Privacy Policy
Effective Date: 22nd October, 2024
Watches of Switzerland (Nevada) LLC and its affiliates (part of The Watches of Switzerland Group USA Inc.) (“Watches of Switzerland”, “we,” “us” or “our”) recognizes the importance of personal privacy of our customers and online visitors. We have created the following privacy policy (“Privacy Policy”) to inform you of our information collection, use, storage and sharing practices for when you interact with us, including when you visit our website available at https://www.watchesofswitzerland.com (the “Site”). However, please note that this Privacy Policy does not apply to the information we collect in any employment context, which is set forth in a separate privacy notice.
PLEASE REVIEW THIS PRIVACY POLICY CAREFULLY. When you provide us with your information, including when you visit our Site, you accept the terms of this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use, and consent to our collection, use, disclosure and retention of your information as described in this Privacy Policy.
1. Information We Collect
a. Personal Information
Watches of Switzerland collects personal information about you, which may include:
- Name
- Address
- Telephone number
- Email address
- Username and password
- Payment information, including but not limited to credit or debit card numbers
- VAT number
- Details of your specific orders and transactions with us, including the products you've purchased and your shopping/consuming histories or tendencies
- If you post a photograph on social media and tag us or if you post a comment on our social media pages, we will collect the photograph or content of that message. Please note that if you choose to post photograph on social media and tag us or post a comment on any of our social media pages, any information you post will be visible to any other visitors to that social media page. We are not responsible for any personal information you include in such posts or for any use of such information by any other visitor to the social media page.
This information is collected and stored electronically when you register an account with us, purchase one of our products or contact us.
Where permitted by applicable law, we may combine your personal information with other non-personally identifiable information we have collected from you. We may also combine your personal information with information we receive about you from other sources, such as our service providers.
b. Information Collected Automatically
In addition, information about your device's hardware and software is automatically collected by Watches of Switzerland when you use the Site. This information may include:
- IP address
- Browser type
- Device type
- Type of operating system
- Language preference
- Access times and dates
- Search queries
- Device IDs
- Geographic location
- Other technical information such as protocol status and substatus, bytes sent and received, and server information.
We may also collect information regarding traffic patterns, the actions taken on our Site, including the user's click-stream and session replay information, and your interaction with our Site and advertisements. This information is used by us for our business purposes, including for the operation and improvement of the Site, for technical troubleshooting, to maintain the quality of the Site, to provide general statistics regarding use of the Site and to determine the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns.
We may also receive similar data from our business partners, including our parent company, subsidiaries, affiliates or other related companies, online advertising networks, and from social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and X, subject to your registration and privacy settings with such third-party social media platforms.
c. Cookies and Other Information Collection Tools
Cookies
A cookie is a small file containing a string of characters that is sent to your computer when you visit a website or use an online service. When you visit the website or use the service again, the cookie allows that website or online service to recognize your browser or device. Cookies may store unique identifiers, user preferences and other information.
We may use “session cookies” or “persistent cookies.” Session cookies are temporary and expire once you close your browser or once your session ends. Persistent cookies remain on your device for much longer or until you or your browser erase them. Persistent cookies have varying durations that are dependent on their expiration date.
The types of cookies Watches of Switzerland may use on the Site include:
- Necessary Cookies. These cookies are necessary for you to browse the Site and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the Site. Without these cookies, certain aspects of the Site may not be available to you.
- Preferences Cookies. These cookies collect information about how you have used the Site in the past and allow the Site to remember the choices you have made. These cookies allow us to improve how the Site works for you and tailor the Site to your preferences.
- Statistics Cookies. These cookies collect information about how you use the Site, such as which pages you most often visit on the Site, the time you spend on the Site, which links you click on, and any issues encountered. These cookies help us understand how visitors interact with the Site. All information collected is aggregated and do not identify you.
- Marketing Cookies. These cookies track your online activity to help deliver advertisements that are relevant to you and your interests and measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaigns. They also limit how many times you see a certain advertisement. We may share the information collected through these cookies with others, such as advertisers.
We may also use third-party cookies, like Google Analytics, for example, which sets cookies on the Site to help analyze how visitors use the Site. If you would like to opt-out from the use of your information by Google Analytics, you may use Google Analytics' opt-out browser add-on designed for this purpose.
Cookies help us improve the Site by providing us with information about which parts of the Site are most popular, enabling us to analyze technical and navigational information about the Site, and helping us to detect and prevent fraud. We also use cookies and other data collection tools, such as pixels, to help improve your experience with the Site.
Web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to manage and delete cookies, visit www.allaboutcookies.org. Some web browsers provide settings that allow a user to reject cookies or to alert a user when a cookie is placed on the user's computer, tablet or mobile device. Most mobile devices also offer settings to reject mobile device identifiers. Although users are not required to accept cookies or mobile device identifiers, blocking or rejecting them may prevent access to some features available through the Site.
Web Beacons and Pixels
A pixel is an HTML code snippet embedded in a website or email that collects information about user behaviors and interactions with the website or email.
We may utilize pixels both on certain aspects of the Site and in HTML-formatted email messages to you. Pixels may be used for the purpose of, among other things, measuring the success of our marketing campaigns, compiling statistics about Site usage and tracking the activities of users of the Site and email recipients. For instance, we may use pixels from Meta and Google on the Site to enable us to create targeted advertisements and measure the effectiveness of our advertisements. For additional information on interest-based advertising, please see Section 2 (Interest-Based Advertising).
2. Interest Based Advertising
We may collect information about your online activities on our Site to provide you with advertising about products tailored to your individual interests. We also may obtain information for this purpose from third-party websites on which our advertisements are served.
You may see certain advertisements on other websites because we work with advertising partners (including advertising networks) to engage in remarketing and retargeting activities. Our advertising partners allow us to target our messaging to users through demographic, interest-based and contextual means. These partners track your online activities over time and across websites, including our Site, by collecting information through automated means, including through the use of third-party cookies and web beacons. They use this information to show you advertisements that may be tailored to your individual interests. The information our advertising partners may collect includes data about your visits to websites that participate in the relevant advertising networks, such as the pages or advertisements you view and the actions you take on the websites. This data collection takes place both on our Site and on third-party websites that participate in the ad networks. This process also helps us track the effectiveness of our marketing efforts. For example, we utilize certain of our advertising partners' targeted advertising services to show you our advertisements on other websites based on your prior visits to our Site and other online activity.
Provided that a company participates in industry-developed programs designed to provide consumers choices about whether to receive targeted advertising, you may opt out of interest-based advertising generally through the Network Advertising Initiative website or by visiting http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ (web-based advertising) or http://www.aboutads.info/appchoices (for mobile advertising). To learn more, please visit the websites operated by the Network Advertising Initiative and Digital Advertising Alliance at www.networkadvertising.org/choices. Opting-out does not mean that you will stop receiving advertisements from us. It means that you still stop receiving advertisements from us that have been targeted to you based on your visits and browsing activity across websites over time.
3. How Information is Used
We may use the information we collect for any of the following purposes:
- to provide the Site to you and to improve the Site;
- to create and manage your account with us;
- to operate, improve, and personalize the products and services we offer, and to give each user a more consistent and personalized experience when interacting with us;
- to personalize our advertising, marketing communications, shopping experiences and promotional offers and to deliver promotions and offers to you that we think may interest you;
- if you sign up for our email list, to send you our newsletters and emails about products or offers that we think might be of interest to you;
- to notify you if a product you were interested in is back in stock;
- for security, to detect fraud or illegal activities, and for archival and backup purposes in connection with the provision of the Site;
- to complete and fulfill your purchase, for example, to process your payments, have your order delivered to you, communicate with you regarding your purchase, and provide you with related customer service;
- to respond to your inquiries and communicate with you;
- For our other business purposes, such as data analytics, audits, developing new products and services, identifying Site usage trends;
- As we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (i) under applicable law; (ii) to comply with legal process; (iii) to respond to requests from public and government authorities; (iv) to enforce this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use; (v) to protect our operations; (vi) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of you or others; and (vii) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.
4. Disclosure of Information
We may disclose your information:
- With Third Party Service Providers Performing Services on Our Behalf. We share your personal information with our service providers to perform the functions for which we engage them. For example, we may use third parties to host the Site or assist us in providing functionality on the Site, provide data analytics on the Site, send out email updates about the Site and our products and services, and to process payments.
- With Our Parent Company, Subsidiaries, Affiliates or Other Related Companies. We may share your information with our parent company, subsidiaries, affiliates or other related companies for our internal business purposes.
- Through Tracking Technologies. We may share information collected through tracking technologies set on the Site with our website analytics and digital advertising service providers.
- For Legal Purposes. We also may share information that we collect from users as needed to enforce our rights, protect our property or protect the rights, property or safety of others, or as needed to support external auditing, compliance and corporate governance functions. We will disclose personal information as we deem necessary to respond to a subpoena, regulation, binding order of a data protection agency, legal process, governmental request or other legal or regulatory process. We may also share personal information as required to pursue available remedies or limit damages we may sustain.
- Changes of Control. We reserve the right to transfer or assign the information that we have collected from users in connection with a corporate transaction, such as a divestiture, merger, consolidation, or asset sale, or in the unlikely event of bankruptcy.
Watches of Switzerland does not share your personal information with third parties for those third parties' direct marketing purposes.
5. Links to External Websites and Online Services
Our Site may contain links to third-party websites and online services. Any access to and use of such third-party websites and online services is not governed by this Privacy Policy, but is instead governed by the privacy policies of those third-party websites and online services, and we are not responsible for the information practices of such third-party websites and online services.
6. Social Media
Some aspects of the Site may allow you to interface with social media, such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and X. We will attempt to identify these aspects of the Site to you, for example, by identifying them with the applicable third-party logos or trade names. By using these interfaces, you will allow us to access information about you from those other online services, including information and other content that you submit to those online services. If you interface with the Site through your social media account, we may contact you or enable you to share your experience and content via your social media account, which information may be publicly viewed by other users of those services. For a description on how such social media services and other third-party platforms, plug-ins, integrations, and applications handle your information, please refer to their respective privacy policies and terms of use, which may permit you to modify your privacy settings with that service or platform.
7. Communications
You may choose to stop receiving our marketing emails by following the unsubscribe instructions included in such emails or contacting us at info@watchesofswitzerland.com.
8. Data Security and Retention
Watches of Switzerland uses reasonable security measures designed to prevent unauthorized intrusion to the Site and the alteration, acquisition or misuse of personal information. However, please note that no data transmission over the Internet or data storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. It is your responsibility to protect the security of your login information.
We will retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected, or as required by applicable laws or regulation.
9. Do Not Track
Our Site does not currently take any action when it receives a Do Not Track request. Do Not Track is a privacy preference that you can set in your web browser to indicate that you do not want certain information about your webpage visits collected across websites when you have not interacted with that service on the page. For details, including how to turn on Do Not Track, visit www.donottrack.us.
10. Children
We do not knowingly collect or maintain personal information from any person under the age of sixteen. No parts of our Site are directed to or designed to attract anyone under the age of sixteen.
11. Nevada Residents
Under Nevada law, Watches of Switzerland does not sell your personal information. However, if you are a Nevada resident, you may submit a request that we not sell any personal information we have collected about you by contacting us at info@watchesofswitzerland.com
12. California Residents
The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (“CPRA”) provides California residents with specific rights regarding their personal information. The below describes such rights and how you may exercise such rights, and our information practices, including the categories of personal information we collect, use, retain, disclose, sell or share, and how and why we collect, disclose, sell or share such information.
Consumer Rights
Right to Know
You have the right to request that we disclose what personal information we collect, use, disclose, sell or share. Specifically, you may request that we disclose to you the following:
- The categories of personal information we have collected about you.
- The categories of sources from which the personal information is collected.
- The business or commercial purpose for collecting, selling or sharing personal information.
- The categories of third parties with whom we disclose personal information.
- The specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you.
You may also request that we disclose to you:
- The categories of personal information that we have sold or shared about you and the categories of third parties to whom the personal information was sold or shared, by category or categories of personal information for each third party to whom the personal information was sold or shared.
- The categories of personal information that we disclosed about you for a business purpose and the categories of persons to whom it was disclosed for a business purpose.
Right to Request Deletion
You have the right to request that we delete any personal information about you which we have collected from you. If it is necessary for us to maintain your personal information for certain purposes, we are not required to comply with your deletion request. If we determine that we will not delete your personal information when you request us to do so, we will inform you and tell you why we are not deleting it.
Right to Opt-Out of Sale or Sharing of Personal Information
You have the right to direct a business that sells or shares personal information about you to third parties not to sell or share your personal information. We do not sell your personal information for monetary consideration. However, we do use cookies for targeted advertising purposes. The collection of data through certain cookies for our targeting advertising purposes may be considered a "sale" and is considered "sharing" under the CPRA. To opt-out of having your information sold and shared with third-party website analytics and digital advertising service providers for this purpose, please click on the hyperlink entitled "Your Privacy Choices" set forth at the footer of the Site.
Right to Correct Inaccurate Personal Information
You have the right to request a business that maintains inaccurate personal information about you to correct that inaccurate personal information, taking into account the nature of the personal information and the purposes of the processing of the personal information.
Right to Limit Use and Disclosure of Sensitive Personal Information
Watches of Switzerland does not collect any sensitive personal information.
No Discrimination
You have the right not to be discriminated against because you exercised any of your aforementioned rights.
How to Submit a Request
To exercise the rights described above, you must submit a verifiable request to us. You can do so by calling us toll free at (877) 762-9677or by emailing DPO@thewosgroup.com
If you maintain an online account with us, we will verify your identity for a request through the normal account authentication process, meaning you will need to sign on with your username and password
To submit a verifiable request, you will be asked to provide certain information to help us verify your identity. The information we ask you to provide to initiate a request may differ depending upon the type of request, the type, sensitivity and value of the personal information that is the subject of the request, and the risk of harm to you that may occur as a result of unauthorized access or deletion, among other factors.
You may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf by providing the agent with signed written permission to do so.
If we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request, we will not be able to comply with your request. We will inform you if we cannot verify your identity or authority. We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable request to verify the requestor's identity or authority to make the request.
How We Collect, Use, Disclose, Sell and Share Personal Information
Watches of Switzerland has collected the following categories of personal information and used, disclosed, sold or shared such information in the twelve (12) months prior to the effective date of this Privacy Policy:
- Identifiers, such as name, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, Internet Protocol address, email address, account name, or other similar identifiers.
- Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)), such as name, address, telephone number, bank account number, credit card number, debit card number, or any other financial information.
- Commercial information, such as records of products purchased, obtained, or considered, or other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies.
- Internet or other electronic network activity information, including, but not limited to, browsing history, search history, and information regarding a consumer's interaction with an Internet Web site, application, or advertisement.
- Geolocation data.
Each of the above categories are disclosed for a business or commercial purpose as described above in Section 3 (How Information is Used) to the third parties listed in Section 4 (Disclosure of Information).
The following categories of personal information were sold or shared in the twelve (12) months prior to the effective date of this Privacy Policy:
- Identifiers, such as unique personal identifier, online identifier, Internet Protocol address, or other similar identifiers.
- Internet or other electronic network activity information, including, but not limited to, browsing history, search history, and information regarding a consumer's interaction with an Internet Web site, application, or advertisement.
- Geolocation data.
Such information is sold to or shared with our third-party website analytics and digital advertising service providers.
We share or sell such information to:
- Provide the Site to you and to improve the Site;
- Operate, improve and personalize the products and services we offer, and to give each user a more consistent and personalized experience when interacting with us;
- Personalize our advertising, marketing communications, shopping experiences and promotional offers and to deliver promotions and offers to you that we think may interest you;
- For security, to detect fraud or illegal activities, and for archival and backup purposes in connection with the provision of the Site;
- For our business purposes, such as data analytics, audits, identifying Site usage trends;
- As we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (i) under applicable law; (ii) to comply with legal process; (iii) to respond to requests from public and government authorities; (iv) to enforce this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use; (v) to protect our operations or those of any of our affiliates; (vi) to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliates, you, or others; and (vii) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.
Watches of Switzerland does not collect sensitive personal information.
Watches of Switzerland collects the personal information described above from or through the following categories of sources:
- You, directly and indirectly, including when you access the Site or when you purchase our products, register an account with us, subscribe to our newsletter or otherwise contact us;
- Service providers, including those that provide website analytics services to help us understand the activity on the Site.
Watches of Switzerland will retain the personal information described above for as long as necessary to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected, or as required by applicable laws or regulation.
Personal Information of Minors
Watches of Switzerland does not have actual knowledge that it sells or shares personal information about minors under the age of sixteen.
13. Texas Residents
The categories of personal information we process about you is set forth in Section 1 (Information We Collect). The purposes for processing such personal information are set forth in Section 3 (How Information is Used). We disclose the personal information we process about you with the third parties set forth in Section 4 (Disclosure of Information).
As a Texas resident, you have the rights to:
- Confirm whether or not we are processing your personal information and access such personal information;
- Correct inaccuracies in your personal information, taking into account the nature of the personal information and the purposes of the processing of your personal information;
- Delete personal information provided by or obtained about you;
- Obtain a copy of your personal information we process, in a portable and, to the extent technically feasible, readily usable format that allows you to transmit the data to another entity without hindrance, where the processing is carried out by automated means; and
- Opt out of the processing of personal information for purposes of:
- Targeted advertising;
- The sale of personal information; or
- Profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects concerning you. We do not engage in profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects concerning you.
You may exercise these rights by calling us toll free at (877) 762-9677 or emailing DPO@thewosgroup.com
The verifiable consumer request must:
- Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information; and
- Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.
We reserve the right to verify your identity in connection with any requests regarding personal information to help ensure that we provide the information we maintain to the individuals to whom it pertains and allow only those individuals to exercise rights with respect to that information. We cannot respond to your request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you.
In the event we deny your request, you may appeal our denial by contacting us in the same manner by which you submitted your request.
We process your personal information for the purposes of targeted advertising, and under Texas law, our processing may qualify as a “sale”. We share the information set forth in Section 1.b (Information Collected Automatically) with our third-party website analytics and digital advertising service providers. To opt-out of such sharing of information with our third-party website analytics and digital advertising service providers, please click on the hyperlink entitled “Your Privacy Choices” set forth at the footer of the Site.
If you are an authorized agent making a request to opt-out on behalf of a consumer, we may require and request that you provide us with written permission signed by the consumer to verify that you are authorized to make such request.
14. Personal data processed in the UK
To the extent that our processing of personal data is covered by UK data protection law, we will process your data in accordance with our UK privacy policy. Should you have any queries about how Watches of Switzerland handles personal data in the UK, please contact DPO@thewosgroup.com
15. Questions / Contact Us
If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy, please contact us at DPO@thewosgroup.com
16. Notification of Changes
Any changes to our Privacy Policy will be posted to this page so users are always aware of the information we collect and how we use it. Accordingly, please refer back to this Privacy Policy frequently as it may change.