parties for the third parties’ marketing purposes.

We may also use your personal data to personalise and to target more effectively our marketing communications to ensure, to the extent possible, that any marketing-related correspondence is relevant to you. 

To opt out of receiving marketing-related correspondence from APS, please update your email and contact preferences or click "Unsubscribe" from any marketing or promotional email you receive from us.

15.    Children's personal data

A.    Who is a child? 
APS considers a child to by anyone under the age of 16, or such younger age as may be specified by applicable data protection laws.

B.    Do we collect personal data from children?         
We do not knowingly collect or try to collect personal data from or about children without the consent of a parent or guardian. Where we do collect personal data from children, we will always use reasonable efforts to verify that consent has been given or authorised by the child's parent or guardian.

C.    What do we do when children submit personal data to us?    
If we become aware that personal data that has been submitted to us relates to a child without the consent of a parent or guardian, we will use reasonable efforts to:
delete that personal data as soon as possible; or if deletion is not possible, we will ensure that this personal data is not used for any purpose, nor disclosed further to any third party.

D.    Parent or guardian queries    
If you are a parent or guardian and you have queries regarding APS processing of your child's personal data, please contact us using the details provided in the "Contact Us/Further Information" section below.

16.    Changes to this Privacy Notice

APS may change this Privacy Notice from time to time. The “Date last updated” at the bottom of this page states when the notice was last updated and any changes will become effective upon our posting of the revised Privacy Notice. We will provide notice to you if these changes are material and, where required by applicable law, we will obtain your consent. We will provide this notice by email or by posting notice of the changes on the Advanced Power Solutions website or through any relevant Services.

17.    Contact Us / Further Information

If you have any questions regarding the collection, processing, or use of your personal data or if you wish to correct, block, rectify, object, access, revoke your consent to any applicable aspect of this Privacy Notice or delete any of your Personal data, please contact us:

Advanced Power Solutions NV      
Nieuwe Gentsesteenweg 21          
1702 Groot-Bijgaarden Belgium    
Registered No. 0414.688.361 (company registration number)

Date last updated: 31 October 2023