Privacy policy

Caritas Switzerland takes the protection of personal data seriously. For this reason, we would like to provide users of our online service with information on which data we store and how we use it.

This privacy policy is aligned with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Although the GDPR is a regulation for the European Union, it is also important for us. The Swiss Federal Data Protection Act (FADP) is heavily influenced by EU law. Since we also provide some of our services to customers outside of Switzerland, we follow the EU standard. We are not permitted to use your data for any purposes other than those stated here or permitted by law.

Responsible person

Unless otherwise stated in individual cases, Caritas Switzerland is responsible for the forms of data processing described here. If you have any queries about data protection law, you can contact us as follows:

Caritas Switzerland
Adligenswilerstrasse 15
P.O. Box
CH-6002 Lucerne

Head of Data Protection: Marco D'Onofrio, datenschutz@caritas.ch

We do not forward your personal data

We will not forward your data to third parties. We work with external service providers for particular tasks, for example, putting addresses on shipments. These service providers are obliged to comply fully with data protection regulations, are not permitted to use your data for any other purposes whatsoever and must delete it after 30 days. Your address details may be transferred to CRIF Ltd. in Zurich for the purpose of updating your postal address, for example if you move house. This helps us to prevent mail being returned and reduces unnecessary postage costs. You can find more detailed information at www.mycrifdata.ch/home/dsg. All Caritas Switzerland employees who handle your data are obliged to comply with data protection regulations.

Use of data

We will not misuse any data that you provide to us about yourself. In order to send you a newsletter you are subscribed to, respond to your queries, process your donations, ensure your participation in petitions, campaign promotions or competitions or complete your order in the online shop, we require some information from you. We will use the information that you provide via a form on the website or by other means to achieve these ends and process the resulting communication. If you make a donation via our website, we will notify you about some of Caritas Switzerland’s ongoing projects. Just like any online provider, we collect user data in order to optimise our service. We collect and store information in such a way that it is not personally identifiable. We therefore cannot check which user has accessed which data. In particular, we do not collect any names, postal addresses, telephone numbers or e-mail addresses when you visit our website, nor any details about your personal interests or donations. If you have given us consent to process your personal data for particular purposes (for example when you subscribe to newsletters), we will process your personal data on the basis of this consent. You can revoke your consent at any time. We process personal data for fundraising insofar as it is permitted and appears to us to be appropriate. We process your personal data partly by automatic means, in order to be able to inform and advise you specifically about products (profiling).We use evaluation tools that enable us to pursue needs-oriented communication and advertising, incl. market and opinion research.

Right to rectification, blocking and to be informed

Within the scope of the data protection legislation applicable to you and in so far as this legislation provides (as in the case of the GDPR, for instance), you have the right to rectification and erasure, as well as the right to restrict data processing, object to our data processing and publish certain personal data for the purpose of transferring it to another authority (known as data portability). Please note, however, that we reserve the right to enforce the legally prescribed restrictions, for example if we are obliged to store or process your data or need it to assert claims. If this incurs any costs for you, we will notify you in advance. We have already explained the option of revoking your consent in the «Use of data» section. If you send a written request to Caritas Switzerland, we will inform you about the data we have stored about you. When requesting this data, please send us your full name, e-mail address and a copy of an official identification document (ID card, passport). This is necessary to prevent any unauthorised persons gaining access to your data. You may exercise the rights indicated above with regard to the data stored about you. Furthermore, every data subject is entitled to assert their claims in court or file a complaint with the competent data protection authority. The competent data protection authority in Switzerland is the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (www.edoeb.admin.ch/edoeb).

We use cookies during your visit to our webpages. Cookies are small text files that are stored on your computer permanently or temporarily when you visit this website. The purpose of the cookies is, in particular, to analyse the use of the website for statistical evaluation and continuous improvement. You can partially or entirely disable cookies in your browser settings at any time. If you disable them, you may no longer have access to all of the features on the website.

We occasionally use Google Analytics or similar services on our website. This is a service provided by third parties that may be located in any country in the world (in the case of Google Analytics, it is Google LLC in the USA, www.google.com), which allows us to measure and evaluate the use of the website (in such a way that it is not personally identifiable). For this purpose, we also use permanent cookies set by the service provider. The service provider will not receive any personal data from us or retain any IP addresses. It may, however, track your use of the website, combine this information with data from other websites you have visited that are also tracked by the service provider, and use these findings for its own purposes (for example, managing advertising). If you have registered with the service provider yourself, it will also know you. In this case, the service provider is responsible for processing your personal data in accordance with its own data protection provisions. The service provider will only tell us how our respective website is being used. We will not receive any information that identifies you personally.

Elements from other providers on our website

We use services from other providers on our websites and mobile applications. For example, videos are embedded via the YouTube platform. Content may be shared or recommended via Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Clicking an element from one of these third party providers (e.g. the «Like» plug-in from Facebook), may automatically connect you to this third-party provider’s servers. Data relating to your visit to the website may then be transferred to the third-party provider and possibly associated with the user account you have created with them. You can find out how these platforms collect and use data in their respective privacy policies, where you will also be given the option to adjust the settings to restrict the use of your personal data.

Google Remarketing

Caritas Switzerland uses the remarketing function of Google Inc. («Google»). The function serves to present to people who visit the Website advertisements based on their interests as part of the Google advertising network. The Browser of the person visiting the Website stores so-called cookies, data files that are stored on your computer and allow recognising the visitor when s/he clicks on Websites that are part of Google’s advertising network. On these pages, the visitor can be presented with advertisements relating to content which the visitor has previously accessed on Websites that use the Google remarketing function. According to its own statement, Google does not collect personal data in this process. However, if you do not want the «remarketing by Google» function stored on your computer you can deactivate it by entering the appropriate settings at http://www.google.com/settings/ads. Alternatively, you can deactivate the use of cookies for interest-related ads via the advertising network initiative by following the instructions at https://www.networkadvertising.org.

Retargeting Adform

This website uses cookies that are provided by Adform S.A., a company that offers digital advertising services. Through the placement of cookies, Adform can recognise your computer when you visit our Website as well as when you visit certain other Websites. Adform can collect information about your device and the browser behaviour via the cookie that contains the following information:

IP address – this is anonymised before and after its use so that no-one can identify you directly;
the cookie identifier which is a random string of characters stored on your device
information about the operating system and other technical information (screen resolution, language settings, country settings, device ID and device type as well as the Browser type which was used to visit a Website; and
date, time and region of your visit to a Website, the domain and URLs that you have visited previously.

The data collected in this process do not enable us to identify your name, contact details or other personal data. These cookies and the information obtained through them are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you, and include the following functions: Prevent the same advertisement from reappearing constantly, measure and report on the effectiveness of the advertising, determine the price and the specific advertising opportunity to be offered, select ads and content based on your interests, and ensure the integrity and security of the services that Adform offers its customers, including the analysis of whether a visit to a Website is made by a robot or a software.

If you want to find out more about the use of cookies and the data protection practices of Adform, please visit https://site.adform.com/product-and-services-privacy.policy. You can unsubscribe from Adform cookies at any time by following the instructions at https://site.adform.com/right-to-be-forgotten/ or if you refuse Adform cookies via your Browser settings.

Secure data transfer

All data that you provide to us on our website, when ordering a newsletter or making contact enquiries, is transferred to us via a secure connection in encrypted form. We use a state-of-the-art security procedure (SSL Secure Sockets Layer) to do this.

Liability for links

We also place links on our website to external services that we think you might like. Of course, we only provide links to pages that did not appear to contain any misleading or illegal content when the link was created. We have no control over the way these pages will be set up in future, however. We cannot therefore be held responsible for recommended pages that have been changed after the link was created. Liability for illegal, incorrect or incomplete content and, in particular, for any damage or loss suffered as a result of using this information lies solely with the provider of the page in question.

Donating online

On our website, you can easily and securely make a donation or process a payment online using debit or credit cards. The company RaiseNow’s certified e-payment platform was designed specifically for non-profit and aid organisations. RaiseNow (www.raisenow.com/) with its head office in CH-Zurich complies with all the guidelines of the financial authorities and IT security standards and is PCI-DSS certified (Payment Card Industry Data Security-Standard). All transactions are transmitted securely via SSL. We will store the data you provide when making a donation, i.e. the amount, the specific purpose of your donation and your address, in our donor database.

If you subscribe to one of the newsletters we offer, we will use your data exclusively to send our newsletter as it is defined when you subscribe. You only need to provide your e-mail address to subscribe to our newsletter. You subscribe to newsletters via what is known as a double opt-in procedure. After subscribing, you will receive an e-mail prompting you to confirm your subscription. This confirmation is necessary to prevent anybody from subscribing with unauthorised e-mail addresses. Subscriptions or changes to newsletter subscriptions are recorded and are therefore traceable.

If you provide any more personal information when you subscribe, we will check it against our own address database to ensure that the addresses are fully up to date and of sufficient quality, thus optimising our communication with you. We will treat your newsletter data as strictly confidential and will not forward or sell it to third parties. We work closely with our Internet and newsletter providers to provide maximum protection for your data from unauthorised access, loss, misuse or forgery. Please do not forward your newsletter as this may also send a means of accessing your personal information. To forward the newsletter, please use the «Forward message» function integrated into every newsletter or the URL for the online version of the newsletter.

Newsletters are sent using ActiveCampaign of ActiveCampaign Inc, 1 N Dearborn, 5th Floor, Chicago, IL 60601, USA, hereafter referred to as ‘distribution service provider’. You can find the distribution service provider’s data protection regulations here www.activecampaign.com/legal/privacy-policy. ActiveCampaign Inc. is certified under the Privacy Shield Framework www.privacyshield.gov/participant, which ensures compliance with European privacy standards. Furthermore, the distribution service provider may, according to its own information, use this data in pseudonymous form, i.e. without allocation to a user, to optimise or improve its own services, e.g. for technical optimisation of the distribution and presentation of the newsletter or for statistical purposes to determine from which countries the recipients come. However, the distribution service provider does not use the data of our newsletter recipients to contact them directly or to pass the data on to third parties.

The newsletters contain a ‘web-beacon’, which is a one pixel-sized file that is accessed by the distribution service provider’s server when the newsletter is opened. During this access, technical information is first collected, such as information about the browser and your system, as well as your IP address and the access time. This information is used to improve the technical performance of the services based on technical data or target groups and their reading habits, which are based on their access locations (which can be determined using the IP address) or access times. The statistical surveys also include determining whether the newsletters are opened, when they are opened, and which links are clicked. For technical reasons, this information can be assigned to the individual newsletter recipients. However, it is neither our intention, nor that of the distribution service provider, to observe individual users. The evaluations are instead focused on helping us to recognise the reading habits of our users and to adapt our content to them, or to send different content according to the interests of our users.

ConvertFlow

We use the ConvertFlow service of ConvertFlow Inc., 5790 Sunset Drive #145, Miami, FL. 33143 to collect and store data for marketing, market research and optimisation purposes based on the legitimate interests of the website operator (art. 6 para. 1 point f GDPR). ConvertFlow offers us the possibility to address users in a situation-specific way and to adjust our web offer to the needs of our users. We use this service to make users aware of special offers via popups and to give them the opportunity to get in contact with us in a specific context. To collect the data, ConvertFlow sets a cookie in your browser and reads technical information about your device (screen size, device type, browser, country). IP addresses are only recorded and stored anonymously. This information is collated and stored by ConvertFlow in a pseudonymous user profile. The information is not used either by ConvertFlow or by Caritas Switzerland to identify individual users or merged with other data about individual users. You can find the ConvertFlow privacy policy here www.convertflow.com/terms-and-policies.

Your contact details from the forms provided by ConvertFlow are stored for the purpose of processing the request and in case of follow-up questions at ConvertFlow. The processing of the data entered by you in the ConvertFlow form is therefore based on your consent (Art. 6 para. 1 point a GDPR). You can revoke this consent at any time. An informal communication by email to info@caritas.ch is sufficient.

The legality of the data processing operations carried out until revocation remains unaffected by the revocation. The data entered by you in the ConvertFlow forms remains with Caritas Switzerland until you ask us to delete it, revoke your consent for storage or the purpose for which the data was stored ceases to apply (e.g. after your request has been processed). Mandatory legal regulations – especially retention periods – remain unaffected.

Retention period for personal data

We process and store your personal data for the duration of the business relationship and in accordance with the statutory retention and documentation requirements. Data may therefore be retained for the period in which claims can be asserted against our company (including, in particular, during the statutory limitation period) and to the extent that we are otherwise required to do so by law or it is required by legitimate business interests (for example for evidence or documentation purposes). As soon as your personal data is no longer required for the aforementioned purposes, it will be deactivated and will no longer be used. For operational data (for example system records, logs), shorter retention periods of up to twelve months apply as a basic principle.

Obligation to provide personal data

As part of our business relationship, you are invited to provide the personal data that is required to enter into and conduct a business relationship and fulfil the associated contractual obligations. Generally speaking, you are not legally required to provide data to us. Without this data, we will usually be unable to conclude or process a contract with you (or the body or person you are representing). The website cannot be used either if certain details designed to secure data traffic (such as your IP address) are not disclosed.

Changes

We may adjust this privacy policy at any time without giving notice. The current version published on our website shall apply. If the privacy policy forms part of an agreement with you, we will notify you of any changes made as part of an update via e-mail or another appropriate method.