The Switch is committed to protecting your privacy and your personal information. Therefore, we process your personal data in accordance with relevant data protection legislation. We encourage you to read this privacy policy.

This privacy policy informs you of our privacy practices and the way your personal information is collected and how that information is used by us. This policy is available on our home page. We reserve the right to update, modify, change and alter this privacy policy. All changes to this policy will be posted on our website.

The Switch is a global company with offices both within the European Union and outside. As such, your personal data may be transferred outside the European Union. The countries to which your data is transferred may not provide the same level of data protection as your home country. Despite this, when transferring personal data to foreign countries, we will always look after its safety by ensuring that there is a legal basis for the transfer and that applicable laws governing data transfers are followed.

1. Why we gather personal information?

We gather personal information for various purposes to conduct our business activities, including:

  • To sell products and services
  • To purchase products and services
  • To deliver products or services
  • To provide customer support for sold products or services
  • To secure and optimize the website experience
  • To monitor our website traffic
  • To provide marketing communication
  • To carry out recruitment and employment processes
  • To enable us to fulfill our legal and contractual obligations

2. Personal data collection

We collect personal information based on the business relationship between your organization and The Switch as well as based on the use of our services or website. We may also collect personal data from you with your consent and use the information as set forth in this privacy policy. The data can also be updated by using other registers, such as the registers of our business partners and from the authorities, as well as other enterprises to the extent allowed by applicable legislation.

We also collect personal identifying data for:

  • Sales and sourcing purposes: when you order our products and services, or you sell products and services to us
  • Marketing & promotional purposes: when you order newsletters, download materials, leave a contact request, use our web services (including our social media platforms) and participate in our events
  • Recruitment & employment purposes: when you submit a job application to our recruitment system

The types of personal information we collect from you include:

  • Your name, job title
  • Email address, phone number, street address
  • Company name, industry and segment
  • Customer type, job function
  • Purchasing authority
  • Product and service preferences
  • Educational and employment background, and job interest data
  • Data based on the information on your CV
  • IP address and information concerning your visit on our website

3. How do we use your personal information?

The Switch and our selected third parties may use the information we collect to inform you – by letter, e-mail, phone or SMS – about promotions, news, and new products that we think may be of interest to you. If you do not wish to receive marketing information from us, please indicate this where requested on the registration or request forms.

The Switch website uses the following third-party software to store personal data: Google Analytics, Google Ads, Salesforce, Pardot, ClickMeeting, ReachMee.

This enables us to supply you with a more personalized experience on our website and in our communications with you.

If you want to prevent the tracking by Pardot, Google Analytics or other third-party services, you can adjust your browser settings or add an appropriate extension to your browser. However, this may result in some limitations in the features and usability of our offering.

Your data is used neither for automatic decision making nor for profiling.

3.1 Cookies

When you visit our websites, a cookie stores traffic data linked to the unique ID of the cookie in the browser. If the user identifies him- or herself by volunteering personal data, such as filling in a contact form or clicking on links in an e-mail sent by The Switch, the cookie’s unique user ID is linked to the personal data volunteered by the user. (Please refer to our Cookie Policy for further information on how we use cookies.)

3.2 Google Analytics

Our website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.

Google Analytics uses cookies to track your data. These allow an analysis of your use of the website. For example, information on the operating system, the browser, your IP address, the website you previously accessed (referrer URL) and the date and time of your visit to our website is recorded. The information generated by the cookie about your use of our website is generally transferred to a Google server in the USA and retained there. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of our website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and Internet usage. If this is required by law or if third parties process this data on behalf of Google, Google will also pass this information on to these third parties. This use is anonymous or pseudonymized. You can find more information about this directly from Google.

For more information about how Google Analytics treats user data, please see Google’s privacy policy: support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245.

3.3 Google Ads

Our website uses Google conversion tracking. Google conversion tracking is a service of Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 USA.

If you have reached our website via an advertisement placed by Google, Google Ads places a cookie on your computer. The conversion tracking cookie is set when a user clicks on an ad placed by Google. These cookies become invalid after 30 days and are not for personal identification. If you visit certain pages of our website and the cookie has not expired yet, we and Google can recognize that you as a user have clicked on one of our ads placed with Google and have been forwarded to our page. The information collected with the help of cookies is used by Google to compile visit statistics for our website. These statistics tell us the total number of users who clicked on our ad and also which pages of our website were subsequently accessed by the respective user. However, we do not receive any information that personally identifies users.

You can prevent the installation of cookies by making the appropriate settings in your browser, for example, by setting your browser to deactivate the automatic setting of cookies in general or to block cookies from the “googleadservices.com” domain in particular.

You can find Google’s data protection declaration on this subject under the following link: https://privacy.google.com/businesses/processorterms/.

3.4 Pardot

We use the data gathered by Pardot to find out which topics are of interest to you by tracking whether our emails are opened and which links you click. We then use this information to improve our emails and landing pages, and the services we provide to you.

We use Pardot also to distribute our newsletter, send out new blog post notifications or inform about upcoming webinars.

If you wish to receive our newsletter, blog post or webinar notification, we require an e-mail address from you as well as marketing consent regarding receiving this type of communication submitted via a dedicated form on our website. Any other data is not collected. This data will only be used for sending the selected type of communication.

With the registration via the form on our website, we store your IP address and the date of giving your marketing consent.

You can revoke your consent to receiving any communications from us at any time. The revocation can take place by contacting us directly or by unsubscribing through the link at the bottom of any email.

3.5 ReachMee

We use ReachMee, an online application to assist with our recruitment process. This is an embedded solution showing vacant positions and bringing you to the ReachMee website for handling your application. We use ReachMee to process personal information as a data processor on our behalf. When you apply for a job opening posted by us, ReachMee’s privacy policy is applied in addition to our general privacy policy. Please see ReachMee’s privacy policy for further details.

4. Transfers of personal data

We do not sell, rent or hand over personal data that identifies individuals to any external party, except to parties who process data on our behalf as data processors. Such third parties cannot use your data for any other purposes than the ones defined in this privacy policy and for the purposes which have been defined by The Switch. The Switch obliges third parties to keep your information confidential and to keep their data protection at a level high enough to protect your personal data.

We may use service providers, which can access your information outside the EU/EEC, e.g. from the USA. In addition, we may also transfer your personal data as necessary for our legitimate business needs to our staff located outside the EU/EEC. In this case, we typically send personal information to the countries that are declared as offering an adequate level of protection through a European Commission decision (‘Adequacy Decision’). The Switch is responsible for the transfer being done in a legal and adequate way in accordance with the legislation regarding the handling of personal data.

Your personal data can be transferred in accordance with the demands set by a competent authority and in accordance with the conditions based on law.

5. Information security and storage

Protecting registered data is important for us. The data is stored in electronic systems, which are protected by firewalls, passwords and other technical solutions. Only our staff and those of our selected third-party suppliers, who need to have access to your information in order to perform their assigned task of complying with your requests or supplying you with our service, are authorized to have access to your personal information. Everyone using the register is bound by confidentiality.

In order to protect the security of your data during transmission, we use state-of-the-art encryption procedures (e.g. SSL). You will recognize an encrypted data transmission by the “https://” at the beginning of the browser line. Submit your confidential information only when SSL encryption is enabled.

We store personal data only as long as is necessary for achieving the purposes defined in this policy description acknowledging the limitations set out in the applicable laws. Due to obligations in the applicable legislation, the data might have to be stored longer than the time period mentioned above.

Outdated and unnecessary information will be destroyed in an appropriate manner. The data will be stored in the register in the same way as you have reported it to us, and the data will be updated or removed when we are informed of any updates or deletions by you.

6. Your rights

Upon request, you are entitled to obtain free-of-charge information on any personalized data that has been stored about you. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 also entitles you to have this personal data corrected, blocked or deleted. For these purposes, please contact us by email.

Your rights include, to the extent set forth in the GDPR:

  • Right to access
  • Right to oppose and limit the handling of personal data
  • Right to be “forgotten”
  • Right to have wrongful data corrected or imperfect data complemented
  • Right to transfer your personal data
  • Prohibition against direct marketing
  • Right of appeal

If your data is handled on the basis of your consent only, you have the right to cancel the consent by informing The Switch thereof in accordance with this privacy policy.

7. Legal basis for the processing of personal data

We process your personal data only to the extent that is necessary for the establishment, content or amendment of the legal relationship, if a statutory regulation requires us to process personal data or if you have expressly consented to such processing.

8. Questions, suggestions and complaints

We are at your disposal at any time to answer questions regarding the processing of your personal data by our organization. If you have any questions that this data privacy policy could not answer, or if you have any further information, suggestions or complaints, please contact us.

9. Contact information

The Switch
Data Protection Team
Elimäenkatu 5
FI-00510 Helsinki, Finland
data.privacy@theswitch.com

10. Data protection officer

Mathias Martin
Elimäenkatu 5
00510 Helsinki
Finland
E-mail: mathias.martin(at)theswitch.com

This privacy policy has been updated on January 18, 2024.