3. Contact form and e-mail

a. Data processing

Our web pages contain contact forms as well as links to send us an e-mail directly. If you use one of these contact forms, the data which you provide in such forms will be transmitted to us and processed. The mandatory data that must be filled in for electronic contact via the respective contact form are marked with (*). If you provide us with additional data, this is done voluntarily.

If you send us an e-mail, we will process the associated metadata and the content of the message.

b. Purpose and legal basis

Your data will be processed to enable us to contact you, to process your request and to provide you with our respective services, to prevent misuse of the contact form and to ensure the security of our information technology systems.

The legal basis for the processing of data classified as being mandatory is Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. f GDPR. The aforementioned purposes also include a legitimate interest in the processing of the data. If the purpose of the contact is the conclusion of a contract, the additional legal basis for the processing is Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. b GDPR. The legal basis for the processing of the data that you have voluntarily provided us with is your consent in accordance with Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. a GDPR. 

c. Storage period

The personal data of the person concerned will be deleted or made unavailable as soon as the purpose of the storage does no longer apply. Furthermore, data may be stored if this has been provided for by the European or national legislator in EU regulations, laws or other regulations to which the person responsible is subject. Data will also be deleted or made unavailable when a storage period prescribed by the above-mentioned provisions expires, unless there is a need to continue storing the data for the purpose of concluding or fulfilling a contract.

In case of a consent, you have the right to revoke such consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of the processing carried out on the basis of the consent until revocation. To do so, please change the settings in the Privacy Preference Center.

4. BASF Personal Care Platform

a. User registration

If you register in BASF Personal Care Platform, we process your first and last name, email address, company name, position, place for the purpose of setting up your user account and providing access to the BASF Personal Care Platform to you.

We will transmit your personal data – depending on the location of your business – to the following BASF companies for the purposes as mentioned above:

• BASF Corporation, 100 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932, USA
• BASF S.A. Brazil, 04538-132 Sao Paulo, Brazil
• BASF East Asia Regional Headquarters Ltd., 45/F, Jardine House, 1 Connaught Place, Central, Hong Kong, China
• BASF Personal Care and Nutrition GmbH, Rheinpromenade 1, 40789 Monheim am Rhein, Germany
• BASF Digital Solutions GmbH, Pfalzgrafenstrasse 1, 67061 Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany
• BASF SE, Carl-Bosch-Str. 38, 67056 Ludwigshafen, Germany

In some cases, the data will be transferred to a country in which there may be no appropriate level of data protection, i.e. no level of data protection comparable to that of the European Union.

The legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 Sec. 1 lit. b) and f) GDPR. Your personal data will be deleted after the deactivation of your user account within one week.

b. Download of documents in exchange of information 

Within our platform users can download information and request certain samples and recipes as described below in exchange for personal behavior data provided by the users. For the performance of this exchange, BASF will process the following data by the use of cookies:

• Activities on website (time spent with contents, number of visits, number of clicked pages per visit)
• Geolocation information (Country, State, City)
• Traffic Source (Search Engine, Campaigns, Social Media)
• Device used (Computer, Tablet, Mobile Phone)
• Documents downloaded
• Key Words searched
• Content viewed (Videos, Graphs, Pages, Documents)
• Products and formulations explored
• Product catalogues generated
• Product favourites generated
• Samples ordered
• Filters used
• User data (First and last name, email address, company name, position, place)

The processing of these data is carried out for the following purposes:

• Identification of trends and market needs to drive product development activities
• Improvement of BASF Personal Care platform functionalities to enhance user experience, providing better solutions and proposals to users
• Personalization of customer visits (e.g. customized offers )
  
  
• Registration for User Account to get access to additional Personal Care data on BASF Personal Care
• Sending out newsletters with special customer offers

We will transmit your personal data – depending on the location of your business – to the following BASF Companies for the purposes as mentioned above:

• BASF BASF Companies

In addition, we and the BASF Companies as mentioned above will transfer anonymous statistics based on the information processed above to BASF Companies according to the country your business is being situated in. In some cases, the data will be transferred to a country in which there may be no appropriate level of data protection, i.e. no level of data protection comparable to that of the European Union. If you apply to our e-mail-marketing, you expressly consent to the transfer of you personal data into third countries.

The legal basis for this processing is the user’s consent acc. to Art. 6 Sec. 1 lit. a) GDPR. It is necessary in order to provide BASF with the user’s personal data in exchange for the requested information. The consent can be withdrawn at any time by email to kommunikation-personalcare@basf.com. The revocation of consent shall not affect the legality of the processing carried out on the basis of the consent until revocation.

c. Sample ordering

If you order samples, BASF will process your name, your business address and your email-address for sending your ordered samples. For the performance of your order, it might be necessary to internally forward it to colleagues being situated outside the EU. The legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 Sec. 1 lit. b) and f) GDPR.

d. E-mail marketing

If you have given us your consent to do so, we will process your personal data (email address) to send you a newsletter about information on new products and upcoming events at regular intervals to the e-mail address you have provided.

We will transmit your personal data – depending on the location of your business – to the following BASF companies:

• BASF BASF Companies

In addition, we will transfer to BASF Companies  according to the country your business is being situated. Both of the aforementioned transfers serve the purpose as described above. In some cases, the data will be transferred to a country in which there may be no appropriate level of data protection, i.e. no level of data protection comparable to that of the European Union. If you apply to our e-mail-marketing, you expressly consent to the transfer of your personal data into third countries.

We will share your personal data with other affiliated companies of the BASF Group if they provide IT services for us or if this is necessary for operational reasons. Furthermore, we will pass on your personal data to the technical IT service providers we use from whom we obtain services. Our IT service providers are carefully selected and regularly checked by us. They process personal data only on our behalf and strictly in accordance with our instructions on the basis of corresponding contracts for order processing.

We store your personal data collected within the scope of your consent for the above-mentioned purposes until your consent is revoked.

The legal basis for the processing of your personal data for the above-mentioned purposes is your consent, Art 6, paragraph 1, lit. a) GDPR.

You can revoke your consent at any time with effect for the future by notifying us of your revocation under your account settings. If offered in the newsletter, unsubscribing by the unsubscribe-link will be sufficient as well.

You are at liberty to grant or withhold consent. This has no effect on the use of this website.

If you revoke your consent, we will delete your personal data immediately, provided that we process them for marketing purposes on the basis of your consent. Please note that the revocation does not result in the deletion of all your personal data which we process in the course of the business relationship with you, if there is another legal basis for this. The revocation of your consent does not affect the legality of the data processing that has taken place up to that point.

e. Personalization features

We are interested in offering a customizable service. Therefore, the BASF Personal Care Platform provides you with features enabling you to save products, concepts and formulations as favorites (“Favorites”) or showing the last tailormade product catalogue. For those features to function properly, the BASF Personal Care Platform saves your data for those features in your user account. The legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 Sec. 1 lit. f) GDPR.

5. Social media hyperlink

We have included hyperlinks to the following social media services on our website: LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

These hyperlinks are designed in the form of the corresponding logos and are stored on our own server. This means that when our website is loaded for the first time, no data about you as a user are transferred to the respective provider. You will be directed to the respective website only if you click on the logos. Further data about you may be processed on this website.

We have no influence on this data processing on the respective linked websites.

C. Are you obliged to provide us with this data? 

When you visit our website, the information specified in section B. 1. a. as well as the information from the cookies classified as strictly necessary is processed automatically. The transfer of this information is voluntary. Without the provision of this personal data, we cannot display the requested page.

If you

• allow us to use cookies that are not classified as strictly necessary,
• want to contact us and send us an e-mail or use our contact form (including the necessary reCAPTCHA query) or 
• want to see embedded YouTube videos

the transfer of the information is voluntary.

If you contact us, we cannot answer your inquiry in the chosen way without the provision of the personal data required in the individual case. As far as cookies are concerned, the lack of consent can lead to a restriction of the functionality of the website or parts of it. Embedded videos cannot be played without your consent.

D. To whom do we pass on your personal data?

Within our company, only persons and departments are granted access to your personal data as far as they need it to fulfil the abovementioned purposes.

We also involve service providers. These service providers will only act on our instructions and are contractually obliged to comply with the applicable data protection requirements. The service providers are BASF Digital Solutions GmbH, Pfalzgrafenstraße 1, 67056 Ludwigshafen as well as AAG GmbH, Saarbrücker Straße 8, 66386 St. Ingbert as frontend provider and Qwaiko GmbH, Konrad-Adenauer-Ufer 65, 50668 Köln as communication agency.

Otherwise, we will only pass on your data to third parties if:

• you have given your express consent in accordance with Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. a GDPR,
• the disclosure pursuant to Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. f GDPR is necessary for the assertion, exercise or defense of legal claims and there is no reason to assume that you have an overriding interest worthy of protection in not disclosing your data,
• there is a legal obligation for us to pass on the data in accordance with Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. c GDPR, or
• this is legally permissible and, in accordance with Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. b GDPR, is necessary for the fulfilment of contractual relationships with you.

A transfer of your personal data to service providers in a third country will only take place if the special requirements of Art. 44 ff. GDPR are fulfilled.

E. How do we secure your personal data?

BASF uses technical and organizational security measures to protect your personal data from accidental or intentional manipulation, loss, destruction or access by unauthorized persons. Our security measures are continuously revised in line with technological developments.

F. What rights do you have?

You have certain rights under the General Data Protection Regulation including the right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you, if you request it from us in writing:

Right to access: the right to obtain access to your information (if we’re processing it), and certain other information (like that provided in this Privacy Policy);

Right to correct: if your personal information is inaccurate or incomplete you have the right to have your personal information rectified;

Right to erasure: this is also known as ‘the right to be forgotten’ and, in simple terms, enables you to request the deletion or removal of your information where there’s no compelling reason for us to keep using it. This is not a general right to erasure; there are exceptions. For example, we have the right to continue using your personal data if such use is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations or for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims;

Right to restriction of processing: the right to suspend the usage of your personal information or limit the way in which we can process it. Please note that this right is limited in certain situations: When we are processing your personal information that we collected from you with your consent you can only request restriction on the basis of: (a) inaccuracy of data; (b) where our processing is unlawful and you don’t want your personal information erased; (c) you need it for a legal claim; or (d) if we no longer need to use the data for the purposes for which we hold it. When processing is restricted, we can still store your information, but may not use it further. We keep lists of people who have asked for restriction of the use of their personal information to make sure the restriction is respected in future;

Right to data portability: the right to request that we move, copy or transfer (where technically feasible) your personal information in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, for your own purposes across different services;

Right to object: the right to withdraw your consent informally at any time. For this, please send e. g. an e-mail to info.labassistant@basf.com and delete the cookies. The revocation of consent shall not affect the legality of the processing carried out based on the consent until revocation

Right to withdraw consent: if you have given your consent to anything we do with your personal information, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time (although if you do so, it does not mean that anything we have done with your personal information with your consent up to that point is unlawful).

Exercising these rights is free of charge. However, you are required to prove your identity by means of a two-factor-authentication. We will engage reasonable efforts consistent with our legal duty to supply, correct or delete personal information about you.

To exercise your rights, please contact us, for example by e-mail or by post. You will find the contact details in section A.

G. Where can you complain?

You have the right to lodge a complaint with our data protection officer (for contact details see Section A) or with a supervisory authority, in particular in the Member State of your habitual residence, place of work or place of the alleged infringement.

In either case, you can contact our Lead Data Protection Authority:

State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information of Rhineland-Palatinate (Landesbeauftragter für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit Rheinland-Pfalz)
Hintere Bleiche 34
55116 Mainz

https://www.datenschutz.rlp.de/de/general-storage/footer/ueber-den-lfdi/kontakt/

E-Mail:  poststelle@datenschutz.rlp.de

H. Data protection for minors

This website is intended for persons who are at least 18 years old. If a minor submits personal data via this website, we will delete this data and not process it further as soon as we become aware of this fact.