Privacy Statement

Visitors to our website

Relevant personal data and their source

We process limited personal data of visitors of our websites such as:

• Contact details including name and email address;
• Business related information including job title, job level and company name;
• Order information and customer’s credit card information in case you order something via our website; or
• Content of (email) correspondence between website visitors and us..

This data is collected directly from the website visitors and generally on a voluntary basis. An exception is the provision of credit card details in case a purchase is made via our website.

Purposes of processing personal data

When a website visitor provides personal data to us, we use them in connection with the purposes stated below or as obvious from the context of collection.

• Initiating and fulfilling a contract
  
  We process your data to provide you with information material you requested or to invite you to events resp. conferences you registered for. Although most publications are provided as downloads, website visitors may also have the opportunity to purchase PwC publications online. In such case, we process the order information and your credit card information, where applicable, in order to facilitate shipment and payment of the publication.
• Use of the website and communication
  
  Furthermore, your personal data is processed in order for you to benefit from all capabilities of our website resp. services provided via the website, including registration for webinars and events, subscriptions to updates or newsletters, participation in surveys, quizzes or polls, requests for further information or for reference materials.
  
  If we have collected consent to the respective tracking cookies we may leverage a visitor’s interactions with the website to display content recommended specific to his or her interests.
  
  Website visitors are also able to send us emails or contact us via specific forms on our website. Their messages will contain the name and email address, as well as any additional information the user may wish to include in the message.
• Security, quality and risk management
  
  We process your personal data for administering and managing our website, including monitoring and enforcing compliance with the terms and conditions for the use of our website, confirming and authenticating identity and preventing unauthorized access to restricted areas, premium content or other services limited to registered users.
  
  As policy, visitors are not required to register to gain access to the areas of PwC websites. In certain cases, as a visitor’s PwC website experience expands, we may require in the future that a visitor register in order to obtain a user ID and password for authentication and secure access to a transaction or to certain confidential business or proprietary information services on premium websites.
• Website analytics
  
  In order to assess the usage of our website and improve the user experience we aggregate data.
• Marketing purposes
  
  Unless we are asked not to, we may also use your data to contact you with information about PwC’s business, services and events, and other information that may be of interest to you. Should visitors subsequently choose to unsubscribe from mailing lists or revoke their registration, we provide instructions on the related webpage or in our communication to the individual, or the individual may contact us by email. Users may visit the Preference Centre to adjust their interests, subscriptions and their consent to marketing communications.

Cookies and log files

Cookies may be used on some pages of our site. Cookies are small text files placed on your hard drive that assist us in providing a more customised website experience. For example, a cookie can be used to store registration information in an area of the site so that a user does not need to re-enter it on subsequent visits to that area. It is PwC’s policy to use cookies to make navigation of our websites easier for visitors and to facilitate efficient registration procedures. Site statistics are compiled by third parties and therefore your IP address will be passed to third parties for statistical reporting only.

Our website uses cookies for a variety of purposes detailed on the cookies information page. Visitors to the website get prompted to accept or reject these cookies upon their first visit. There are options to set preferences for analytics, personalisation and advertisting cookies.

Please bear in mind that the cookie settings don’t apply to third-party websites.

Data retention

We retain the personal data processed for as long as is considered necessary for the purpose for which it was collected and described above (including as required by applicable laws or regulations).

Contact information about visitors (such as information generated though registration for access to areas on the site) shall be kept as long as the information is required to service the contact request or until a user requests that we delete that information. Mailing list information, discussion posts and emails are kept for only the period of time considered reasonable to facilitate the visitor’s requests.

Profiling and automated decision-making

In case a user has accepted personalisation cookies, we might use automated technology to display personalised content such as reading recommendations, event invitations or other relevant content related to a user’s browsing behavior. Users can opt out at any time by declining these cookies.

Recruitment applicants

When applying for a job, applicants should refer to the details provided on why and how personal data are collected and processed. If you should enter in an employment relationship with us, contractual agreements will regulate our use of your personal data. For more details about how we handle recruitment data, please visit our separate Privacy Statement and terms of use for the relevant tools.

Suppliers (including subcontractors and individuals associated with our suppliers and subcontractors)

We collect and process personal data about our suppliers (including subcontractors and individuals associated with our suppliers and subcontractors) in order to manage the relationship, contract, to receive services from our suppliers and, where relevant, to provide professional services to our clients. We commonly process contact details, e.g. name, job title, work telephone numbers, work email addresses, other contact details.

Purposes of processing personal data

• Receiving services: We process personal data in relation to our suppliers and their staff as necessary to receive the services.
• Providing professional services to clients: Where a supplier is supporting us to deliver professional services to our clients, we process personal data about the individuals involved in providing the services in order to administer and manage our relationship with the supplier and the relevant individuals and to provide such services to our clients.
• Administering, managing and developing our businesses and services
• Security, quality and risk management activities: We have security measures in place to protect our and our clients’ information (including personal data), which involve detecting, investigating and resolving security threats. Personal data may be processed as part of the security monitoring that we undertake; for example, automated scans to identify harmful emails. We have policies and procedures in place to monitor the quality of our services and manage risks in relation to our suppliers. We collect and hold personal data as part of our supplier contracting procedures. We monitor the services provided for quality purposes, which may involve processing personal data.
• Providing information about us and our range of services: Unless we are asked not to, we use business contact details to provide information that we think will be of interest about us and our services.
• Complying with any requirement of law, regulation or a professional body of which we are a member: As a professional services provider, we are subject to legal, regulatory and professional obligations. We need to collect personal data or to keep certain records to demonstrate that our services are provided in compliance with those obligations and those records may contain personal data.

Data retention

We retain personal data processed by us for as long as necessary for the purpose for which it was collected (including as required by applicable law or regulation). Personal data may be held for longer periods where extended retention periods are required by law or regulation and in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights.

Alumni 

We use personal data collected in connection with the PwC Switzerland alumni community through the offboarding process or registration on the alumni website for our global community platform and for communication purposes, including sending alumni newsletters and event invitations. The following categories of personal data will be processed to enable you to use the application and its features: 

• first and last name; 
• email address; 
• leaving grade; 
• joining and leaving date; 
• last PwC office location; 
• last PwC territory; and 
• new employer and job title. 

 In addition, you may voluntarily and optionally provide further information in the course of using PwC’s alumni community platform. 

The data processing is conducted solely for the specified purposes and will not be carried out in a manner incompatible with these objectives. Further details on the processing of your personal data can be found in the global alumni privacy statement.

Social Media

General Information

We use different social media platforms to provide information about us and our services, get in touch with interested parties and learn more about how our brand is perceived.

In this connection we might process certain personal data, including your name, social media handle, posts and other social media content (including pictures) as well as certain statistics provided by the social media platforms that might include personal data. Furthermore, we will process direct messages or the like in case you get in contact with us.

This data is only used for managing our social media profiles, for the purpose of social media listening (please see below) and to answer to your requests or react to your suggestions, praises or criticism. Furthermore and as far as the platform allows for it, we may share personal data made publicly available by you (e.g. re-share your posts mentioning our brand or the like).

We will store your data for as long as necessary to meet the purposes mentioned above.

Please note that we have no influence on the type and extent of personal data collected and processed by the social media networks for their own purposes. Refer to the privacy statements of the respective networks for information on this.

Social Media Listening

We use a dedicated social media management platform, to monitor public conversations across social networks like X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram. This allows us to track mentions of our brand, products, and services. Through this platform we may collect publicly available data such as posts, comments, and interactions related to our company. This data is securely processed on servers of our provider in the United States of America and used solely and as far as necessary for social listening purposes to understand customer sentiment as well as engage with our audience.

We do not collect or store any personal or sensitive information beyond what is publicly shared on social media platforms. The collected data is processed based on our legitimate interest and generally deleted from our platform when the corresponding social media data is deleted natively on the respective social media network unless it is needed for a longer period of time to meet the purposes mentioned above.

If you do not want your public social media activity included in our monitoring, you can adjust your privacy settings on the respective platforms or avoid mentioning our brand.

Others

Individuals who use our applications

We provide external users access to various applications managed by us. Such applications generally include their own Privacy Statements explaining why and how personal data are collected and processed by those applications

Children

PwC understands the importance of protecting children’s privacy, especially in an online environment. Our website is not intentionally designed for or directed at children 16 years of age or younger. It is PwC’s practice never knowingly to collect or maintain information about anyone under the age of 16.

Participants of events, fairs or the like

PwC organizes or helps organize events and takes part in fairs (e.g. at universities or the like) or other social gatherings. We may use various applications to manage event registration processes, which applications will contain their own privacy notices explaining why and how personal data is collected and processed by these applications. Please refer to the privacy notices available on those applications.

Should you register via our website for such an event please see above in section covering website visitors. As part of the event management, we may process event-related data (but only to the extent required for a specific event), such as dietary restrictions, special requirements, travel information. We do not intentionally collect sensitive personal data unless you provide us with such data.

Participants of such events can interact with our employees and provide their personal data (such as information on business cards or by registering for talent pools, newsletter, games or the like). We will use this data to fulfill the purpose your data has been collected for or to get in touch with you with information about us or our services which could be of interest to you. You can at all times request us to stop our communication in accordance with your privacy rights described below.