PRIVACY POLICY

This policy (together with our Terms of Use and any other documents referred to on it) sets out the basis on which we, Karen Volckaerts International, Schansweg 67, 2610 Wilrijk, Belgium (BE0668.892.006) will collect and process any personal data we collect from you, or which you provide to us, in the course of using our site  www.karenvolckaerts.com

Karen Volckaerts is the data controller and we are responsible for processing your personal data (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice), in compliance with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Law.

WHAT DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU, FOR WHAT PURPOSE AND ON WHAT GROUNDS WE PROCESS IT

Personal data means any information capable of identifying an individual, including your professional email address or an IP-address. For this specific reason the privacy rules are applicable to both companies as private consumers.

Which categories of personal data about you may we process?

When you communicate with us through the contact form on our website, signing up for our newsletter, requesting a quotation or some kind of other question regarding our services through email, text, social media (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn) messaging, social media posting or any other communication that you send us, we will ask you to fill out certain data. We will exclusively process the data you provide us for the only purposes of communicating with you, for record keeping and for the establishment, pursuance or defence of legal claims. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to reply to communications sent to us, to keep records and to establish, pursue or defend legal claims. These data may be: your legal name, email address, (personal) website, phone number or skype address, company name, legal address, VAT-number.
Customer Data  that includes data relating to any purchases of goods and/or services such as your name, title, billing address, delivery address email address, phone number, contact details, purchase details. We process this data to supply the goods and/or services you have purchased and to keep records of such transactions. Our lawful ground for this processing is the performance of a contract between you and us and/or taking steps at your request to enter into such a contract 
Marketing Data  that includes data about your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences. We process this data to enable you to partake in our promotions such as competitions, prize draws and free give-aways, to deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of this advertising. Our lawful ground for this processing is our legitimate interests which in this case are to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to decide our marketing strategy.

We may use the data you provide us with for delivering relevant website content and advertisements to you (including Facebook and Instagram adverts or other display advertisements) and to measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve you. Our lawful grounds for this processing are legitimate interests which is to grow our business. We may also use such data to send other marketing communications to you. Our lawful ground for this processing is either consent or legitimate interests (namely to grow our business).

Note:

When you fill out a contact form it will be necessary to provide us with your name and email address in order for us to get back to you with a written reaction.

We will only use the data you provide to us through downloading free documents. We will never use data provided through contact forms or quotation requests. We ourselves will never add your email address to a mailing list.

The name, email address, perhaps a website, telephone number and/or skype address you provide us with when requesting a quotation, will merely be used by us to make an offer. Such form will end up in our mailbox where it will be kept during the period of 5 years. Until the moment you become our customer we do not put these data in our email marketing system.

We will use your name, email address, billing and delivery address to create an invoice.

We may receive data from third parties such as analytics providers such as Google based outside the EU, advertising networks such as Facebook based outside the EU, such as search information providers such as Google based outside the EU

By providing us with these data you give us permission to use the data for previous purposes. Moreover, when certain services have to be carried out for you, a number of these data are necessary to execute the agreement. We will process your data according to article 8 sub a and sub b of the Belgian WBP (Law for Personal Data Protection)

SENSITIVE DATA

We do not collect any Sensitive Data about you. Sensitive data refers to data that includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data. We do not collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.

We do not carry out automated decision making or any type of automated profiling.

DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below:

Service providers who provide IT and system administration services.
Our Mailing provider ActiveCampaign, though only when you subscribed yourself to our mailing list. Its servers are U.S. based. Your data may be passed, stored and processed in the United States. Passing on these data only happens based on the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework
Professional advisers including accountants, lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers.

Our professional coaches and trainers
Government bodies that require us to report processing activities.

We require all third parties to whom we transfer your data to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS

Countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) do not always offer the same levels of protection to your personal data, so European law has prohibited transfers of personal data outside of the EEA unless the transfer meets certain criteria.

Many of our third parties service providers are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we do our best to ensure a similar degree of security of data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is in place:

We will only transfer your personal data to countries that the European Commission have approved as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data by; or

Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe; or
If we use US-based providers that are part of EU-US Privacy Shield, we may transfer data to them, as they have equivalent safeguards in place.

If none of the above safeguards is available, we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.

DATA SECURITY

We have put in place security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed, or accessed without authorisation. We also allow access to your personal data only to those employees and partners who have a business need to know such data. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they must keep it confidential.

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach if we are legally required to. These measures, such as encryption through SSL-certification provide a decent security level regarding our data processing

DATA RETENTION

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

When deciding what the correct time is to keep the data for we look at its amount, nature and sensitivity, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure, the processing purposes, if these can be achieved by other means and legal requirements.

When you unsubscribe from our newsletter, you will be put on a list that will not receive email anymore. Yet, you will remain in the system for a maximum period of one year until we completely delete the unsubscribe list.

For tax purposes, the law requires us to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for five years after they stop being customers.

In some circumstances, we may anonymise your personal data for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.  

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our  Cookie Policy.

YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

Under data protection laws you have rights in relation to your personal data that include the right to request access, correction, erasure, restriction, transfer, to object to processing, to portability of data and (where the lawful ground of processing is consent) to withdraw consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email us at hello@karenvolckaerts.com

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive or refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

All request will have to be in writing.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you.

COOKIE POLICY

A “cookie” is a piece of information that is stored on your computer’s hard drive and which records how you move your way around a website so that, when you revisit that website, it can present tailored options based on the information stored about your last visit. Cookies can also be used to analyse traffic and for advertising and marketing purposes.

We only use analytical cookies which enable us to analyse the number of visitors to our website and to see how our website users navigate around our website. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that you can find what you are looking for easily.

Cookies are used by nearly all websites and do not harm your system.

If you want to check or change what types of cookies you accept, this can usually be altered within your browser settings. You can block cookies at any time by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

We use cookies to track your use of our website. This enables us to understand how you use the site and track any patterns with regards how you are using our website. This helps us to develop and improve our website as well as products and/or services in response to what you might need or want.

Cookies are either:

Session cookies: these are only stored on your computer during your web session and are automatically deleted when you close your browser – they usually store an anonymous session ID allowing you to browse a website without having to log in to each page but they do not collect any personal data from your computer; or

Persistent cookies: a persistent cookie is stored as a file on your computer and it remains there when you close your web browser. The cookie can be read by the website that created it when you visit that website again. We use persistent cookies for Google Analytics.

Cookies can also be categorised as follows:

Strictly necessary cookies: These cookies are essential to enable you to use the website effectively, such as when buying a product and / or service, and therefore cannot be turned off. Without these cookies, the services available to you on our website cannot be provided. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing or remembering where you have been on the internet.

Performance cookies: These cookies enable us to monitor and improve the performance of our website. For example, they allow us to count visits, identify traffic sources and see which parts of the site are most popular.
Functionality cookies: These cookies allow our website to remember choices you make and provide enhanced features. For instance, we may be able to provide you with news or updates relevant to the services you use. They may also be used to provide services you have requested such as viewing a video or commenting on a blog. The information these cookies collect is usually anonymised.

By using our website you consent to our use of cookies as described above.

THIRD-PARTY LINKS

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

Social Media: We wish to make it as easy as can be for you to share our website content on social media. Therefore, we incorporated a few social media buttons.

To know how these social media channels deal with privacy, please read their privacy policy in the following links: