Privacy notice

General

IEC is committed to protecting your privacy. This privacy notice addresses how IEC and potentially, IEC Members and Affiliates, process and safeguard your personal data collected during registration or during use of our Webstore and IT tools, which are protected either by the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (hereinafter "FADP"; SR 235.1), as revised and effective on 1 September 2023, or the European General Data Protection Regulation (hereinafter "GDPR"; EU 2016/679). IEC has taken appropriate organizational and technical measures (e.g. IT security) to ensure that your personal data is protected.

For more information, you may contact IEC SEC Data Protection Officer.

 

Your personal data

In your interactions with IEC, you may be required to provide personal data such as your name and contact details, your payment information and other information that identifies or could identify you.

Personal data that you provide will be used only for the purpose of effecting your purchase or potential purchases or for any other purpose to which you consent at the point of collection (the "Purpose"). In line with good data protection principles, IEC will apply the data minimization principle and will only process personal data required for the Purpose. This privacy notice applies to the personal data you provide to IEC and that IEC may otherwise collect in the following situations and for the Purpose:

 

Processing activity

Categories of personal data

Specific purpose

Your use of IEC Webstore or other IEC IT tools

IP addresses and other information collected through cookies

Enable, optimize and improve the performance of our Webstore and IT tools

Creation of an IEC Webstore account, and any subsequent use of your account including for sales and related customer service such as management of queries, contracts, sales delivery, invoice management, etc.

 

Personal identification (name, surname, honorific...)

Contact details (email address, postal address, telephone number…)

Professional information (job title, company...)

Payment and account information (invoices, payment data, credit card number, account number, account age, purchase history…)

Enable the purchase of IEC Publications and other materials from the IEC Webstore.

 

Your subscription to IEC mailing lists such as newsletters on new Publications

 

Personal identification (name, surname...)

Electronic contact details (email address)

Mailing list of interest

IP address

Email open dates and items clicked

Send newsletters and other general information material to the different customer groups based on the preferences communicated.

This Privacy notice has been prepared for and applies specifically to your use of the IEC Webstore. You can consult the IEC Privacy notice covering other interactions in the framework of other activities in which you may engage in with IEC.

You can consult, update and correct the personal data that you have provided directly through your IEC Webstore account. Alternatively, you can contact the IEC Customer Service.

If required to do so by law or to respond to any legal claims, we may disclose your personal data to the relevant regulatory or legal authority.

 

Retention of personal data

IEC only processes personal data until the purpose for which it was collected is fulfilled, or as required by law. Once you open a Webstore account with IEC, IEC will store the data you provided for as long as you wish to maintain that account . Please note that you can request the deletion of your account at any time by contacting IEC Customer Service.

 

Your rights

In addition to understanding if and how IEC processes your personal data and your right to withdraw your agreement to that processing, you can request access to, correction of, and deletion of your personal data at any time. You can also request that your personal data be provided to you in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. Requests for deletion will be considered in light of IEC tax, auditing, contractual and other obligations under applicable laws, including in Switzerland, as well as IEC legitimate interests or business requirements in preserving past contributions to IEC work.

 

How to withdraw your agreement to this privacy notice:

- You can directly update the personal data in your IEC Webstore account or delete your account. If you have subscriptions to IEC mailing lists, you can unsubscribe at any time (see Third parties below for more information about how we ensure successful subscription campaigns.)

- You have the right to object to the processing and request a response. If you disagree with our response to your request, you have the right to file a complaint with a competent supervisory authority

 

If you suspect a personal data breach, please contact the IEC SEC Data Protection Officer immediately.

 

International data transfers

IEC is an international organization with IEC Members and Affiliates worldwide. In order to provide you the best service possible for the Purpose, IEC and IEC Members may transfer and process your personal data out of Switzerland to other countries of IEC Members and Affiliates. As joint controllers, under the IEC Privacy notice, IEC and IEC Members and Affiliates may also process your personal data for their own IEC purpose.

The list of the above-referenced countries may include the following:

Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte D'Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Republic of Djibouti, Commonwealth of Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Kingdom of Eswatini, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Republic of Korea, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Republic of Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, State of Palestine, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Republic of the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, South Africa, Republic of South Sudan, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

 

Third parties

In order to provide you the best service possible, IEC may also transfer your personal data to third parties that provide back office applications for IEC websites, your accounts and subscriptions, and other IT tools. Third parties are bound by contractual agreements to keep your data private and secure. The third parties may process personal data abroad, i.e. in European or non-European countries. Third parties will only use personal data according to the law (FADP and/or GDPR) and exclusively for the Purpose or in your interest.

IEC has engaged third parties for international cloud services, for analytics and statistics, for desktop services, and for relationship building.

For subscriptions to IEC mailing lists, we use a service provider to help us track subscriber engagement within specific campaigns.

From time to time, we may ask our visitors to answer survey questions about IEC websites, our products or categories of products. These surveys do not request any personally identifiable data from you, but you may provide them voluntarily.

 

Inclusion of third party elements

Our websites include embedded content from various third parties. If you are signed into a third party’s account at the time of your visit to IEC websites, your personal data, in particular your IP address, is automatically collected by these third parties. Please note that the information regarding the purpose and scope of data processing by such third parties, as well as your rights and setting options, is provided by such third parties.

 

Legal bases of processing

The legal justification, upon which we base our processing of personal data, is stipulated in article 31(2)(a) FADP (processing directly related to the conclusion, or the settlement, of a contract); corresponding to article 6(1)(b) GDPR; and article 31(1) FADP (consent of the data subject or obligation to process by law) corresponding to article 6(1)(a) GDPR, as well as article 6(1)(c) GDPR.

We reserve the right to store your first name and surname, postal address, and e-mail address pursuant to article 31(1) FADP (corresponding to article 6(1)(f) GDPR) if, based on misuse, non-payment or similar legitimate reasons, we refuse to conclude any future contracts with you.

Furthermore, IEC Members and Affiliates may also process personal data pursuant to article 31(1) FADP (corresponding to article 6(1)(a), (c) and (f) GDPR).

 

Revisions

If any provision of this privacy notice is held to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable, the validity, legality and enforceability of the remaining provisions will in no way be affected or impaired as long as the Purpose of IEC can be preserved.

IEC reserves the right to change or modify this privacy notice at any time. If we revise our privacy notice, we will post the changes on the Webstore to ensure transparency.

 

Governing law and place of jurisdiction

Any dispute arising in connection with this privacy notice shall be governed by Swiss law to the exclusion of its choice of law provisions, unless the GDPR or the applicable law of another country applies mandatorily. The exclusive place of jurisdiction shall be Geneva, Switzerland.

 

Version effective as of 9 July 2024