HBS-Research

Stand C05

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Introduction

HBS-research is committed to respecting your rights of confidentiality. This document details all the measures put in place to ensure the protection of the personal information that you communicate to us when you visit our websites. It presents the various types of information which we are likely to ask you, the use that we make of it and the possible restrictions that you have the right to apply. It also describes the methods applied to guarantee the safety of your personal information and the way in which you can revise and correct your personal information. When accessing our websites, you authorise us to collect and use personal information in accordance with the terms described in the present declaration of confidentiality.

Data collection methods

Information given by you directly

In general, you are free to visit the HBS-research websites without having to enter personal information. On certain pages, it is however advisable to provide personal details so that we are able to ensure you receive the service or transaction which you requested. Here are various types of information which you will possibly be asked to provide us:

• Personal details (name, profession, name of your company/organisation, email address, fax and telephone numbers and postal address, for example);
• Information about your company and your job title
• Preferences on commercial offers that you receive electronically;
• Financial information (including the data concerning your credit card or your account);
• Information used for personalising and simplifying the consultation of our websites (this can consist of connection data and technical information);
• Requests for additional information and orders relative to our products and services;
• Information allowing us to identify the products and the services which best meet your needs;
• Details of subscriptions to various events and comments which you wish to share with us on the subject of our websites and our products and services in general.

You are in no way obliged to provide this information, but it is not always possible for us to satisfy service or transaction requests without certain details.

Automatically gathered information

We collect information each time you visit our sites. We record in particular the pages which you consult, the number of bytes transferred, the links on which you click, the documents which you access and various other actions carried out from HBS-research sites. On sites which you access using a user ID, we sometimes link this information with your identity to determine the products and the services which are most likely to interest you. We also collect certain standard data transmitted by your browser to each website which you visit. In particular this may involve your IP (Internet Protocol) address, the type of browser used, its functionality and language, your operating system, the date and time at which you access the site or of the website from which you connected to our site. We do not link any of this information to your identity.

What we do with the information

Services and transactions.

We use your personal information only with the aim of assuring the services or the transactions which you requested: providing information about HBS-research products, recording of products purchased, replacement of product reference handbooks, response to requests from customer service, simplifying access to our websites, etc. To best address your expectations when interacting with HBS-research, it is possible that information collected by our websites may be combined with information obtained by other means.

Improving websites

Your personal information helps us improve our websites and products and HBS-research services which refer to it, but also to facilitate consultation of our websites (by avoiding the need for you to enter the same information each time or by personalising content according to your preferences or centres of interest).

Communications.

With your agreement, we reserve the right to use your personal information collected by means of our websites to announce the availability of products or HBS-research services. At the time of collecting information likely to be used to keep you informed of our products and services, we always leave you the choice to decline this offer. You will not then receive any communications of this type. Moreover, each electronic mail that we send you contains a link to an unsubscription service which makes it possible to automatically put a stop to this type of communication. If you choose to you unsubscribe, you will be withdrawn from the corresponding mailing list within 10 working days.

Use of the cookies and web beacons

Cookies are small files which websites record on your hard disk or load in your brower's memory. We can use this information to evaluate the number of times you have visited our site, to calculate the number of visitors to the site, to determine and to analyse the impact of our sites and to measure the effectiveness of online advertising, to record personal data such as your preferences and to store practical technical data for your future interaction with our websites. We sometimes use session cookies (those which are removed when the browser session ends) to record your user ID (elements of your user profile) in order to facilitate your use of our websites (in particular with regard to information retrieval and order taking) and to store other information of interest for session administration. You are free to accept or refuse cookies. The majority of Internet browsers accept cookies automatically, but generally you only need to modify certain browser parameters in order to refuse cookies or to be informed if a cookie is recorded on your computer. If you disactivate the recording of cookies, you will probably not benefit from the full functionality of HBS-research websites or of other websites which you visit. Our sites can also contain electronic images called Web beacons (or single-pixel GIFs) which enable us to count the number of users having visited these pages. It is possible that we will use these Web beacons in promotional emails or in news bulletins in order to know if you have opened these messages or carried out an unspecified action.

Disclosure of your personal information

Except in the cases mentioned below, personal information that you provide to HBS-research via our websites will not be disseminated by HBS-research and its subsidiary companies and related companies without your consent.

Disclosure to service providers

HBS-research contracts with other companies so that they carry out services on our behalf, that may involve website hosting, diffusion of information, transaction handling or analysis of our websites, for example. We provide these companies only with the personal data elements which they need to ensure these services. These companies and their employees do not in any way have the right to use this personal information for any other unspecified goal.

Disclosure for other reasons.

We are authorised to reveal personal information if the law requires it or if we judge, in all good faith, that that is essential to conform to the legal obligations or the regulations imposed to us, to defend and take advantage of our rights of ownership or others or in emergency cases in order to guarantee the safety of individuals.

Security

The company HBS-research is committed to ensuring the protection of your personal information by all the means it has. We use various technologies and security procedures with the aim of protecting your personal information and of prohibiting their being accessed, used or disclosed by unauthorised people. When you connect to the one of our sites, access information destined for you or which is specific to your company, or carry out a commercial transaction, we apply standard protection technology, such as protocol SSL (Secure Socket Layer), in order to code the information transmitted via Internet. For all sites which you access, it is up to you to ensure you that your password is totally secure and to take care not to reveal this information to other people. When you navigate a site or pass from a site to another, if the mechanism of connection is the same one, we check your identity by means of an encrypted cookie placed on your computer.

Validation of your personal information

In certain cases, you can examine and rectify personal information provided via our websites by going directly to the page on which you entered this information. In any event, you have the right to ask to consult and correct your personal information collected by our websites or to prohibit HBS-research from exploiting this information by filling out our contact us form. Before giving you access to your personal information, we take care in principle to check your identity. So that our information is as precise as possible, do not hesitate to notify us of changes to your postal address, electronic address or telephone number.

Links to other sites

Our websites can contain return links to other sites (such as those of partners of HBS-research, of professional or government organisations) or to publishing sites. Although we endeavour to link only to sites sharing the same concerns and standards as us regarding protection of the personal information, we cannot be held responsible for the contents of the other sites, of their level of security or the confidentiality measures applied.

Implementation of this declaration of confidentiality

For all questions regarding this declaration of the treatment of your personal information contact us. We will do all in our power to respond quickly to your enquiry and to find the right solution to the problem.

Modifications to this declaration of confidentiality

This declaration of confidentiality is likely to be updated from time to time by HBS-research. In such cases, we will show the date of the "last update" at the top and bottom of the declaration of confidentiality. We will systematically ask for your assent if the update of this declaration of confidentiality changes in any way the rights to use your personal information compared to the provisions envisaged in the declaration of confidentiality which was current at the moment we collected that information.