Privacy Statement

Effective Date: May, 2024

Last Updated: May, 2024

The Ascensia website based in the United States (“Website”) is operated by Ascensia Diabetes Care US Inc. (“Ascensia”) of 5 Wood Hollow Road, Parsippany, NJ, 07054 United States. Ascensia is a subsidiary of Ascensia Diabetes Care Holdings AG of Switzerland.

Our Privacy Statement explains how Ascensia collects, uses, and discloses your personal information. There is also additional information for California residents subject to the California Consumer Privacy Act, amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (“California Privacy Rights Act”). The additional information also applies to residents of other US States with similar privacy laws, as applicable. For residents of Washington and other States with consumer health privacy laws, please also see our separate Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy.

Please read this Privacy Statement to understand how Ascensia may process your personal information provided via our Website.

INDEX

1. Personal Information Collection

2. Your Health-Related Information

3. Marketing

4. Sharing your Personal Information

5. Storing your Personal Information

6. Keeping your Personal Information Secure

7. Use of Cookies

8. Google Analytics and Artificial Intelligence

9. Opting out of cookies

10. Children

11. Exercising Your EEA Rights

12. Exercising Your California and other US State Rights

13. Links to Other Web Sites

14. Changes to this Privacy Statement

15. Contact Us

1. Personal Information Collection

You are not required to provide any personal information as a condition of using our Website. Where you submit personal information to us, Ascensia will process your personal information for the following purposes:

• Communications via our Website: If you complete an online registration or webform, where you contact us with an enquiry or request and similar situations in which you have chosen to provide the information to us, we will process the information to respond to your request including for customer services support.
• Products or Services You Request: Where you request a product or service from us, we will collect your personal information to process your request. Our distributors may also share with us personal information that you provide to them when you buy an Ascensia product or otherwise contact them following a purchase. 
  When you communicate with us via our Website, for example by signing up for a loyalty account or to otherwise request a product or service, the types of information we may collect from you include: your name, address, email address, phone number, language preference and details of your communication or request, financial information, including bank account and payment card details, and transactional data including details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us.
• Product Warranty: We collect information you provide to us when you register a warranty (including warranty cards you send to us via mail) for a product that you have received.
• Information About Your Device: When you use our Website, we will automatically receive technical information, including the name of your internet service provider, the website that you used to link to our Website, the websites that you visit from our Website, the type of device you use, a unique device identifier (such as your device IMEI number, MAC address of the device’s wireless network interface, or the mobile phone number used by the device, mobile network information your operating system and software version number, IP address, the type of browser you use, the country and language code and time zone setting. We do not use this information to identify any individual.
• Job Applicants: We also collect and process your personal information if you apply for a position at Ascensia or at any of our Ascensia group of companies. We hold the applications from unsuccessful applicants for up to 12 months.

2. Your Health-Related Information

Where you request a product or service from us, complete an online registration or web  form or contact us with an enquiry or request, you may choose to provide us with your health-related information in order for us to respond to your communication or request, or to help us provide customer service tailored to your needs. This health-related information may include: your diabetes type, therapy, treatment, details of your blood glucose meter and other apparatus, and your measurement frequency.

We will ask you for your explicit consent to the processing of your health-related information as described in this Privacy Statement, which you can withdraw at any time by contacting us at: privacy.us@ascensia.com.

The Reasons for Processing your Personal information

To enable us to perform the contract between you and us and for our legitimate business interests including for statistical purposes, we may process your personal information:

• to process any request for a product or service you make;
• to process and deliver your order for a product and to enable us to take payment from you or provide you with a refund;
• to enable us to respond to an enquiry or other request you make when you contact us via our Website, including for customer services support;
• to continue to develop, test and improve our Website, including to offer new functionality and features;
• to better understand how you interact with our Website, including its functionality and features, and ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner; and
• to allow you to participate in interactive features of our Website when you choose to do so.

For our purposes relating to direct marketing, and where required, based on your consent, we may process your personal information:

• to invite you to participate in surveys or opinion groups or other promotional and marketing activities concerning our products and services, including in conjunction with selected third party partners;
• to make suggestions and recommendations about products or services that may interest you, as described in the “Marketing” section below; and
• to measure and understand the effectiveness of advertising we may serve and to deliver relevant advertising.

To comply with local legal and regulatory requirements, we may process your personal information:

• as necessary if we need to issue a safety notice or corrective action related to any of our products or services, or
• to report events to governmental or regulatory authorities that are responsible for medical devices and/or telemedicine policies, including related to medical device reimbursement and funding.

For reasons of public interest in the area of public health relating to medical devices, to conduct scientific research and/or for our legitimate business purposes, we may use and disclose to third party researchers statistical, aggregated, anonymized or de-identified/pseudonymized information (this is information with which Ascensia will remove personal identifiers such as name and email address) for the purposes of:

• determining and improving the effectiveness of diabetes management techniques, therapies, treatments, and costs;
• researching and evaluating how our products and services are provided and used; and
• evaluating the performance, impact and experience of our products and services (including based on user demographics, such as geography). 

On the basis of your consent, we may process your health-related information (as outlined under “Your Health-Related Information” section above) to enable us to respond to an enquiry or other request you make when you contact us via our Website or to help us understand your needs so that we can better assist you, including in connection with your use of our Contour Diabetes App.

3. Marketing

We may contact you to tell you about products and services that we feel may be of interest to you or that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about.

You may be contacted by Ascensia, a distributor of Ascensia products, or by one of our selected partners, in each case where you have consented to receive these communications.

If you register for any US-based e-commerce store, you can sign up for an account, where you may be able to benefit from free shipping in exchange for receiving our marketing promotions.

You may opt out of receiving our marketing communications at any time by contacting us at privacy.us@ascensia.com or by using the unsubscribe link in any of our communications.

We will continue to contact you for non-marketing related purposes where we need to issue a field corrective or safety notice, or to where we need to send certain information to you under a legal, regulatory, or ethical requirement.

4. Sharing your Personal Information

We do not rent or sell your personal information to anyone. Ascensia may share your information with:

• Ascensia Diabetes Care Holdings AG or other companies in the PHC Group of companies where those colleagues need to know your personal information to provide products and services to you;
• our selected partners where you have chosen to participate in surveys, opinion groups or other marketing-related initiatives relating to your use of our products and services;
• a prospective seller or buyer in the event of a sale or purchase of any Ascensia business or asset so that the buyer can continue to provide you with information and services;
• we may also share your personal information with third parties that we engage to provide services for us. Where we provide your personal information to data processors, they are required to keep your personal information confidential and secure, and must only use your personal information as instructed by us; and
• our distributors, business partners, or service providers, including for marketing purposes or where you have chosen to share your personal information through various features and functionality provided via our Website.

We may also disclose your personal information where required to respond to authorized requests from government authorities or where required by law, including for national security. Where we are required by law, we may also disclose your personal information where it is necessary to enforce or apply our Website Terms and Conditions, this Privacy Statement or other agreements, to investigate or protect the rights, property or safety of Ascensia and our group companies, our products and services, and our customers, distributors or business partners or to prevent or take action regarding illegal activities or fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person or as evidence in litigation. Your personal information may be subject to foreign laws and may be accessible by foreign governments, courts, law enforcement and regulatory agencies.

5. Storing your Personal Information

Ascensia will store your information for as long as we have to by law, and where there is no legal requirement, we will only store it for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected as described in this Privacy Statement. To determine the appropriate period for storing personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

6. Keeping your Personal Information Secure

Ascensia implements appropriate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your personal information. We will use strict procedures and security features, including cryptographic techniques, and take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure your personal information is processed securely and in accordance with this Privacy Statement.

Please note that the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although Ascensia will do its best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your information transmitted via our Website and any transmission is at your own risk.

7. Use of Cookies

We use cookies and similar technologies. These are small data files that are sent to your browser and placed on your computer's hard drive when you visit a website. The information the cookie contains is set by a website's server and it can be used when the user visits the website. Cookies are designed to remember things that an internet user has done whilst on a website in the past, which can include putting products in a basket, logging in, or clicking on links.

We make continuous improvements and changes to the ways we use cookies and similar technologies, and we will keep this section of our Privacy Statement updated with the cookies we use.

We use the following cookies on our Website:

• Strictly necessary cookies: Required for the operation of our Website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our Website, to move around the Website and to use its features such as use the shopping basket when making a purchase.
• Analytical/performance cookies: Allowing Ascensia to recognize and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our Website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our Website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
• Functionality cookies: These recognize you when you return to our Website. This enables us to personalize our content for you, for example, your choice of language or region.
• Targeting cookies: These cookies record your visit to our Website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our Website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose. 

Some of these cookies are persistent cookies that may be used if you log on to restricted areas of our Website to remember who you are. Others are session cookies that may be used for anonymous identification of a website visit for technical purposes only. Session cookies are stored only temporarily during the browsing sessions and are deleted once the browser is closed.

We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:

• to improve our Website security;
• to identify you when you sign-in to our Website and remember your preferences;
• to analyse how you use our Website by tracking specific actions on our Website, such as the completion of a purchase and visits to the various pages of our Website;
• to collect anonymous statistical information on how visitors use our Website so that we can make improvements to its usability and to improve content delivery value;
• to allow you to share pages with social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn;
• to determine the effectiveness of our online campaigns in terms of both sales and user activity on our Website;
• to optimize our advertising by ensuring we can deliver on other websites advertising to those who visit our Website;
• to allow us to assess the success of our advertising by identifying events (such as registrations, checkouts, etc.) on our Website which happened as a direct result of our advertising; and
• to make sure our advertising on other websites is relevant to you. 

We also use cookies and similar technologies provided by other companies to collect web traffic information such as time, date, IP address, and browser, so that we can store your preferences and other information on your device and save you time on subsequent visits by eliminating the need to repeatedly enter the same information. This data could possibly lead to your identification, but we do not use it to do so. In most circumstances the information captured by the Website cookies cannot identify you as an individual.

Facebook Pixel: In certain countries we use Facebook Pixel to show you useful and relevant ads and to optimize our advertising. You can control how we use data to show you ads by using the tools described below.

1. If you have a Facebook Account: You can use your Facebook ad preferences to learn why you’re seeing a particular ad and control how we use information we collect to show you ads. To show you better ads, Facebook uses data that we and other partners provide Facebook about your activity off Facebook to show ads for Ascensia products, including websites and apps. You can control whether Facebook uses this data to show you ads in your Facebook ad settings.
2. If you do not have a Facebook Account: You can opt out of seeing online interest-based ads from Facebook and other participating companies through the Digital Advertising Alliance in the US, the Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada in Canada, or the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance in Europe or through your mobile device settings. Please note ad blockers and tools that restrict our cookie use may interfere with these controls.
3. Browser cookie controls: In addition, your browser or device may offer settings that allow you to choose whether browser cookies are set and to delete them. For more information about these controls, visit your browser or device’s help section. Certain parts of our website may not work properly if you have disabled browser cookie use.

8. Google Analytics and Artificial Intelligence

We use Google Analytics cookies to collect information and compile reports about how visitors use our Website, and we use this information to help us improve our Website. Google Analytics mainly uses first-party cookies which are not shared across different websites that you visit. The information that the cookies collect is mostly anonymous and includes the number of visitors to the Website, where those visitors originate from and how many times they have visited the Website. Google has published information in relation to Privacy and safeguarding data.

Google Analytics will collect your IP address, which is a unique code assigned to every computer and device connected to the Internet. IP addresses are usually assigned in geographic blocks and may allow website operators to identify the country, state, and city in which the computer or device is based. We may collect either the full or a portion of an IP addresses to help us identify the location of our website visitors. Google Analytics will also collect demographic and interests information, including age and gender, where available in the cookie.

Google Analytics also uses third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick cookie) on websites where Google Analytics Advertising Features are used, such as Remarketing or AdWords. Our use of Google Analytics’ Remarketing feature allows targeted and relevant advertising to be delivered to you when you browse elsewhere on the internet. This feature can also work cross-device where you have a Google account and you have chosen to enable Google to associate your web browsing history with your account and to use information from your account to personalize advertising you see across the internet. When you are signed-in to your Google account, Google will use your data together with the analytics data they obtain by the third-party cookies on our Website to serve better advertising on other websites you visit and based on your past browsing habits. To support this feature, Google will collect user’s Google-authenticated identifiers.

More information in relation to these advertising cookies can be found at http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/technologies/ads/. You may opt-out of these features by visiting Google’s Ads Settings.

As part of providing our services to you, and where appropriate, we may use artificial intelligence such as machine learning for automated analysis, for example to assist customer support in providing responses more quickly.

9. Opting out of cookies

You may refuse to accept cookies by altering the settings on your internet browser (for example Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox). Please note that if you choose not to permit cookies, some areas of our Website may not function properly or be accessible.

In general by consulting the help menu item in your internet browser, instructions on how to disable or delete cookies is available. Most browsers are set-up to accept these cookies automatically. In addition, you can deactivate the storing of cookies or adjust your browser to inform you before the cookie is stored on your computer. You may also use self-regulation programs available in your jurisdiction to manage the way that companies other than Google advertise to you, such as the EU-based Your Online Choices.

Please note though, that if you delete your cookies:

• We will no longer know that you have opted out of online behavioral advertising, so the banners from our third-party advertisers will reappear when you visit other selected websites.
• We will no longer automatically recognize that you have agreed to our Privacy Statement and will ask for confirmation of this.

We do not currently honor Do Not Track signals.

10. Children

The services on our Website are for a general US audience and not directed at children under the age of thirteen. Accordingly, we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under age 13. If we discover that a child has provided us with personal information online through our Website, we will take reasonable steps to delete this data. If you are a parent/guardian with any concerns regarding your child’s personal information in connection with our Website, please contact Ascensia at privacy.us@ascensia.com or by mail to Ascensia Diabetes Care US Inc., 5 Wood Hollow Road, Parsippany, NJ, 07054, United States.

11. Exercising Your EEA/Swiss Rights

Residents of the European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland: have the right to: request (a) access to the personal information we hold about you; (b) request we correct any inaccurate personal information we hold about you; (c) request we delete any personal information we hold about you; (d) restrict the processing of personal information we hold about you; (e) object to the processing of personal information we hold about you; and/or (f) receive any personal information we hold about you in a structured and commonly used machine-readable format or have such personal information transmitted to another company. We may ask you for additional information to confirm your identity and for security purposes, before disclosing information requested to you.

12. Exercising Your California and other US State Rights

We collect information about individuals in a variety of contexts. This section only applies to residents of certain US States, including California, whose personal information is subject to the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”) or the equivalent laws in certain other US States. This section does not always apply, and does not apply to information we collect about employees, and job applicants. If you would like to know if the rights apply to you, please contact: privacy.us@ascensia.com.

Below is a summary of the personal information we collect from you and the categories of third parties with whom we share consumer personal information. Information about the categories of sources from which we collect information, and the purposes of collection are described above in Sections 1, 2, 7 & 8.

How Long We Keep Personal Information: We keep your personal information for as long as needed or permitted taking account in line as described above in Section 5. We may remove personal information for inactive accounts from our database, subject to any applicable legal or regulatory obligations. Similarly, we may delete personal information at any time and without providing a reason.

Your Rights: Subject to certain legal limitations and applicable exceptions, residents of certain US States, including California, may exercise the following rights via mail at: privacy.us@ascensia.com or by calling (800) 348-8100.

• Right to Know.  You have the right to request information about the categories of personal information we have collected about you, the categories of sources from which we collected the personal information, the purposes for collecting the personal information, and the categories of third parties with whom we have shared your personal information (“Categories Report”).  You may also request information about the specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you (“Specific Pieces Report”). 

• Right to Delete.  You have the right to request that we delete personal information that we have collected from you.

• Right to Opt Out.  We do not sell any personal information (including information about minors).
• Right to data portability.  You have the right to request your data in a readily useable format that allows you to transmit the information from one company to another.

In accordance with applicable law, we will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights.

Verification:  In order to exercise your rights, we will need to obtain information to verify your identity. If you are submitting a request on behalf of a household, we will need to verify each member of the household in the manner set forth in this section. For a Specific Pieces Report, we will request personal information sufficient to verify your identity to a reasonably high degree of certainty and seek a signed declaration, under penalty of perjury, that you are who you say you are. In most cases, we will seek to match at least three data points to information we already have about you for this verification process. For a Categories Report or a Request to Delete, we will request personal information sufficient to verify your identity to a reasonable degree of certainty.

In certain circumstances, we may require additional or different data to verify your identity. If you make a request (1) for a Specific Pieces Report, (2) as an authorized agent, or (3) on behalf of a household, we will contact you via email following your initial request to obtain information specifically needed for your type of request.

Authorized Agents:  If you are an authorized agent, we will request written and signed authorization from the consumer and will seek to verify the consumer as described above, or we will accept a legal Power of Attorney under the California Probate Code (or equivalent law). At a minimum, we will require evidence of your (the agent’s) identity (via passport or driver’s license submission), proof of registration with the California Secretary of State (or State equivalent), and at least one of the following evidencing proof of your legal authority to act on the behalf of the individual who is the subject of this request:

• Written authorization signed by the consumer,
• Certified copy of a Power of Attorney granted under Probate Code, or legal equivalent, or
• Evidence of parental responsibility.

Timing:  We will respond to Requests to Delete and Requests to Access within 45 days unless we need more time in which case we will notify you and may take up to 90 days total to respond to your request.

Shine the Light: To the extent we share your personal information for third parties’ direct marketing purposes, you may contact us at privacy.us@ascensia.com to request that we stop doing so.

13. Links to Other Web Sites

Our Website may contain links to other third-party websites that are not governed by this Privacy Statement. Although we endeavor to link only to websites with high privacy standards, this Privacy Statement will no longer apply once you leave our Website.

Links to other websites are provided for information only and do not constitute endorsements of those other websites. Ascensia and/or its affiliated companies are not responsible for the content of links or third-party websites and do not make any representation regarding their content or accuracy. Your use of third-party websites is at your own risk.

14. Changes to this Privacy Statement

Any changes we make to our Privacy Statement in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our Privacy Statement.

15. Contact Us

Questions, comments and requests regarding this Privacy Statement are welcomed and should be addressed to the Data Protection Officer at privacy.us@ascensia.com or to Ascensia Diabetes Care US Inc., 5 Wood Hollow Road, Parsippany, NJ, 07054, United States. If you contact us, we will do our utmost to address any concerns you may have about our processing of your personal information.

If you have a disability and would like to request this Privacy Statement in an alternative format, or if you would like to receive this Privacy Statement in a format that permits printing as a separate document, please contact us using the information below.