Information on the

Privacy Statement

Thank you for your interest in our company. The protection of your personal data is of paramount concern for us. We therefore want to inform you comprehensively about the information we collect on our websites, the purpose for which we use it, who we might make it available to and what rights you have (Art. 12 and 13 of the General Data Protection Regulation – GDPR).

Our personal privacy measures are guided by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, Regulation (EU) 2016/679), effective May 25, 2018, and the Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG). Should personal data be processed in a particular instance, we want to express which standard is used to justify the data processing through a simple parenthetical citation of a regulation.

WAGO GmbH (under Swiss law) & Co. KG
Hansastr. 27
D-32423 Minden
Phone: +49 (0) 571/887-0
Fax: +49 (0) 571/887-169
Email: info@wago.com

We take the company’s internal privacy policy very seriously. We contractually obligate our employees and the processors (service companies) we engage to maintain confidentiality and to observe the IT/security rules and the applicable data protection provisions.

Generally, it is not required that you provide personally identifiable information to visit our website. Technically, however, the IP address transmitted from your system is necessary to transfer the data from our website to you. Beyond the freely accessible area of our website – to process your registration, for example – we need your personal data, as appropriate, in order to be able to personally respond to you.

We need a legal basis to process your data art. 6 GDPR presents a non-exclusive list of legal bases. Per art. 6 GDPR, processing is permitted when:

• You have consented to the processing of your personal data for one or more specific purposes (Art. 6 (1)(a) GDPR);
• The processing is required to perform a contract in which the contracting party is the data subject. This also applies to pre-contractual measures undertaken at the request of the data subject (Art. 6 (1)(b) GDPR);
• The data processing is required to fulfill a legal obligation we are subject to (Art. 6 (1)(c) GDPR); The processing is required to protect the vital interests of the data subject or another natural person. This may include the rare event when a data subject is severely injured and the subject's personal data is shared with a physician as a result (Art. 6 (1)(d) GDPR).
• The processing is required to maintain the legitimate interests of the controller or a third party, except where the interests, fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data are overriding (Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR). Processing procedures not covered by any of the above legal bases are premised on this legal basis if the processing is required to protect a legitimate interest of our company or a third party, except where the interests, fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject are overriding. We are allowed such processing procedures expressly because they were specially mentioned by the European legislature. This legislation advocated the view that a legitimate interest may be assumed when the data subject is a client of the controller (Recital 47 sentence 2 GDPR).

When you visit our website, we receive your complete IP address from your computer. Only with this IP address are we able to transmit the data of our website to you so that the website displays for you (Art. 6 (1)(b) and (f) GDPR). Beyond processing for transmission of the retrieved data, the full IP address is stored for only two (2) days in order to be in a position to initiate defensive measures against attacks on our IT, such as a block of IP addresses as well as possible criminal prosecution (Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR).

We save the date and time of the page view and the page from which you have retrieved our website. We do not save other personal data, unless you log in.

If the programming of our website prompts your browser to load data from servers operated by third parties, we are not, as such, involved in these data transmissions. Our third-party providers have requested that we inform you of the following:

Please visit our website with special information on the subject of cookies.

We offer you free online project-planning software for the configuration of our products. You can register there to store your own projects and view finished projects again at a later time. There you will have to give at least the following information about yourself: last name, first name, email, company name, address (street address, number, postal code, town), country, password.

The recorded data is used for self-initiated price inquiries and orders arising from the projects from the configurator and displayed with the created project documentation (Art. 6 (1)(b) and (f) GDPR).

You can select “do not accept cookies” in your browser settings in order to prevent the use of cookies. In such case, it is not possible to use Smart Designer.

If you have additionally registered for our newsletter in Smart Designer, we will also use your email address for account management as well as for any price queries, project planning and orders pertaining to projects created with the configurator that you initiate. However, this only applies to our own advertising purposes, which are described in detail in the newsletter registration, until you cancel your newsletter subscription (objection option, Art. 6 1(a) and (b) GDPR). The provisions in article V, “Collection, storage and utilization of usage data when visiting our website with registration and after log-in” and section 5 there, “Email newsletter and other direct advertising” apply accordingly.

If you have further questions about the protection of your personal data, this data privacy statement, declarations of consent and the processing of your personal data or in case of complaints about data privacy, you can contact our data protection officer:

WAGO GmbH (under Swiss law) & Co. KG

-DATA PROTECTION OFFICER-

Hansastr. 27
D-32423 Minden
Email: dataprotection@wago.com

Independent of the provisions of this data privacy statement, Art. 13 (2) 1(d) GDPR grants you the regulatory right to complain to the competent supervisory authority.

If no express storage period is indicated upon collection (for instance, as part of a declaration of consent), personal data is deleted when it is no longer required for fulfilling the purpose of storage unless legal retention obligations (such as commercial and tax retention obligations) preclude deletion.

We maintain publicly accessible profiles on social networks.

Normally, social networks such as Facebook can analyze every aspect of your user behavior when you visit their websites or a website with integrated social media content (e.g., “like” buttons or advertising banners). Visiting our social media presences triggers numerous processing procedures relevant to data protection. In particular:

If you are logged into your social media account and visit our social media presence, the operator of the social media portal can assign this visit to your user account. However, under some circumstances your personal data may also be collected if you are not logged in or do not have any account with the respective social media portal. In this case, your data is collected through cookies, for example, which were saved on your end device or through logging of your IP address.

The social media portal operator can then use such collected data to create user profiles based on your preferences and interests. In this way advertisements reflecting your interests can be displayed to you both on the respective social media presence and off it. If you have an account at the particular social network, these advertisements tailored to your interests can be displayed on all devices to which you are or were logged in.

Please also note, we can neither monitor nor control all processing procedures employed by social media portals. Depending on the provider, the operators of the social media portals can therefore perform further processing procedures. You will find relevant information in the terms of use and privacy policies of the specific social media portal.

Whistle-blowers who report unethical, illegal and irresponsible action are not denouncers. But please bear in mind that the information about yourself, your coworkers or any other aspect of business operations which you supply can result in decisions that affect other persons. Therefore, please only provide information which, to the best of your knowledge, you assume is correct. Even when you have no sanctions to expect, when you impart information in good faith, even when it afterwards turns out to be incorrect, the intentional supplying of false or misleading information is not tolerated.

When you report incidents through our whistle-blower system, we protect your personal data so that the reporting does not disadvantage you in any way.

When you supply personal data through the reporting form, we use it exclusively to investigate the reported incident in the framework of our whistle-blower system. Your personal data is processed based on a legitimate interest pursuant to Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR. The legitimate interest for the processing of your personal data lies in the efficient investigation of the incident reported by you.

Naturally, it may happen that you have to impart personal data within your report. The information may, for example, be within the subject area of your concern or within the circumstances of how knowledge of the incident was acquired. We likewise process this data for the efficient investigation of the incident reported by you.

If we forward personal data to individuals whose profession obligates them to secrecy (such as lawyers and auditors) or to other third parties who are bound to confidentiality by separate contract (e.g. detective agencies) for further clarification of the reported incident and so that any civil claims against the reported person can be asserted, this happens based on our legitimate interest in terms of Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR and so that legal obligations can be satisfied (Art. 6 (1)(c) GDPR).

If in the case of criminally relevant acts of the reported person, we have to forward personal data to law enforcement agencies for purposes of criminal prosecution, this happens based on our legitimate interest in terms of Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR and so that legal obligations can be satisfied (Art. 6 (1)(c) GDPR).

When you use the system uprightly, you have no detriments to fear. If the whistle-blower system is used improperly for the purpose of causing detriments to reported persons, we reserve the right to proceed against the whistle-blower. This occurs based on our legitimate interest under Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR to protect upright whistle-blowers and safeguard our whistle-blower system against improper use.

We store your data for different lengths of time depending on the required purpose of processing.

If no express storage period is indicated upon collection (for instance, as part of a declaration of consent), personal data is erased when it is no longer required for fulfilling the purpose of storage unless legal retention obligations (such as commercial and tax retention obligations) preclude erasure. We therefore normally process your data for the duration of the entire business relationship (from initiation, execution up to termination of a contract and to the end of any interest in information you may have).

In addition, we store your data in compliance with and within the framework of legal retention and documentation obligations, with applicable guarantee, warranty and limitation periods and, in the event of legal disputes, until the end of such disputes in which this data is required as evidence.

You can, at any time with future effect and without stating reasons, withdraw the consents you have given us to collect and use data without thereby affecting the lawfulness of the processing that occurred based on your consent up through the withdrawal. After withdrawal has occurred, WAGO may further process your personal data only if the processing is required because of another legal basis or statutory obligation. You can send your withdrawal to controllers or to the contact address indicated in the site notice. If technically possible, we will also make withdrawal options available to you in your account.

If you have further questions about the protection of your personal data, this privacy policy, declarations of consent and the processing of your personal data or in case of complaints about data privacy, you can contact our data protection officer:

WAGO GmbH (under Swiss law) & Co. KG

-DATA PROTECTION OFFICER-

Hansastr. 27

32423 Minden

Email: dataprotection@wago.com

Independent of the provisions of this privacy policy, Art. 13 (2) (1)(d) GDPR grants you the regulatory right to complain to the competent supervisory authority.

This privacy policy shall be in force from the time of publication on the website of WAGO GmbH & Co. KG until revocation.

Confirmation and acknowledgment of the privacy policy agreement is absolutely required to make use of our offering.

Please bear in mind that data protection regulations and handling for data protection can change continually and the content of this privacy policy must be conformed. If this should be the case, we will present changes in a transparent form for you. In addition, it is advisable to keep informed of changes in the law and our company's practice.