NG Hydro GmbH (hereinafter also referred to as “we”, “us”) obtains and processes personal data concerning you or other persons (so-called “third parties”). We use the term “data” here synonymously with “personal data”.

In this privacy policy, we describe what we do with your data when you use www.nghydro.ch (hereinafter referred to as the website), communicate with us or otherwise deal with us. If necessary, we will inform you of additional processing activities not mentioned in this Privacy Policy by means of a timely written notification.

This Privacy Policy is designed to meet the requirements of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), the Swiss Data Protection Act (“DPA”) and the revised Swiss Data Protection Act (“revDSG”). However, whether and to what extent these laws are applicable depends on the individual case.

Contact details of the data protection officer

NG Hydro GmbH is responsible under data protection law for the data processing described in this privacy policy, unless otherwise communicated in individual cases. You can contact the responsible data protection officer at info@nghydro.ch.

What personal data do we process and for what purposes?

NG Hydro GmbH may process personal data in the following situations and for the following purposes:

Communication: We may process personal data when you contact NG Hydro GmbH or when NG Hydro GmbH contacts you. In this case, we normally process name(s) and contact details as well as the content and time of the relevant communications. We may use this data to provide you with information, process your request and communicate with you. Messages may also be forwarded within NG Hydro GmbH.

Visiting websites, using apps: When you visit our websites, we may automatically collect information such as your browser, the IP address of your computer, your internet service provider, the website from which you switched to our website, the duration of your visit to our website and what type of device you are using (such as a PC, smartphone or tablet and the corresponding operating system). We can then record which pages you have accessed during your visit to our website. This information may be used to improve the functioning of our website, for statistical purposes and as part of system administration. We may also use “cookies”. These are small text files that are temporarily or permanently stored on your device when you visit our website. Cookies collect information about the number of visitors to the websites, the pages visited and the time spent on the websites. They are often necessary for the functionality of the website. You can refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser or by clicking on the cookie settings on our website. After rejecting the use of cookies, you will be able to visit our websites, but some functions may not work properly.

We may also use analysis services from external service providers, such as Google Analytics, which is provided by Google LLC (USA). As part of these services, the service provider collects information about the use of the corresponding website, but often in a non-personally identifiable form.

Finally, we may use functions of service providers such as LinkedIn, which may result in the service provider in question processing data about you. We recommend that you read the privacy policies of these external service providers.

Use of e-mail: We may use your name and e-mail address to send you notifications, updates and other information by e-mail. However, we will first ask for your consent to do so, unless we have already received your contact details from you elsewhere in connection with our services. If you receive marketing communications from us and no longer wish to receive them, you can unsubscribe at any time by following the link provided in these emails. We may use external service providers to find out whether you open our emails or click on the links they contain. You can prevent this by making the appropriate settings in your e-mail client.

Business partners: NG Hydro GmbH works with various companies and business partners, such as suppliers, commercial customers of goods and services and service providers (e.g. IT service providers). Depending on the area of activity, we may be obliged to check the relevant company and/or its employees in detail. If this is the case, we will notify you separately. We may then process personal data about you in order to improve our customer orientation, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty (“customer relationship management”).

Administration: We may process personal data for our internal company and group administration. We may also process personal data for accounting and archiving purposes and generally for the review and improvement of internal processes.

Protection of rights: In order to protect our rights, we may process personal data in various circumstances, for example to assert claims in or out of court or to defend claims against us. For example, we may have the prospects of litigation clarified or submit documents to an authority. In addition, authorities may oblige us to disclose documents containing personal data.

We process personal data based on the following principles:

– for the performance of a contract.

– on the basis of legitimate interests. These include, for example, the interest in customer care and communication with customers outside of a contractual relationship, for marketing activities, to get to know our customers and other persons better, to improve products and services and to develop new ones, to combat fraud and to prevent and investigate criminal offences, to protect customers, personnel and other persons and data, secrets of NG Hydro GmbH, to ensure IT security, in particular in connection with the use of websites, apps and other IT infrastructure, to secure and organize business processes, including the operation and further development of websites and other systems.

– on the basis of consent, if this is obtained separately, and

– to comply with legal and regulatory obligations.

In general, you are not obliged to disclose personal data to us. However, we must collect and process certain data in order to conclude and fulfill a contract and for other purposes.

Data processing is also carried out to analyze the Internet traffic on our website, to improve the functionality of our website and for advertising purposes.

Recipients of personal data

In connection with our contracts, the website, our services, our legal obligations or otherwise to protect our legitimate interests and for other purposes, we also transfer your personal data to third parties, in particular to the following categories of recipients:

• Service providers: we work with service providers in Switzerland and abroad who process data about you on our behalf or under joint responsibility with us or who receive data about you from us under their own responsibility
• Public authorities: We may pass on personal data to offices, courts and other authorities in Switzerland and abroad if we are legally obliged or entitled to do so or if this appears necessary to protect our interests. The authorities process data about you that they receive from us under their own responsibility.
• Other persons: This refers to other cases where the involvement of third parties arises from other purposes.

All these categories of recipients may in turn involve third parties, so that your data may also become accessible to them. We can restrict the processing by certain third parties (e.g. IT providers), but not by other third parties (e.g. authorities, banks, etc.).

Collection of personal data for informational use

If you use the website for informational purposes only, i.e. if you do not log in to use the website, register or otherwise provide us with information, we do not collect any personal data, with the exception of the data that your browser transmits to enable you to visit the website.

These are

• IP address
• Date and time of the request
• Time zone difference to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
• Content of the request (specific page)
• Access status/HTTP status code
• amount of data transferred in each case
• Website from which the request originates
  browser
• Operating system and its interface
• Language and version of the browser software

Use of cookies for functional purposes

Cookies are also stored on your computer when you use the website. Cookies are small text files that are stored on your hard disk and assigned to the browser you are using and through which certain information flows to the body that sets the cookie (in this case us). They are used to make the website more user-friendly and effective overall. We use cookies to identify you for subsequent visits if you have an account with us. Otherwise you would have to log in again for each visit.

This website may use the following transient cookies (temporary use) and persistent cookies (time-limited use).

• Transient cookies are automatically deleted when you close the browser. These include session cookies in particular. These store a so-called session ID, with which various requests from your browser can be assigned to the joint session. This allows your computer to be recognized when you return to the website. The session cookies are deleted when you log out or close the browser.
• Persistent cookies are automatically deleted after a specified period, which may vary depending on the cookie. You can delete cookies at any time in the security settings of your browser.

You can configure your browser settings according to your wishes and, for example, refuse to accept third-party cookies or all cookies. However, we would like to point out that you may then not be able to use all the functions of this website.

Social media plug-in

We use the social plug-ins below on our website to make our company better known. The underlying advertising purpose is to be regarded as a legitimate interest within the meaning of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR. Responsibility for data protection-compliant operation must be guaranteed by the respective provider. Data processing in connection with these plug-ins is carried out with your consent when you use these plug-ins.

If you use the services of these social networks independently of or in connection with our website, the social networks will evaluate your use of the plugin. In this case, information about the plugin is forwarded to the social networks.

LinkedIn

Plug-ins of the social network LinkedIn Corporation, USA, are installed on our website. You can recognize the LinkedIn plug-in (“LinkedIn Recommended” button) by the LinkedIn logo. When you visit a page of our website that contains such a plug-in, a direct connection is established between your browser and the LinkedIn server. LinkedIn receives the information that you have visited our site with your IP address. If you click on the LinkedIn button while you are logged into your LinkedIn account, you can link the content of our pages to your LinkedIn profile. This allows LinkedIn to associate your visit to our pages with your user account. We would like to point out that, as the provider of the pages, we have no knowledge of the content of the transmitted data or its use by LinkedIn. You can find further information at https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy

Newsletter

We would be pleased to inform you about current topics relating to our range via our newsletter. To send you a newsletter, we need your name, e-mail address and company. You can enter both in the fields provided. After you have sent this data, you will receive a confirmation e-mail from us. Your data will only be stored by us for the purpose of sending the newsletter.

Duration of storage

You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time and thus object to the further use of your data. You can unsubscribe from the mailing list at the end of a newsletter.

Unless otherwise stated, we store usage data or other personal data for as long as we deem it necessary or appropriate to comply with applicable laws or for as long as we deem it necessary for the purposes for which it is processed. We will delete your data as soon as it is no longer needed and in any event after the maximum retention period required by law.

Rights of the data subject

You have the following rights if the legal requirements are met:

• Right to information
• rectification
• erasure
• Restriction of processing
• data portability

If you wish to exercise the above rights against us, please contact us in writing by e-mail; you will find our contact details above. So that we can rule out misuse, we must identify you (e.g. with a copy of your ID, if this is not otherwise possible).

Please note that these rights are subject to conditions, exceptions or restrictions under the applicable data protection law (e.g. to protect third parties or business secrets). We will inform you accordingly if necessary.

If you do not agree with our handling of your rights or data protection, please let us know.

You also have the right to object at any time to processing based on your consent or our legitimate interests.

Right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the competent supervisory authority if you believe that your personal data is being processed unlawfully.

Data security

We maintain up-to-date technical measures to ensure data security, in particular to protect your personal data from risks during data transmission and from third parties gaining knowledge of it. These are adapted in line with the current state of the art.

Changes and updates to the privacy policy

Changes to this privacy policy will be published on this page. In this way, you can find out at any time what data we store and how we collect and use it.

August 2024