Privacy Notice

Type of personal data

  • General personal data: We process general personal data about you.

Source of personal data

  • Provided data: We process personal data that you provide to us.
  • Collected data: We process personal data that we collect about you.
  • Received data: We process personal data about you that we receive from third parties.

Purpose of processing

  • Marketing: We use your personal data for marketing and advertising.
  • Product development: We use your personal data for the development and improvement of products and services.
  • Other purposes: We use your personal data for other purposes without direct connection with the core service.

Special processing

  • Profiling: We analyse your behaviour and make assumptions about your interests and preferences.

Passing on to third parties

  • Data transfers: We may also transfer your personal data to other companies that decide themselves how to use the data.

Place of processing

  • Worldwide: We also process your personal data outside of Switzerland and the EU.

1. What is this Privacy Notice about?

This Privacy Notice provides information on the nature, scope and purpose of the gathering, processing and use of personal data carried out by the SemioticTransfer AG translation agency (hereinafter also ‘we’ or ‘us’) and lets you know which rights you have in this regard.

‘Personal data’ means data relating to identified or identifiable individuals, which means that the relevant data, in combination with additional data, make it possible to draw conclusions about the identity of these individuals.

‘Sensitive personal data’ means personal data accorded particular protection under the law, e.g. data revealing racial or ethnic origin, health data, religious or philosophical beliefs, biometric data for identification purposes and information relating to trade union membership.

‘Processing’ means any operation that is performed on personal data, such as collection, storage, use, alteration, disclosure and erasure.

If you disclose data to us or share data with us about other individuals, such as family members, co-workers, etc., we assume that you are authorized to do so and that the relevant data is accurate. When you share data about others with us, you confirm this.Please make sure that these individuals have been informed about this Privacy Notice.

This Privacy Notice is aligned with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’), the Swiss Data Protection Act (‘DPA’) and the revised Swiss Data Protection Act (‘revDPA’). However, the application of these laws depends on each individual case.

2. Who is the controller for processing your data?

The controller for the data processing described in this Privacy Notice for the purposes of data protection law is:

SemioticTransfer AG
Mark Cheetham
Bruggerstrasse 69
5400 Baden
Phone: +41 (0)56 470 40 40
E-mail: mark.cheetham@semiotictransfer.ch
Website: www.semiotictransfer.ch

3. What data do we process?

The most important categories of data are as follows:

  • Technical data: When you use our website, we gather technical data (e.g. your IP address, information about your browser and operating system and the date and time of your visit) in order to ensure that our website remains functional and secure. To this end, we may also assign an individual code to your terminal device (for example as a cookie, see Section 12). Technical data as such does not permit us to draw conclusions about your identity. However, technical data may be linked with other categories of data (and potentially with your person) in relation to user accounts, registrations, access controls or the performance of a contract.
  • Registration data: Certain offers and services (such as login areas of our website and newsletters) can only be used with a user account or registration, which can happen directly with us or through our third-party login service providers. In this regard you must provide us with certain data (e.g. user name, password, name, e-mail address or telephone number), and we collect data about the use of the offer or service.
  • Communication data: When you are in contact with us via the contact form, by e-mail, by telephone, by letter or by other means of communication, we collect the data exchanged between you and us.
  • Master data: ‘Master data’ means basic data, such as name, contact details, function, bank details, date of birth, etc. We receive master data from you (e.g. when you purchase a service or as part of registration), from third parties and/or from sources in the public domain such as public registers or the internet (websites, social media, etc.).
  • Contract data: This isdata accrued in connection with the conclusion of a contract. We collect this data from you, from contractual partners and from third parties involved in the performance of the contract, from third-party sources (for example credit information providers) and/or from public sources.
  • Behavioural and preference data: Depending on our relationship with you, we try to get to know you better and to tailor our offers to you. For this purpose, we collect and process data about your behaviour and preferences. We may supplement this information with information from third parties – including from public sources. This data is already known to us (for example where and when you use our services), or we collect it by recording your behaviour (for example how you navigate our website). We describe how tracking works on our website in Section 12.
  • Other data: We also collect data from you in other situations, e.g. when you come to our offices (visitor lists), who participates in which events or campaigns (e.g. competitions) or who uses our infrastructure and systems at which moments.

To the extent that it is lawful, we also collect data from public sources (for example debt collection registers, land registers, commercial registers, the media, or the internet including social media) or receive data from public authorities and from other third parties (such as credit agencies, address brokers, associations, contractual partners, internet analytics services, etc.).

4. For what purposes do we process your data?

We process your data for the following purposes:

  • to communicate with you, particularly in relation to responding to inquiries and the exercise of your rights (Section 11) and to enable us to contact you in case of queries.
  • for the conclusion, administration and performance of contractual relationships.
  • for marketing purposes and for customer relationship management, e.g. in the form of newsletters and/or as part of marketing campaigns.
  • for market research, to improve our services and/or for product development.
  • for security purposes and for access control.
  • to comply with laws, directives and recommendations from authorities and internal regulations (‘Compliance’).
  • for other purposes, e.g. for training and quality assurance purposes.

5. On what basis do we process your data?

If we need to ask for your consent for specific types of processing, we will inform you separately of the corresponding purposes of that process.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by writing to us; our contact details are given in Section 2. For withdrawing consent for online tracking, see Section 12.

Once we have received notification of withdrawal of consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose(s) you consented to, unless we have another legal basis to do so. Withdrawal of consent does not, however, affect the lawfulness of the processing based on the consent prior to withdrawal.

Where we do not ask for consent for processing, the processing of your personal data relies on the requirement of the processing for initiating or performing a contract with you (or the entity you represent) or on our or a third-party legitimate interest in the particular processing, in particular in pursuing the purposes and objectives set out in Section 4 and in implementing related measures. Our legitimate interests also include compliance with legal regulations, insofar as this is not already recognized as a legal basis by applicable data protection law (for example in the case of the GDPR, the laws in the EEA and Swiss law).

Where we receive sensitive personal data (for example health data, data about political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, and biometric data for identification purposes), we may process your data on other legal basis, for example, in the event of a dispute, as required in relation to a potential litigation or for the enforcement of or defence against legal claims. In some cases, other legal bases may apply, which we will communicate to you separately as necessary.

6. What does profiling involve?

We may automatically evaluate personal aspects relating to you (‘profiling’) based on your data (Section 0) for the purposes set out in Section 4, where we wish to determine preference data, but also in order to detect misuse and security risks, to perform statistical analysis or for operational planning. We may also create profiles for these purposes, i.e. we may combine behavioural and preference data, but also master data, contract data and technical data relating to you in order to better understand you as a person with your various interests and other characteristics. We may also create anonymous and – with your consent – personalized motion profiles of you.

An automated data analysis may also determine, for your own protection, the likelihood of a particular transaction being fraudulent. This allows us to suspend the transaction for further clarification. Profiles are to be distinguished from profiling. ‘Profiles’ refers to the combining of different data in order to draw conclusions on essential aspects of your personality (for example what you like, or how you behave in certain situations) from the totality of this data. Profiles may also be used for marketing, for example, or for security purposes.

In both cases, we pay attention to the proportionality and reliability of the results and take measures against misuse of these profiles or profiling.

7. To whom do we disclose your data?

In connection with the purposes set out in Section 4, we may also disclose your data to third parties:

  • Service providers: We work with service providers in Switzerland and abroad who process your data on our behalf or as joint controllers with us or who receive data about you from us as separate controllers.
  • Contractual partners including customers: For example, they receive registration data in relation to issued and redeemed vouchers, invitations, etc. The recipients also include additional contract partners who advertise on our behalf and to whom we disclose data about you for analysis and marketing purposes. We require these partners to send you or display advertising based on your data only with your consent (for online advertising, see Section 12).
  • Authorities: We may disclose personal data to agencies, courts and other authorities in Switzerland and abroad if we are legally obliged or entitled to make such disclosures or if it appears necessary to protect our interests. These authorities act as separate controllers for the data they receive from us.
  • Other persons: This means other cases where interactions with third parties follows from the purposes set out in Section 4, for example service recipients, the media and associations in which we participate or if you are included in one of our publications. If it should be necessary to disclose personal data in other circumstances, the persons concerned will be informed in advance.

All these categories of recipients may involve third parties, so that your data may also be disclosed to them. We can restrict the processing by certain third parties (for example IT providers), but not by others (for example authorities and banks).

In addition, we enable certain third parties to collect personal data from you on our website and at events organized by us (for example press photographers, providers of tools on our website, etc.). If you have concerns or wish to exercise your data protection rights, please contact these third parties directly. See Section 12 for the website.

8. Is your personal data disclosed abroad?

As explained in Section 0, we disclose data to other parties. These are not all located in Switzerland; some of them are based abroad.

If a recipient is located in a country without adequate statutory data protection, we require the recipient to undertake to comply with data protection (for this purpose, we use the revised European Commission’s standard contractual clauses, which can be accessed here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dec_impl/2021/914/oj), unless the recipient is subject to a legally accepted set of rules to ensure data protection and unless we cannot rely on an exception. An exception may apply for example in case of legal proceedings abroad, but also in cases of overriding public interest or if the performance of a contract requires disclosure, if you have consented or if data has been made available generally by you and you have not objected to the processing.

Please note that data exchanged via the internet is often routed through third countries. Your data may therefore be sent abroad even if the sender and recipient are in the same country.

9. How long do we process your data?

We process your data for as long as our processing purposes, the legal retention periods and our legitimate interests in documentation and keeping evidence require it or storage is a technical requirement.

10. How do we protect your data?

We take appropriate security measures in order to maintain the required security of your personal data and ensure its confidentiality, integrity and availability, to protect it against unauthorized or unlawful processing, and to mitigate the risk of loss, accidental alteration, unauthorized disclosure or access.

11. What are your rights?

To make it easier for you to control how your personal data is processed you have the following rights:

  • the right to request information from us as to whether and what data we process from you;
  • the right to require that we modify, delete or block your data;
  • the right to have us publish your data;
  • the right to withdraw consent, where our processing is based on your consent;
  • the right to receive, upon request, further information that is helpful for the exercise of these rights;

If you wish to exercise the rights set out above, please contact us in writing; our contact details are set out in Section 2.

You also have these rights in relation to other parties that cooperate with us as separate controllers – please contact them directly if you wish to exercise your rights in relation to their processing. You will find information on our key partners and service providers in Section 0 and additional information in Section 12.

Please note that conditions, exceptions or restrictions apply to these rights under applicable data protection law (for example to protect third parties or trade secrets). We will inform you accordingly where applicable.

If you do not agree with the way we handle your rights or with our data protection practices, please let our Data Protection Officer (Section 2) know. If you are located in the EEA, the United Kingdom or in Switzerland, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the competent data protection supervisory authority in your country. The supervisory authority for data protection in Switzerland is the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC).

12. Do we use online tracking?

We use various techniques on our website that allow us and third parties engaged by us to recognize you during your use of our website, and to track you across several visits.

In essence, we wish to distinguish access by you (through your system) from access by other users, so that we can ensure the functionality of the website and carry out analysis and personalization. We do not intend to determine your identity, even if that is possible where we or third parties engaged by us can identify you by combination with registration data. However, even without registration data, the technologies we use are designed in such a way that you are recognized as an individual visitor each time you access the website, for example by our server (or a third-party server) that assign a specific identification number to you or your browser (so-called ‘cookies’).

Cookies are small parcels of data (individual codes) that our server or a third-party server transmits to your system when you connect to our website, and that your system (browser, cell phone) accepts and stores.

Depending on the purpose, we may ask for your consent before these techniques are used. You can also set your browser to block, spoof or delete certain types of cookies. You can also add software to your browser that blocks certain third-party tracking.

13. What data do we process on our social network pages?

We may maintain an online presence on social media and other platforms run by third parties and gather data about you via these platforms.

We receive this data from you and from the platforms when you encounter our online presence. At the same time, the platforms analyse your use of our online presences and combine this data with other data they have about you. They also process this data for their own purposes, in particular for marketing and market research purposes (for example to personalize advertising) and to manage their platforms (for example what content they show you) and, to that end, they act as separate controllers.

We currently use functions of the LinkedIn social network. The provider is the LinkedIn Corporation, based in the USA. You can find information on how your data is handled in LinkedIn’s Privacy Policy.

14. Can this Privacy Notice be updated?

This Privacy Notice is not part of any contract with you. We can change this Privacy Notice at any time. The version published on this website is the current version.

Last updated: Monday, 18 September 2023

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General exclusion of liability

All information on our internet offer is checked thoroughly. We strive to keep our information up-to-date, accurate and complete. Nonetheless, the occurrence of errors cannot be entirely excluded, and we thus cannot make any guarantee with regard to the completeness, accuracy and up-to-date nature of this information, including information of a journalistic or editorial nature. Liability claims for loss or damage to physical or intellectual property caused by the use of the information provided are excluded, unless wilful misconduct or gross negligence can be established.

The publisher may modify or delete text at its own discretion and without notice, and is not obliged to update the contents of this website. Visitors use or visit this website at their own risk. The publisher and its processors and partners are not responsible for any loss or damage, such as direct, indirect, accidental or consequential loss or loss determined in advance, that is allegedly caused by visiting this website and may therefore not be held liable in this regard.

The publisher furthermore assumes no responsibility or liability for the contents and availability of any third-party websites that may be accessible via links external to this website. Solely the operators of linked sites are responsible for their contents. The publisher thus explicitly distances itself from any third-party content that is susceptible to trigger criminal or civil liability or is morally objectionable.