2. Collection and storage of personal data; type and purpose of its use
a) When visiting the website
When you access our website, information is automatically transferred to us via the browser on your device. When you visit our website, the following data – without any action on your part – will be collected and temporarily stored in a log file:
- IP address
- Date and time of the request
- Time zone difference to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
- Contents of the request (specific page)
- Access status/HTTP status code
- the amount of data transferred
- the website from which the request was received
- Browser used
- Language and version of the browser software
- Operating system and its interface
The specified data will be processed by us for the following purposes:
- To ensure the smooth establishment of a connection to the website
- To ensure convenient operation of our website
- To evaluate the system security and stability
- For determining the correct country site
- Other administrative purposes
The legal basis for data processing is Art. 6 para. 1 clause 1 littera (lit.) f of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Our legitimate interest arises from the aforementioned purposes for data collection.
When you visit our website, we also use analytical services, social media bookmarks/plug-ins and website cookies. Further information on cookies and analytical services can be found under sections 4 and 5 of this privacy policy and information about social media bookmarks/plug-ins can be found under section 6. Sections 7 and 8 provide information about the integration of YouTube Videos and Google Maps.
b) When using a contact form or contacting us via email
By making contact with us through a contact form or email, the data communicated by you (your email address, name, phone number, address, and any other information you provide on the contact form) are stored by us in order to answer your questions. Insofar as is necessary based on your request, the data can also be transferred to companies affiliated with BERNINA or to independent market organizations and processed by them. We delete any data arising in this context if it is no longer necessary to store it in order to answer your request.
The processing of data for the purpose of contacting us is made according to Article 6 para. 1 clause 1 lit. a GDPR on the basis of your voluntarily provided consent.
c) when using our customer portal and product registration
If you wish to use our customer portal, you must first register by providing your name, your email address, and a password of your choosing. This information will be stored in the Microsoft Azure Cloud, operated by Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052-6399, USA, on servers in the EU. For this registration, we use for the double opt-in process, which means your registration is not complete until you confirm the registration using a code sent to you by email. You must provide the aforementioned data to use the customer portal. You can voluntarily provide more information by using our portal.
In our customer portal, you can view, change, and add to the personal information that we have on record for you at any time. We use this information for customer data management and, if necessary, to process any warranty claims as well as to personalize advertising. Additionally, you can register your BERNINA products, sign up for the BERNINA newsletter, and identify topics that you are particularly interested in.
If you want to register a product, we will save the information you provide (serial number, date of purchase, dealer, product, and other information in the questionnaire) and use it for the purpose of customer data administration and, if necessary, to grant any benefits you may be awarded as a result of registering the product, and to provide personalized advertising.
For more information on data privacy when using the newsletter service, please see section 2. d) Newsletter.
Information that you provide in the customer portal may be linked to other information we have saved about you in a customer profile. In doing so, we comply with the principle of purpose limitation and link only data that has been collected for the same purposes (e.g. for advertising). BERNINA can provide dealers, suppliers, or service providers with information from your customer profile if you have given your consent, which is revocable at any time, to this submission or if the transmission of this information is necessary in order to process your request. BERNINA will only transmit your data to third parties to the extent required. These third parties are obligated to adequately protect your data and to use it in conformity with the law.
The processing of your data when using the customer portal is subject to art. 6 para. 1 sent. 1 lit. a) (if and to the extent you give your consent), lit. b) (product registration), and lit. f) (other cases; in these cases, the legitimate interests of BERNINA are those of direct marketing) of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). You are neither legally or contractually obligated to provide information. Use of the customer portal, however, is only possible if the required information specified above has been provided. Any benefits arising from product registration can only be provided if the product has been registered.
You can delete individual data stored in the customer portal at any time. All of your stored data may be deleted upon request. Additional information about your information and revocation rights is available in paragraph 10 of the data protection provisions. In all other respects, your data will be deleted when the purpose for which the data was collected no longer exists.
d) when signing up for our newsletter
You can sign up for our newsletter to receive information about the latest trends in sewing, quilting, and embroidery as well as attractive offers from BERNINA.
When registering for our newsletter, we use the double opt-in procedure. This means that we send an email to the specified email address in which we ask you to confirm that you wish to receive the newsletter. If you do not confirm your registration, your information will be automatically deleted. In addition, we will save your IP addresses as well as the date and time of registration and confirmation. The purpose of the procedure is to verify your registration and, if necessary, to investigate any possible misuse of your personal data.
In addition to your email address, on some forms, your name and/or your zip code are mandatory information for sending the newsletter. We want to send our users high-quality newsletters that are customized to their needs. In order to address you personally in the newsletter, and to tailor the newsletter to your needs, we also require your name, and in some cases your zip code, when you subscribe to the newsletter. You are neither legally nor contractually obligated to provide information. However, the use of our newsletter service is only possible if the aforementioned mandatory information is provided.
If you sign up for the BERNINA newsletter, the data you enter when registering (name, email address, interests, zip code, and additional information where appropriate) is stored for the purpose of direct marketing (including the delivery of personalized content within the newsletters but also on the BERNINA website) and may be linked to other data that BERNINA has saved about you.
Please note that we use our newsletter to evaluate your user behavior. This may be done using an algorithm or manually. If you click on a link in a newsletter, you will be directed to one of our websites via a Salesforce Marketing Cloud server. Salesforce Marketing Cloud evaluates various parameters, e.g. when you click which links in the newsletter and which of our pages you visit. To evaluate user behavior, we link the data generated in this way with other user data, in particular data collected via a Salesforce Marketing Cloud cookie (for more information, see Section 5 i) of this privacy policy below). We use the aforementioned data to create a user profile in order to tailor our digital offers such as the newsletter or websites to your individual interests.
For sending newsletters and the subsequent evaluation of your user behavior, we use solutions from the external service provider Salesforce.com, Inc., Salesforce Tower, 415 Mission Street, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA. This may result in Salesforce.com, Inc. having access to your personal data. The collected data is stored on Salesforce.com, Inc. servers.
In addition to the aforementioned user analysis by Salesforce Marketing Cloud services, some of the services offered by Email on Acid, 5500 Greenwood Plaza Blvd, Suite 220, Greenwood Village, CO 80111, USA are also used, whereby the above statements on data collection/processing and user analysis by Salesforce Marketing Cloud apply accordingly to Email on Acid's analysis and tracking services. This may result in the transmission of your personal data to Email on Acid in the USA.
In addition, we use the services of Email on Acid to test the presentation of newsletters on different email platforms and on different mobile devices. In isolated cases, this can result in the transmission of personal data to Email on Acid.
Email on Acid processes this data exclusively on behalf of and in accordance with the instructions of BERNINA.
In addition, we use a solution provided by our external service provider, MailChimp, The Rocket Science Group, 675 Ponce de Leon Ave NE, Suite 5000, Atlanta, GA 30308, USA. This may result in the transmission of your personal data to MailChimp.
The legal basis for the aforementioned data processing is Art. 6 para. 1 clause 1 a) of the GDPR or, insofar as consent has not been granted in individual cases, Art. 6 para. 1 clause 1 f) of the GDPR.
You can revoke your consent to receiving the newsletter and unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time. You can declare that you revoke your consent by clicking on the link provided in each newsletter email, by sending an email to
info@bernina.com or by sending a message to the contact details given in the imprint. This applies equally to an objection against commercial use in the event that you have not given consent to the sending of newsletters.
The data collected in relation to this will be stored until the consent is revoked.
e) when registering for classes with the BERNINA Creative Center
If you sign up for a class with the BERNINA Creative Center, the data you provide (name, address, email address, telephone number, other data you may voluntarily supply) will be processed for the purpose of organizing and running the class you have booked and will be passed on to the class management. The legal basis for the processing is Art. 6 para. 1 clause 1 lit. b of the GDPR. Provided that you have not consented to a longer storage duration, these data will be deleted upon completion of the class.
In addition, if you have consented to the use of your data for direct marketing purposes, we will process the data for direct marketing purposes and combine it in a customer profile with other information collected by us for the same purpose. The legal basis for this is Art. 6 para. 1 clause 1 lit. a of the GDPR.
If you have also consented to the publication of photos taken of you during the class for advertising purposes, we will process these photos in accordance with your consent. The legal basis for this is Art. 6 para. 1 clause 1 lit. a of the GDPR.
f) when using our blogs
If you sign up for the
BERNINA Blog, the mandatory information specified by you when signing up (name, email address, country) as well as any additional data you voluntarily provide to supplement your profile, are saved for the purpose of the blog and for direct marketing purposes and, where appropriate, is linked to other data that BERNINA has saved about you. In the blog, you can publicly post topics, posts, links, comments, photos, sketches, instructions, etc. If you carry out such an action, we will save this internally, publish your action in the BERNINA blog and use these activities, where appropriate, to provide personalized content. Based on your uploaded projects (number of articles written, categories, participation in cooperative actions, tags used to describe articles, first/last entry) we will try to draw conclusions about your interests and use this information for direct marketing purposes.
You can also sign up for our special blog newsletter. For the blog newsletter, the statements under No. 2 lit. d) shall apply accordingly.
Mandatory information is required to use the blog, since we need your email address for authentication, your name in order to be identified as the author of projects/comments, as well as for a personal response from us, and your country in order to be associated with a market organization. You are neither legally nor contractually obligated to provide information. Use of our blog, however, is only possible if the required information specified above has been provided.
If you want to leave a comment in the blog, a spam check is carried out in order to prevent misuse of our blogs. As part of this, your email address and your IP address will be saved and compared to a local blacklist. In addition, we use the Anti Spam Bee plug-in to help detect spam. The plug-in allows invisible input fields to be added to the comment form. Since spambots often complete all possible fields, it is possible to determine whether a comment is classified as spam. The plug-in also matches new comments with the metadata from previous spam comments and checks the comments for content that is commonly used by spammers (links, etc.). All of the checks noted above are carried out locally on our servers. No personal data is transferred to third parties. Once the above tests have taken place, your comment, along with your first name and last name, will be published. In addition, the author of the post you commented on receives an alert about your comment which also includes your first and last name.
The photos you upload to the blog must first be compressed. We use the Optimus image optimizer from the external service provider proinity GmbH, Rümikerstrasse 60, 8409 Winterthur, Switzerland, to perform this image compression. proinity GmbH compresses the photos and then, after the transfer process has been completed, immediately erases all cached data. No personal data remains on the service provider's servers. Your data is processed by proinity GmbH exclusively on behalf of and in accordance with the instructions of BERNINA subject to these data protection regulations.
The legal basis for the processing of your data in the BERNINA blog is Art. 6 para. 1 clause 1 lit. a of the GDPR.
The data collected in the context of our blog will be stored until the consent is revoked.
Please refer to the special
terms and conditions of use of the BERNINA Blog.
g) when using our web shop inspiration.bernina.com
If you wish to order something from our web shop, in order to conclude the contract, you are required to provide the personal data necessary to process your order (mandatory information). The mandatory information required to process the order is marked separately; all other information is voluntary. We process the data you provide for the purpose of processing your order.
You can also voluntarily create a customer account, enabling us to save your data for further purchases. When you create a customer account, the optional data you have provided and your previous purchases will be stored unless consent is revoked. One of the advantages of this is that you can download digital content you have purchased (e.g. a digital edition of our customer magazine) from your customer account at any time.
If you order print media, we will pass on your details to Medienwerkstatt AG, Steinackerstrasse 8, 8583 Sulgen, Switzerland. Medienwerkstatt AG is responsible for shipping single issues ordered and issues covered by a subscription. If you pay by credit card or PayPal, we will pass on your payment details to the payment service provider SIX Payment Services AG, Hardturmstrasse 201, 8021 Zürich, Switzerland. Credit card information is stored and processed exclusively by SIX Payment Services AG. BERNINA does not save or process your credit card information. If you choose to pay by invoice, the invoice will be issued by Medienwerkstatt AG.
Due to commercial and tax regulations, we are obliged to save your address, payment and order data for a period of ten years. Your data will be deleted when the purpose for which the data was collected no longer applies and there is no legal basis for its continued storage. In your customer account, you can edit or delete all optional data yourself under "Addresses" or "Profile data". Your entire customer account can be deleted on request (which you can send to info@bernina.com, for example). More information about your information and consent revocation rights is available in Section 10 of this privacy policy.
If you open a customer account, we will link the data you provided when you opened the account and the purchases made with other information that we have stored about you in a customer profile. In doing so, we comply with the principle of purpose limitation and only link data that has been collected for the same purposes (e.g. for personalized advertising).
The legal basis for processing the data required to conclude a contract is Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 b) of the GDPR and, with regard to all other data, Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 a) of the GDPR (if and insofar as you give your consent) or Art. 6 para 1 sentence 1 f) of the GDPR (other cases; in these cases, BERNINA's legitimate interests are direct marketing interests).
h) when downloading free downloads
On our website, we provide you with the option of free downloads (e.g. for test versions of embroidery software or upgrades of already purchased software). Before you can start downloading, you are required to complete a form, including providing your name, your email address, your post/zip code and your location. With your consent, we store and share this data with the respective market organization or dealer in your area. The purpose of the processing is to create a statistical record of the downloads carried out as well as promotions and advertising on the part of BERNIINA, the respective market organization or a dealer in your area. The legal basis for this is Art. 6 para. 1 clause 1 lit. a of the GDPR.
In addition, if you have consented to the use of your data for the purposes of sending newsletters, we will process the data for direct marketing purposes and combine it in a customer profile with other information that BERNINA has saved about you. The legal basis for this is Art. 6 para. 1 clause 1 lit. a of the GDPR.
i) when ordering fee-based software downloads (BERNINA Toolbox)
For fee-based software, we use the online sales solution, MyCommerce, from Digital River GmbH, Scheidtweilerstr. 4, 50933 Cologne. Digital River GmbH sells our digital software product on our behalf. If you trigger the purchase of fee-based software via our website, you will be redirected to the Digital River GmbH website. Digital River GmbH is the seller of the products and your contractual partner. We assume the role of a “partner” in accordance with the Digital River GmbH data protection policy. The personal data collected by Digital River GmbH during the processing of the order and how this data is processed can be found in the Digital River GmbH data protection policy, which can be viewed at the following link:
https://www.mycommerce.com/privacy-policy/. BERNINA has access to the information entered during the ordering process except for the payment details.
j) when submitting an application
If you submit an application, we will process your application data in order to proceed with the application process. It will be ensured that your personal application data will only be passed on to the internal offices and specialist departments who are responsible for filling the position in question. Your personal application data will not be transferred to third parties. If you are not to be considered as part of the application process, your application data will be automatically deleted six months after the completion of the application process, unless a statutory provision precludes the deletion, further storage is required for the purpose of providing evidence, or you have explicitly agreed to a longer period of storage. In the instance of recruitment, the data you provide during the application process will be stored and processed as employee data. The legal basis for the processing of your data is Art. 6 para. 1 clause 1 lit. a of the GDPR.