Paragon Group Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy offers information about how we use the information you provide to us, which we collect through this website and our Conferences. The transferred information will be stored and processed by the companies of the Paragon Group in South Africa, Panama, UAE and Israel.
We organize conferences, congresses and events (“Congress” or “Congresses”), provide association services and production management (“Services”).
We respect your privacy. We collect and process information in computerized systems for the purposes set out below, including to provide our Services and to protect our legitimate interests.
If you do not wish to provide information or do not agree to these terms, you are not legally required to do so, but you may not be able to obtain our Services or part of them.
What personal information do we collect?
We collect the following information regarding the provision of our Services:
- Information you give us: You may provide us information in the following cases:
- Abstract submitters: If you submit an abstract, the information you provide to us in the application form may include name, title, country, phone, mobile phone, work phone, email address, specialty and affiliation (to a company, hospital, university, etc.)
- Congress Participants: If you subscribe as a participant in one of our Congresses, the information you provide to us in the application form may include name, title, city, country, phone, mobile phone, work phone, email address, specialty and affiliation (to a company, hospital, university, etc.), date of birth and information required for the payment (Credit card number, credit card holder’s name, validity, CVV, Card Holder’s ID number and his or her address, etc).
- WEB Subscribers form: If you subscribe to receive our newsletters, the information you provide to us in the application form includes name, specialty, country and email address.
- We also may collect your unique numerical identifiers like computer’s IP address or your mobile device’s MAC address.
All the information described above will be defined as the “Personal Information”
- Cookies: we collect information through cookies as explained below.
All the Personal Information and the information collected through cookies will be defined as the “Information”.
How do we collect your Personal Information?
We collect or receive information from you via our websites, forms, or otherwise. Sometimes you give us the information directly (i.e. when you contact us or subscribe to our newsletters), and sometimes we receive your information from other sources, including third parties (i.e. when you register on-line to congresses through our websites, you are transferred to a landing page operated by a third party that collects your personal information for us) and publicly available databases.
Why do we collect Personal Information?
We collect, use and process your Information for the following purposes:
- To contact and reach you regarding Congress-related matters.
- To analyze the Congress’ target audience to learn, for example, which countries the participants are coming from or what specialties are most relevant to each congress.
- To market our Congresses to potential participants in relevant fields, including customized information.
- To comply with legal requirements and judicial and governmental orders, issued by national or foreign authorities, if we believe we are required to comply with them.
- To comply with procedures and policies such as book auditing, information security, billing, collection and business continuity, as well as to retain records and documents.
- To improve our Services by executing market research and surveys.
To whom do we transfer the information?
- We may transfer Personal Information to third parties in the framework of our ongoing activity (such as service providers and contractors), but only for providing our Services and operating our business. We only provide them with the information they need to perform our services such as:
- Processing payments details
- Sending direct marketing and advertisements on our behalf
- Performing analysis of our Services
- Subject to the law, we may transfer Information as part of the sale of our business (including in the negotiations of such sale), and within the framework of a reorganization, merger, joint ventures and other transactions related to our business. In such a case, the recipient of the Information will be subject to the same restrictions on the use of Information to which we are subject.
- We may share your Personal Information with our affiliates (i.e. companies controlled by us, or under common control with us) in purpose of providing our services and operating our business.
- We may share your Personal Information to respond to court or law enforcements orders, to defend against legal claims or in the event that such a disclosure is necessary to comply with applicable laws.
How long do we retain your Personal Information?
We keep your personal information for as long as we need to provide you with our services, to comply with our legal or regulatory obligations, and thereafter for a variety of legitimate legal interests or commercial purposes.
These might include the following criteria:
- mandated by law or contract applicable to our services;
- maintaining adequate and accurate records of our activities, for defending in legal proceeding.
If you have any questions about the retention of your personal information, you can contact us at [email protected].
Media, advertisements and direct marketing
We may send you direct marketing materials (i.e. which may be based on your personal data we know about you such as name, title, specialty and other Personal Information you provided us) and advertisement communications by email, phone (including SMS messages), social networks and other means, subject to your consent, or in certain circumstances, in accordance with our legitimate interests.
You have the right to request to be removed from the mailing list at any time and also that no advertisement will be sent to you. In order to do this, please contact us at [email protected]. You can also be removed from the mailing list by pressing the unsubscribe button which will appear at the bottom of every newsletter we send to you. Such removal will not include the necessary data for the provision of our Services or for other legitimate interests of ours.
Even after you have requested not to receive direct mailings or advertisements, you will continue to receive from us those notices (by any means of any communication) which we are permitted or required to send to you without your consent, according to the applicable law.
Right to review, delete, and correct information
You have the right to review the information we hold about you. In order to do this, you must send us a written request to [email protected]. If the information we hold about you is incorrect, you have the right to request its correction.
In some cases, you have the right to request the deletion of your personal information. Please note that this is not an absolute right, as we may have some legitimate interests for retaining your personal data.
If you would like us to delete your personal data, please contact us at the details above.
Right to withdraw your consent for the processing of your information
Subject to the applicable law, you have the right at any time to withdraw your consent given to us to process your information, where we are relying on that consent by sending an email to [email protected]. Please note that we may still be entitled to process your information if we have another legitimate reason (other than consent) for doing so.
More information about your rights
If you would like to receive more information about our privacy practices or wish to exercise a legal right, such as the right to review and amend the information we have about you please contact us at [email protected].
We will review your request in accordance with the applicable laws, notify you of the results of our review, and act accordingly.
As detailed in our privacy policy, you have several legal rights in relation to the information that we hold about you, including:
- The right to request details of the information we have about you.
- In some circumstances, you have the right to receive some of your information in a usable format and/or request we transmit that information to a third party where this is technically feasible (data portability).
- The right to ask that we update your information if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
- The right to ask that we erase your information in certain circumstances. Please note that there may be circumstances where you ask us to erase your information, but we are legally entitled to retain it.
- The right to request that we restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances. Again, there may be circumstances where you ask us to restrict the processing of your information, but we are legally entitled to refuse that request.
Links
Our websites and this privacy policy include links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy and security policies of these sites.
Cookies and targeted marketing
In order to provide our services, we use a technology called cookies, which are text files placed on your computer by a web server. The cookies are not a computer program and cannot read information or perform any actions. The cookies collect information related to your use of our websites, such as: pages you looked at, your location, duration of your visit in our websites, IP address, browser information and device information.
We use cookies to enhance the usability or functionality of our websites, and for targeted marketing purposes through collaborations with our third-party partners (such as Google analytics and Google AdWords). Targeted marketing content may be displayed to you based on your activities on our webpages, and other websites, and based on the congresses you have registered to. This content will display as marketing banners displayed to you while browsing in our websites or in third parties’ websites.
How to block cookies
The settings from the internet browsers are usually programmed by default to accept Cookies, but you can block or delete them at any time by changing your browsing setting. For more details on how to block or delete cookies consult the instructions provided by your browser (normally in its “Help” menu), or in this link: http://preferences-mgr.truste.com.
More information regarding cookies you can find at: http://www.aboutcookies.org.
Information security and encryption
When processing and storing your Information, we follow generally accepted security standards in order to protect your privacy. Despite the aforementioned, there is a risk of unauthorized access to our database. In that case, so long as we have used reasonable security measures, we will not be liable for damages caused by such unauthorized access or for the transfer of Information to a third party due to such access.
We recommend that you take additional security measures: use the security options of your computer’s operating system, install antivirus software, install all available updates (we recommend that you enable an automatic update), avoid downloads from unofficial sites, do not share sensitive social networking information, enable encryption on a wireless network, and avoid using public computers (for example, Internet cafes) or public WIFI networks, unless you are sure your communications are encrypted.
If you are concerned that your identification information (especially your password) or information about you has reached an unauthorized individual, please contact us immediately at [email protected].
Subscribing to our services through our third-party provider
If you submit an abstract or subscribe as a participant in one of our Congresses, you will fill in a form and enter your Personal information, as described above, in the webpage provided by our third-party provider, Eventact. In such case, Eventact will open your account. In order to gain access to your account, you will be provided with a password or you may choose your own password.
Where do we store your Information
The Information that you provide to us or we obtain as a result of your use of our services is stored within the European Economic Area (“EEA”) or in countries which have an adequacy decision from the European Commission (such as Israel). In certain circumstances, we may transfer your information to our affiliates or staff working for us in countries outside the EEA which do not have an adequacy decision from the European Commission, but only subject to our appropriate safeguards (i.e. Contractual Model Clauses) or to your explicit consent.
Restrictions on the use of information
According with this Privacy Policy, we will keep your Information and we will not trade, sell, or transfer your information for any use other than as stated in this privacy policy.
Notification of changes
We reserve the right to change this privacy policy and we may update it from time to time, as necessary and according to the changes in any applicable law.