Business partner privacy notice
Protecting the security and privacy of your personal data is important to Siemens. Therefore, Siemens (for further company details, please see the 'Corporate Information') processes personal data in compliance with applicable laws on data protection and data security.
Categories of personal data processed, purpose of the processing and legal basis
When visiting Siemens’ websites, applications or online tools (each a 'Siemens Online Offering'), Siemens may process the following personal data about you:
- Personal data that you actively and voluntarily provide via the Siemens Online Offering (e.g. when registering, contacting us with your inquiries or participating in surveys, etc.), including name, e-mail address, telephone number, information submitted as part of a support request, comments or forum posts, etc.; and
- Information that is automatically sent to us by your web browser or device, such as your IP-address, device type, browser type, referring site, sites accessed during your visit, the date and time of each visitor request.
We process your personal data for the following purposes:
- to provide the Siemens Online Offering’s services and functions and to administer your use of the Siemens Online Offering;
- to verify your identity (if you registered with the Siemens Online Offering);
- to answer and fulfil your specific requests; and
- as reasonably necessary to enforce the applicable terms of use, to establish or preserve a legal claim or defence, to prevent fraud or other illegal activities, including attacks on Siemens’ information technology systems.
The processing of your personal data is necessary to meet the aforementioned purposes. Unless indicated otherwise, the legal basis for the processing of your personal data is Article 6 (1) (b) or (f) of the General Data Protection Regulation or—if explicitly provided by you—your consent (Article 6 (1) (a) of the General Data Protection Regulation). If Siemens does not collect the respective personal data, the purposes described may not be met by Siemens.
Cookies—We may use cookies within Siemens Online Offerings. You can find additional information on Siemens’ use of cookies in our Cookie Policy. The Cookie Policy also provides information on how to block and object to the use of cookies and the processing of data collected by cookies.
Links to other websites—This Privacy Policy applies only to Siemens Online Offerings, and not to other websites or applications operated by third parties. We may provide links to other websites and applications which we believe may be of interest to you. Siemens is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other websites or applications.
Categories of personal data processed, purpose of the processing and legal basis
In the context of the business relationship with Siemens, Siemens may process the following categories of personal data of contact persons at our customers, suppliers, vendors and partners (each a 'Business Partner'):
- Contact information, such as full name, work address, work telephone number, work mobile phone number, work fax number and work email address;
- Payment data, such as data necessary for processing payments and fraud prevention, including credit/debit card numbers, security code numbers and other related billing information;
- Further information necessarily processed in a project or contractual relationship with Siemens or voluntarily provided by the Business Partner, such as orders placed, payments made, requests and project milestones;
- Information collected from publicly available resources, integrity databases and credit agencies; and
- If legally required for Business Partner compliance screenings: information about relevant and significant litigation or other legal proceedings against Business Partners; and
Siemens may process the personal data for the following purposes:
- Communicating with Business Partners about products, services and projects of Siemens or Business Partners, e.g. by responding to enquiries or requests or providing you with technical information about purchased products;
- Planning, performing and managing the (contractual) relationship with Business Partners; e.g. by performing transactions and orders of products or services, processing payments, performing accounting, auditing, billing and collection activities, arranging shipments and deliveries, facilitating repairs and providing support services;
- Administering and performing customer surveys, marketing campaigns, market analysis, sweepstakes, contests, or other promotional activities or events;
- Maintaining and protecting the security of our products, services and websites, preventing and detecting security threats, fraud or other criminal or malicious activities;
- Ensuring compliance with legal obligations (such as record-keeping obligations), export control and customs, Business Partner compliance screening obligations (to prevent white-collar or money laundering crimes), and Siemens policies or industry standards; and
- Solving disputes, enforcing our contractual agreements and establishing, exercising or defending legal claims.
The processing of personal data is necessary to meet the aforementioned purposes including the performance of the respective (contractual) relationship with Business Partners. Unless indicated otherwise, the legal basis for the processing of personal data is Article 6 (1) (b) or (f) of the General Data Protection Regulation or—if explicitly provided by Business Partner Contacts—consent (Article 6 (1) (a) of the General Data Protection Regulation). If Siemens does not collect the respective personal data, the purposes described may not be met by Siemens.
Siemens may transfer personal data to other Siemens companies or third parties, but only if and to the extent such transfer is strictly required for the purposes mentioned above.
If legally permitted to do so, Siemens may transfer personal data to courts, law enforcement authorities, regulators or attorneys if necessary to comply with the law or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.
Siemens commissions service providers (so-called data processors), such as hosting or IT maintenance service providers, which only act upon the instructions of Siemens and are contractually bound to act in compliance with applicable data protection law.
Recipients of personal data may possibly be located in countries outside of the European Economic Area ('third countries'), in which applicable laws do not offer the same level of data protection as the laws of the respective individual’s home country.
In such cases, Siemens takes measures to implement appropriate and suitable safeguards for the protection of personal data by other means.
- We share personal data with Siemens companies in third countries only if they have implemented the Siemens Binding Corporate Rules ('BCR') for the protection of personal data. Further information about the Siemens BCR can be found here.
- We transfer personal data to external recipients in third countries only in cases where the respective recipient (i) has entered into EU Standard Contractual Clauses with Siemens, (ii) has implemented Binding Corporate Rules in its organisation or (iii)—in case of US recipients—the recipient is certified under the Privacy Shield. Affected individuals may request further information and copies of the safeguards by contacting Siemens.
Personal data published by you on Siemens Online Offerings (such as in chat rooms or forums) may be globally accessible to other registered users of the respective Siemens Online Offering.
Unless explicitly indicated otherwise at the time of the collection of personal data (e.g. within a consent form accepted by you), we erase personal data if the retention of the personal data is no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or otherwise processed and no statutory retention obligations under applicable law (such as tax or commercial law) require us to further retain personal data.
In the case that you declare your consent for the processing of certain personal data by Siemens, you have the right to withdraw the consent at any time with future effect, i.e. the withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal. In cases where consent is withdrawn, Siemens may only further process the personal data where there is another legal ground for the processing.
Under applicable data protection law you may—provided that the respective legal pre-conditions are met—have the right to:
- obtain from Siemens confirmation as to whether or not personal data concerning you are being processed, and where that is the case, access to the personal data
- obtain from Siemens the rectification of inaccurate personal data concerning you
- obtain from Siemens the erasure of your personal data
- obtain from Siemens restriction of processing regarding your personal data
- obtain from Siemens a copy of personal data concerning you, which you actively provided, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and to request from Siemens that we transmit those data to another recipient selected by you
- object, on grounds relating to your particular situation, to processing of personal data concerning you
The Siemens Chief Data Privacy Officer and his team (the 'Siemens Data Protection Organisation') provide support with any data privacy related questions, comments, concerns or complaints or in cases where you wish to exercise any of your data privacy related rights. The Siemens Data Privacy Organisation may be contacted at: dataprotection@siemens.com.
The Siemens Data Privacy Organisation will always use its best efforts to address and settle any requests or complaints you bring to its attention. Besides contacting the Siemens Data Privacy Organisation, you always have the right to approach the competent data protection authority with your request or complaint. The data protection authority competent for Siemens AG is:
Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht
Promenade 27, 91522 Ansbach
Germany
A list of national data protection authorities is available here.