PRIVACY POLICY

1. Introduction

FuMe AG (hereinafter, « FuMe» or « we » or « us ») is committed to protecting your data and respecting your privacy.

FuMe has, therefore, established a precise policy (hereinafter, the « Privacy Policy ») which is designed to assist you in understanding how we collect, use, transfer, disclose, store and protect (hereinafter, the « Treatment ») any of your personal information.  

In addition to this Privacy Policy, our Terms of Use describe the terms and conditions governing your access to and use of our website https://www.meerapfel.com/ (hereinafter, the « Website »).

All Treatment of your personal data is done in a transparent manner and in accordance with EU data protection laws, including the « GDPR » (Regulation 2016/679 of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data). We undertake to respect our obligations and your rights regarding the Treatment of your personal data.

We invite you to read this Privacy Policy carefully. The use of this Website signifies your agreement to be bound by both the Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. If you do not agree to the Terms of Use and/or the Privacy Policy, please do not use our Website and/or do not act as provided by Article 3.2. of this Privacy Policy.

1. What personal data are subject of Treatment ?

• The term « personal data », as used in this Privacy Policy, refers to any data that can be used to identify you (whether by itself or when linked with other information in the possession of FuMe). For examples: your name, your phone number, your email address, your payment data, and any other relevant information that may be provided in order to fulfill the purposes set out in Article 2 of this Privacy Policy.

• However, and as a general rule, no Treatment is accomplished by FuMe regarding sensitive personal data (e.g. information related to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion or other beliefs, health etc.).

• While using the Website, we may ask you to provide certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you. Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to: (i) Email address, (ii) First name and last name.

2. What is the purpose of the Treatment of your personal data ?

Your personal data shall be treated for the following purposes:

• to respond to enquiries and messages we receive from you and to keep records of correspondence;
• to conduct product-related surveys and prospect surveys;
• to conclude or execute an agreement with you;
• to analyze, manage and improve our Website;
• to help us diagnose problems with our server or other technical issues relating to the performance of our Website;
• to comply with a legal obligation;
• to contact you;
• to provide you with news, special offers and general information about other goods, services and events which we offer.

3. How do we collect your personal data ?

3.1.      Treatment (and collection) of your personal data can concern :

• All personal data that are voluntarily and directly given by you to us or to any of the entities promoted in our website and their affiliates, subsidiaries, subcontractors, agents or distributors (“the Promoted Entities”); and

• All personal data that are voluntarily but passively given by you and collected by us or by the Promoted Entities; and

• All personal data that are indirectly accessible through other sources (such as Internet) and that are relevant to our activity and the purpose of the present Privacy Policy, unless such collection of data is prohibited by law.

3.2.      Information are considered to be provided voluntarily by you when you:

• register on our Website;
• use any of the contact, purchase or donation form of FuMe or of the Promoted Entities ;
• enter into contact by email, mail or phone call* with FuMe, its representatives or employees, or the Promoted Entities (*We do not record phone calls) ;
• sign up an agreement with or order products from FuMe or the Promoted Entities.

3.3.       As you navigate through our Website, certain information can be passively collected using various technologies and means such as IP address, cookies, Internet tags and navigational data collection. These technologies help us better understand your behavior, tell us which parts of our Website you have visited, and facilitate and measure the effectiveness of advertisements and web searches. We treat information collected by cookies and other technologies as non‑personal information. However, to the extent that Internet Protocol (IP) addresses or similar identifiers are considered personal information by local law, we also treat these identifiers as personal information. Similarly, to the extent that non-personal information is combined with personal information, we treat the combined information as personal information for the purposes of this Privacy Policy.

When you visit our Website, our web server automatically and temporarily records the following information for system security purposes: Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, browser type and language, Internet service provider (ISP), referring and exit websites and applications, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data.

Our Website also uses necessary cookies and cannot function properly without these cookies:

According to the GDPR, we can store cookies on your device if they are strictly necessary for the operation of the Website. Those necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions. For all other types of cookies, we shall need your permission.

If you want to disable cookies, check with your provider to find out how to disable cookies. Please note that certain or all features of the Website may not be available once cookies are disabled.

Our website also uses unnecessary cookies (e.g. statistic, marketing). You can control and / or delete cookies as you wish.

To find out more, visit www.aboutcookies.org or the website specifically dedicated to your browser Firefox – Chrome – Safari – Internet Explorer – Firefox (mobile) – Chrome (mobile) – Safari (mobile) – Microsoft Edge.

You can delete all cookies already stored on your computer and configure most browsers to block them. However, in this case, you may need to specify certain preferences yourself each time you visit a website, and some services and features may not be accessible.

4. Who has access to your personal data and to whom is it disclosed?

• Your personal data may be processed on our behalf by trusted third parties: to perform certain tasks, we use specialized partners who are bound by obligations of confidentiality and act as processors. We only provide them with the information they need to perform the service and ask them not to use your personal data for other purposes. We always strive to ensure that all those third parties we work with preserve the security of your data.

For example, we may disclose your personal data to the Promoted Entities or other third parties who assist us in providing IT services and solutions, marketing related services and solutions, storage services, archiving services, legal and compliance services, etc.

• We may also disclose your personal data to other third parties:
• To comply with a legal obligation ;
• To identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) our rights or property, customers or other users of the our Website, or anyone else who could be harmed by such activities ;
• To enforce our Terms of Use, take precautions against liability, investigate and defend against any third-party claims or allegations, and/or protect the security or integrity of our Website ;
• Otherwise with your consent.
• We may disclose your personal information to any member of our group, that is our subsidiaries, the ultimate parent company and its affiliates, to the extent necessary to pursue the same purposes as the original treatment presented in this Policy. In addition, FuMe may sell or buy other businesses or entities. In such event, we may transfer or assign the data we have collected as part of such merger, acquisition, sale, or other change of control. In such transactions, your personal data may be included in the transferred business assets.
• Also, in the unlikely event of our bankruptcy, insolvency, reorganization, or assignment for the benefit of creditors, we may not be able to control how your personal data are treated, transferred, or used and your personal data may be included in the transferred assets.
• FuMe does not sell your personal data to third parties and has no intention of doing so in the future.

5. Do we transfer your personal data outside the European Economic Area?

The information you provide to us will be stored on our secure servers in the European Economic Area (hereinafter, « EEA »). However, from time to time, your personal data may be transferred to, stored in, or accessed from a destination outside the EEA. It may also be processed by one of our service providers operating outside of the EEA. When we transfer your personal data outside the EEA, we will ensure that it is protected in a manner that is consistent with how your personal data will be protected by us in the EEA.

This can be done in a number of ways, for instance:

• the country that we send the data to might be approved by the European Commission or a relevant data protection authority;
• the recipient might have signed up to a contract based on « model contractual clauses » approved by the European Commission, obliging them to protect your personal data; or
• where the recipient is located in the United States of America, it might be a certified member of the EU-US Privacy Shield scheme (an approved certification mechanism under Article 42 of the GDPR) which is available here.

Regarding FuMe’s activities:

• Information you submit to us by email is transferred outside the EEA and stored on our third party email provider’s servers. A decision on the adequacy of the level of data protection was made by the European Commission for the country who our third party email provider has his registered office.
• Information you submit via our contact form is stored on our servers in Austria.

We will also transfer your information outside the EEA or to an international organization in the unlikely event that we are required to comply with legal obligations to which we are subject. When we are required to do so, we will ensure appropriate safeguards and protections are in place.

6. Who is responsible for the Treatment your personal data?

FuMe AG, a limited liability company incorporated under Swiss law, with registered office at Nauenstrasse 49, 4052 Basel (Switzerland) and registered under the number CH-670.3.000.592-9.

FuMe, as « data controller » of your personal data, determines the purposes and means of the processing of your personal data, as explained in this Privacy Policy. FuMe is responsible for complying with the regulation regarding those data before the supervisory authorities.

The Promoted Entities who are mentioned in this Privacy Policy and/or on the Website and have access to your personal information in conformity with the purposes of the present Privacy Policy shall not be considered as « controller » nor « processors » of your personal data.

7. How long do we keep your personal data?

We will not retain your personal data for longer than is necessary to fulfil the purpose it is being processed for. To determine the appropriate retention period, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the purposes for which we process it and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means.

We must also consider periods for which we might need to retain personal data in order to meet our legal obligations or to deal with complaints, queries and to protect our legal rights in the event of a claim being made.

When we no longer need your personal data, we will securely delete or destroy it. We will also consider if and how we can minimize over time the personal data that we use, and if we can anonymize your personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you or identify you, in which case we may use that information without further notice to you. 

8. How do we protect your personal data?

We take the protection of your personal data very seriously and take all reasonable precautions to prevent the loss, misuse, disclosure, unauthorized access or alteration of such data.

We take appropriate technical (encryption, anti-virus, firewall) and organizational (rigorous selection of the employees, subcontractors, etc ; Code of conduct applicable to our employees and partners regarding the processing of your personal data, including an obligation of confidentiality) protection measures to ensure a sufficient level of security. In addition, these security measures are regularly reviewed and adapted to ensure an adequate level of protection.

We may disclose your information to trusted third parties for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. We require all third parties to be bound by obligations of confidentiality and to have appropriate technical and operational security measures in place to protect your personal data, in line with national and EU law on data protection. 

You should however be aware that, due to the open and unsecured character of Internet, FuMe cannot be responsible for the personal data transmission over the Internet.

9. Third-party websites

Our Website contains links to other websites which may have privacy policies that differ from our own. We are not responsible for the collection, use or disclosure of information collected through third-party websites and expressly disclaim any liability related to such collection, use or disclosure. We are not responsible for any information or content contained on such sites. Links to other websites are provided solely as a convenience. Your browsing, use and interaction on any other websites, including websites which have a link to our Website, are subject to that website’s own rules and policies. Please review the privacy policy posted on any website that you may access through, or which links to our Website.

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

Subject to certain limitations, you have the following rights in relation to your personal data:

• Request access to your personal data. This enables you to receive periodically a copy of the personal data we hold about you. It is expressly agreed that none of your personal data indirectly collected and/or processed by us will be voluntarily communicated to you, unless you request so or unless such data is used in our communication to you, as it would otherwise involve disproportionate efforts from our part.
• Request rectification of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you rectified.
• Request erasure of the personal data that we hold about you (« right to be forgotten »). This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. This is not an absolute right as we may be forced to keep your personal data for legal or legitimate reasons.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal data. In certain cases, on compelling legitimate grounds relating to your particular situation, you have the right to object to processing of your personal data. Where there is a justified objection, the processing in question may no longer involve those data.
• Object to the processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object when we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes.
• Request transfer of your personal data in an electronic and structured form to you or to another party (commonly known as a right to data portability). This enables you to take your data from us in an electronically useable format to transfer to another party.
• Withdraw your consent to the use of your personal data where we rely on your consent to use or process that information. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so.

If you want to exercise any of these rights, please email us at privacy@meerapfel.com or write us at FuMe AG, Nauenstrasse 49, 4052 Basel (Switzerland). You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

We shall communicate any rectification or erasure of personal data or restriction of processing carried out in accordance with Article 16, Article 17(1) and Article 18 of the GDPR to each recipient to whom the personal data have been disclosed, unless it is impossible or involves disproportionate efforts from our part.

Note that we may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

Also and as provided by Article 30, al. 5 of the GDPR, no records of processing activities of your personal data is kept and shall, therefore, be communicated to you, even if requested.

11. Changes and updates

11.1.     In a world of constant technological change, this Privacy Policy may be subject to change. You therefore agree that FuMe has the right, at its sole discretion, to change, modify, add or remove part(s) of this Privacy Policy at any time. The modifications will become effective on the date they are first posted to the Website.

11.2.     FuMe does not have any obligation to notify you of changes to these Privacy Policy. It is your responsibility to review the Privacy Policy periodically to apprise yourself of modifications. FuMe shall nonetheless notify you of any substantial changes through a notice on our Website or by email. It is agreed that a “change” shall be considered as “substantial” only if it concerns the purpose of collection (see art. 4) or the disclosure (see art. 5) of your personal data.

11.3.     You expressly agree to be bound by the revised Privacy Policy:

• By placing new order to FuMe, or to any of the Promoted Entities, or
• By your continued use of the Website following the posting of changes.

12. Questions and complaint

If you have any questions or comments regarding this Privacy Policy or the use of your personal data, you can contact us by mail or email.

If you are not satisfied with the processing of your personal data by FuMe, you have the possibility to file a complaint with the supervisory authority.

Thank you for visiting our Website.

Updated on : 01/07/2023.