Privacy Policy

1. FairSearch and data privacy

FairSearch is an international non-profit association incorporated under Belgian Law that promotes innovation and choice across the Internet ecosystem by fostering and defending competition in online and mobile search within the European Union.

General information about FairSearch and its associated members is available in the online transparancy register of the European Union at:

http://ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister/public/consultation/displaylobbyist.do?id=329146212053-87.

FairSearch is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This privacy policy sets out the basis on which we will process any personal information that we may collect about you as a visitor to our website at www.fairsearch.org or as an individual who has otherwise expressed interest in our activities, whether by visiting our premises, attending our events, contacting us or our participating members, or otherwise. We therefore ask you to read this privacy policy carefully.

2. The information that we collect about you

We may collect and process the following information about you.

• Information that you give us. This is information about you that you give to us by:
  • giving us a business card (or similar);
  • connecting with us or our staff members on social media; or
  • corresponding with us by telephone, post, email or otherwise.

It may include, for example, your name, address, email address and telephone number; information about your business relationship with FairSearch; and information about your professional role, background and interests.

• Information that our website and other systems collect about you:
  • If you visit our website it will automatically collect some information about the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your device to the internet and some other information such as your browser type and version and the pages on our website that you visit.
  • If you exchange emails, telephone conversations or other electronic communications with the Secretariat and/or employees and staff members of our associated members, details of those contacts sometimes including their content, may be recorded in our information technology systems.
• Other information: we may also collect some information from other sources. For example:
  • If we have a business relationship with the organisation that you represent, your colleagues or other business contacts may give us information about you such as your contact details or details of your role in the relationship, and we may also seek to collect such information through publicly available resources.

3. The uses that we make of your information

   • We may use your information for the following purposes:
     • to operate, manage, develop and promote our business and, in particular, our relationship with the organisation you represent (if any) and related transactions – for example, for marketing purposes;
     • to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations and bring and defend legal claims; and
     • to protect our business from fraud, money-laundering, breach of confidence, cyber attack, theft of proprietary materials and other financial or business crimes.
   • We may from time to time review information about you held in our systems – including the contents of and other information related to your email and other communications with us – for business conduct, compliance and protection purposes as described above.
   • Your emails and other communications may also occasionally be accessed by persons other than the member of staff with whom they are exchanged for ordinary business management purposes (for example, where necessary when a staff member is out of the office or has left FairSearch).
   • We will only process your personal information as necessary so that we can pursue the purposes described above, and only where we have concluded that our processing does not prejudice you or your privacy in a way that would override our legitimate interest in pursuing those purposes.
   • In exceptional circumstances we may also be required by law to disclose or otherwise process your personal information. We will tell you, when we ask you to provide information about yourself, if provision of the requested information is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation or, on the other hand, if it is purely voluntary and there will be no implications if you decline to provide the information. Otherwise you should assume that we need the information for our business or compliance purposes (as described above).
   • If you are uncertain as to FairSearch’s need for information that we request from you, please contact the FairSearch representative asking for the information, or contact us (see the contact details below) with your query.

4. Disclosure and international transfer of your information

   • We may disclose personal information about you where we have obtained your consent or where it is reasonably necessary for the various purposes set out above:
     • to the participating members of the Fairsearch association;
     • in exceptional circumstances:
       • to competent regulatory, prosecuting and other governmental agencies, or litigation counterparties, in any country or territory; or
       • where we are required by law to disclose.
     • The disclosures referred to in paragraph 1 above may involve sharing your personal information (contact details) with members of FairSearch who are located outside the European Union in the US, Canada or India.

5. Retention and deletion of your information

   • We intend to keep your personal information accurate and up-to-date. We will delete the information that we hold about you when we no longer need it.
   • We will retain your information for no longer than two years after our most recent communication with you, after which it will be deleted.. Contact us for more information.
   • Note that we may retain some limited information about you even when we know that you have left the organisation that you represent, so that we can maintain a continuous relationship with you if and when we are in contact with you again.

6. Your rights

   • You may have a right of access to the personal information that we hold about you, and to some related information, under data protection law. You can also require any inaccurate personal information to be corrected or deleted.
   • You can object to our use of your personal information for direct marketing purposes at any time and you may have the right to object to our processing of some or all of your personal information (and require them to be deleted) in some other circumstances.
   • In some circumstances, you may also have a “data portability” right to require us to transfer your personal data to you or to a new service provider.
   • If you wish to exercise any of the rights referred to above, please contact us as set out in paragraph 7 (Contact us) below.
   • You can also lodge a complaint about our processing of your personal information with the body regulating data protection in your country (details of such regulatory authorities are available here: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/article-29/structure/data-protection-authorities/index_en.htm).

7. Contact us

   • We welcome questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy and our processing of personal information.
   • For more information on FairSearch’s data protection policy, please contact Elizabeth de Bony:

• email:
  • Elizabeth.DeBony@bcw-global.com>
• address
  • Elizabeth de Bony, Burson-Marsteller, 37 Square de Meeus, 1000 Brussels
• telephone:
  • Elizabeth de Bony, +32 2 743 66 52

8. Changes to this policy

Any changes we make to this privacy policy in the future will be posted to our website (http://www.fairsearch.org/data-privacy/) and also available if you contact us (see the contact details above).

Last updated: May 2018