Data privacy statement

The mandate of Basel Area Business & Innovation

Basel Area Business & Innovation (hereinafter referred to as “Basel Area“) is an association pursuant to Art. 60 et seq. of the Swiss Civil Code and is financed by private and public partners for the purpose of promoting innovation and the location of the northwestern Swiss cantons of Basel-Stadt, Basel-Landschaft and Jura. The core task of Basel Area is to communicate the strengths of the Basel region as a business location to the public and to support company founders and enterprises from Switzerland and abroad with the implementation of their projects in the region. Basel Area focuses on proactively developing and maintaining a network of qualified decision-makers, innovators, experts, multipliers and investors. In this network, Basel Area provides customers with targeted access to knowledge and specialized know-how and is able to locate new companies in the region and organize successful events. In addition, Basel Area leads and manages several initiatives, such as BaseLaunch and DayOne.

In this data privacy statement, we, Basel Area, explain how we collect and otherwise process personal data in our activities. “Personal data” is defined as all the information that relates to an identified or identifiable person. The privacy statement applies to all persons whose data we process, regardless of how they contact us, e.g. by telephone, on one of our websites or via our initiatives, one of our pages on a social network, at one of our events, etc.  It applies both to the processing of personal data already collected as well as data to be collected in the future. This data privacy statement does not contain an exhaustive description; other data privacy statements or general terms and conditions, conditions of participation and similar documents may govern specific matters.

Responsible persons and contacts

Basel Area is responsible for the data processing described here. If you have any data privacy concerns, you can contact us at the following address:

Basel Area Business & Innovation
Dufourstrasse 11
CH-4010 Basel
+41 61 295 50 00
info@baselarea.swiss

Collection and processing of personal data

You often disclose personal data yourself, e.g. when you transmit data to us or communicate with us. In particular, we process personal data that we receive from you, our customers and business partners as well as other persons in connection with our business relationships or that we collect from visitors to our websites. We also process personal data when you participate in our events, register in our event and newsletter notification lists or interact with us via social media or on our website.

In particular, we process the following personal data:

• Contact information – such as name, e-mail address, telephone number, occupation, industry and areas of interest;
• Communication data – such as e-mail correspondence with you;
• Information about which offers you have used or which events you have participated in;
• Information about how you interact with or use our websites;
• Technical data – such as IP address, language settings, browser settings, time zone, operating system, platform and screen resolution;
• Image and video recordings of you – such as photos or videos of our events.

This list is not exhaustive. In individual cases, we may also process further personal data.

If you provide us with personal data of other persons (e.g. family members, data of work colleagues), please make sure that these persons are aware of this privacy statement and only provide us with their personal data if you are allowed to do so and if this personal data is correct.

Insofar as this is permitted, we may also collect personal data ourselves and also extract personal data from publicly accessible sources (e.g. commercial register, press, Internet) or receive such data from our partners, other organizations, authorities or other third parties.

The purpose of personal data processing

The aim and purpose of Basel Area is to market the Basel region as a business and innovation location, to support international companies that want to establish their business activities in the region, to support local companies and researchers in the fields of technology and innovation, and to provide general assistance to company founders in setting up their companies.

We process the data collected primarily in order to achieve the objectives presented by Basel Area, to communicate with you, to draw attention to the activities of Basel Area, to conclude and process contracts with our customers and business partners, in particular in connection with our business relationships with our customers and the procurement of products and services from our suppliers and contractors, and to comply with our domestic and foreign legal obligations.

Employees of such a customer or business partner may also be affected by our data processing.

If you have given us your consent to process your personal data for certain purposes (for example, when registering to receive the newsletters), we will process your personal data to the extent of and on the basis of that consent, unless we have another legal basis, insofar as such consent is needed.

Consent can be revoked at any time; however, this has no effect on the data processed before the revocation.

Newsletter

Basel Area sends out various newsletters for which you can register. The newsletters contain general information about the Basel region as well as about the services and events of Basel Area. Recipients who are not interested can unsubscribe from the newsletter by using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the e-mail. You can also find our contact details above.

Data transfer and data transfer abroad

Sometimes, as part of our activities, it is necessary for us to transfer your personal data to another organization, a data processor or other third parties – insofar as this is permitted and appears to us to be appropriate – because they process it for us or because they want to use it for their own purposes.

A data processor is a company that handles the information on our behalf and in accordance with our instructions. We have data processors who support us in particular with:

• IT services (companies that perform the necessary operations, technical support and maintenance of our IT solutions).
• Marketing service providers (lead generation, printing and sales, web, design and creative agencies).

Furthermore, Basel Area may also disclose your personal data to third parties, in particular partner organizations (companies or associations with which Basel Area jointly offers certain services and events). These include, in particular, Switzerland Innovation Park Basel Area AG, for which Basel Area Business & Innovation operates the innovation parks.

In principle, we process and store personal data in Switzerland and the European Economic Area (EEA). In certain cases, however, we may also disclose personal data to service providers and other recipients who are located outside this area or who process personal data outside this area, in principle in any country in the world.

If a recipient is located in a country without adequate legal data protection, we contractually oblige this person to comply with adequate data protection (we use the revised standard contractual clauses of the European Commission: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dec_impl/2021/914/oj?), unless they are already subject to a legally recognised set of rules to ensure data protection and we are able to rely on an exception provision. An exception may apply in particular to legal proceedings abroad, but also in cases of overriding public interest or if the execution of a contract requires such disclosure, if you have given your consent or if it concerns data made generally accessible by you, the processing of which you have not objected to.

Cookies

“Cookies” are small files that make it possible, during a user’s visit to the Basel Area website (https://baselarea.swiss/and other domains managed by Basel Area), to store specific information related to the user on the user’s computer or other terminal device. Basel Area uses cookies in particular to determine the frequency of use and the number of users of its website and to make the range of services as convenient, efficient and attractive as possible. The Basel Area website uses the following types of cookies to identify users during their visit:

1. Strictly necessary cookies (third-party cookies: reCAPTCHA, LinkedIn)
2. Performance cookies (third-party cookies: Microsoft D365)
3. Targeting cookies (third-party cookies: YouTube, Doubleclick by Google, LinkedIn)

Users can set their browser to disable cookies, to restrict them to certain websites or so that they are informed as soon as a cookie is sent. Users can also delete cookies from their computer’s hard drive at any time.

You can refuse the use of cookies at any time via the “Cookie Settings” pop-up window at the bottom left of our web pages. However, please note that you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you in the manner and for the purposes set out above.

Google Analytics

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (hereinafter “Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, i.e. text files placed on your computer, whereby the website analyses the use of the site by users. The information generated by cookies about the use of the website (including your IP address) is forwarded to Google and stored by Google on servers in the USA. Google uses this information to evaluate the use of the website, to create reports on website activity for website operators and to provide other services in connection with website activity and Internet use.

We have configured these services so that the IP addresses of Google users within Europe are truncated before being sent to the US and therefore cannot be traced. We have deactivated the “data sharing” and “signals” settings. Although we can assume that the information we share with Google is not personal data for Google, it is possible that Google can draw conclusions about the identity of visitors from this data for its own purposes, create personal profiles and link this data to the Google accounts of these persons.

By using our website, you consent to all cookies in accordance with our Cookie Policy.

Cookies can be rejected by selecting “decline all” cookies.

Google Ads

This website may use Google Ads Remarketing to advertise on third-party websites (including Google) to previous visitors to our website. This could mean that we advertise to previous visitors who have not yet completed an activity on our website, e.g. those who have not sent a request via the contact form. This can also be done in the form of an advertisement on the Google search results page or a website in the Google Display Network. Third-party providers such as Google use cookies to activate ads based on a user’s previous visits to the site. All data collected will be used in accordance with our own privacy policy and Google’s privacy policy. If you do not wish to participate in our Google Ads remarketing, you can deactivate this by visiting Google’s Ads Preferences Manager. Find out more at: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Log files

Every time a page is accessed and displayed, access logs are recorded in a log file, the raw logs of Cyon, Switzerland, and are automatically deleted after 24 hours. The website statistics are generated from the raw logs and stored in prepared form. These records contain the following information: IP address of the accessing device, date and time of access, URL accessed, access status/HTTP status code, amount of data transferred during access, browser identification of the user and the website from which the user was redirected to the requested page (referrer), if available.

Basel Area uses the web server/lightspeed server. Basel Area is able, for example, to determine on which days and at what times the services offered on its website are particularly popular and what data volumes are generated on its website. In addition, Basel Area may use the log files to detect possible errors, such as faulty links or programming errors, and in this way use the log files for the development of its website. Basel Area does not link the page views and uses stored in the server log to individual persons. However, Basel Area reserves the right to use data from log files if there is a suspicion that users are using the website in violation of the law or contractual provisions.

Social media

We use the Salient Social Plugin on our websites to share our content on the social networks X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn. This is visible to you (usually through appropriate symbols). We’ve configured these items to disable tracking by default. If you activate these icons (by clicking), the operators of the corresponding social networks can detect that you are on our website and where exactly you are on our website and can use this information for their own purposes. This processing of your personal data is the responsibility of the respective operator and is carried out in accordance with their data protection regulations.

Profiling

We may process some of your personal data automatically in order to evaluate certain personal aspects (“profiling”). In particular, profiling enables us to provide you with better advice about services or to inform you about events that may be relevant to you. For this purpose, we may use evaluation tools to communicate with you and place appropriate advertisements for you, including market and opinion research.

Automated individual decisions

In principle, we do not use fully automated automatic decision-making (as regulated in Art. 22 GDPR, for example) to establish and implement the business relationship. Should we use such procedures in individual cases, we will inform you separately if this is required by law, and will inform you of the associated rights.

Data security

We take appropriate technical and organizational security precautions to protect your personal data against unauthorized access and misuse, such as issuing instructions, training, IT and network security solutions, access controls and restrictions, encryption of data carriers and transmissions, etc.  Employees sign an employment contract that contains a confidentiality clause. We also require our contractors to take appropriate technical and organizational security measures.

Period for which personal data is stored

We process and store your personal data as long as it is necessary for the fulfillment of our contractual and legal obligations or otherwise for the purposes intended by the processing, i.e. for example for the duration of the entire business relationship (from the initiation and processing of a contract through to its termination) as well as in accordance with the statutory retention and documentation obligations. It is possible that personal data will be kept for the period in which claims can be asserted against our company and insofar as we are otherwise legally obliged to do so or legitimate business interests require this (e.g. for evidence and documentation purposes). As soon as your personal data is no longer required for these purposes, it will generally and wherever possible be deleted or anonymized. For operational data (e.g. system and other logs), shorter retention periods apply.

Rights of the data subject

You have the right to information, correction and deletion of your data within the framework of the data protection law applicable to you. In addition, there is the right to restrict data processing and to object to our data processing activities, in particular those carried out for direct marketing, profiling in the context of direct marketing and other legitimate interests in data processing. Furthermore, you have the right to surrender certain personal data for transfer to other bodies (“data portability”).

Please note that these rights may be restricted or excluded in individual cases, for example if there are doubts about a person’s identity or if this is necessary to protect other people, to protect legitimate interests or to comply with statutory obligations.

If you incur costs, we will inform you in advance.

We have already informed you above about the possibility of revoking your consent. Please note that the exercise of these rights may conflict with contractual agreements and this may have consequences such as the premature termination of the contract or additional costs. We will inform you in advance in such a case, unless this is already regulated by contract.

In order to assert these rights, it is generally necessary for you to prove your identity (e.g. by means of a copy of the identity documents if your identity is not otherwise apparent or can be verified in another way).

In addition, any data subject is entitled to enforce their rights in court or to lodge a complaint with the competent data protection authority. The competent data protection authority in Switzerland is the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner.

Changes to privacy statement

We may amend this data privacy statement at any time, with no prior notice. The current version published on our website applies.