Privacy Policy
The GEA Privacy Policy was updated on 21 July 2023.
Your privacy is important to GEA. So we’ve developed a Privacy Policy that covers how we collect, use, disclose, transfer, and store your information. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with our privacy practices and let us know if you have any questions.
Collection and Use of Personal Information
Personal information is data that can be used to identify or contact a single person.
You may be asked to provide your personal information anytime you are in contact with GEA or a GEA affiliated company. GEA and its affiliates may share this personal information with each other and use it consistent with this Privacy Policy. They may also combine it with other information to provide and improve our products, services, content, and advertising. You are not required to provide the personal information that we have requested, but, if you chose not to do so, in many cases we will not be able to provide you with our products or services or respond to any queries you may have.
Here are some examples of the types of personal information GEA may collect and how we may use it:
What personal information we collect
When you create a GEA ID, apply for commercial credit, purchase a product, download a software update, register for a class at a GEA Academy, contact us or participate in an online survey, we may collect a variety of information, including your name, mailing address, phone number, email address.
In certain jurisdictions, we may ask for a government issued ID in limited circumstances including when setting up a remote support account and activating your system, for verification of your identity and any other the purposes as required by law.
How we use your personal information
The personal information we collect allows us to keep you posted on GEA's latest product announcements, software updates, and upcoming events. If you don’t want to be on our mailing list, you can opt out anytime by contacting us.
We also use personal information to help us create, develop, operate, deliver, and improve our products, services, content and advertising, and for loss prevention and anti-fraud purposes.
We may use your personal information, including date of birth, to verify identity, assist with identification of users, and to determine appropriate services. For example, we may use date of birth to determine the age of GEA ID account holders.
From time to time, we may use your personal information to send important notices, such as communications changes to our terms, conditions, and policies. Because this information is important to your interaction with GEA, you may not opt out of receiving these communications.
We may also use personal information for internal purposes such as auditing, data analysis, and research to improve GEA's services, and customer communications.
If you enter into a sweepstake, contest, or similar promotion organized by GEA or its affiliates, we may use the information you provide to administer those programs.
Collection and Use of Non-Personal Information
We also collect data in a form that does not, on its own, permit direct association with any specific individual. We may collect, use, transfer, and disclose non-personal information for any purpose. The following are some examples of non-personal information that we collect and how we may use it:
We may collect information such as occupation, language, zip code, area code, unique device identifier, referrer URL, location, and the time zone where a GEA product is used so that we can better understand customer behavior and improve our products, services, and advertising.
We may collect information regarding customer activities on our website, and from our other products and services. This information is aggregated and used to help us provide more useful information to our customers and to understand which parts of our website, products, and services are of most interest. Aggregated data is considered nonpersonal information for the purposes of this Privacy Policy.
We may collect and store details of how you use our services, including search queries. This information may be used to improve the relevancy of results provided by our services. Except in limited instances to ensure quality of our services over the Internet, such information will not be associated with your IP address.
With your explicit consent, we may collect data about how you use your device and applications in order to help app developers improve their apps.
If we do combine non-personal information with personal information the combined information will be treated as personal information for as long as it remains combined.
Cookies and Other Technologies
GEA's websites, online services, interactive applications, email messages, and advertisements may use "cookies" and other technologies such as pixel tags and web beacons. These technologies help us better understand user behavior, tell us which parts of our websites people have visited, and facilitate and measure the effectiveness of advertisements and web searches. We treat information collected by cookies and other technologies as nonpersonal information. However, to the extent that Internet Protocol (IP) addresses or similar identifiers are considered personal information by local law, we also treat these identifiers as personal information. Similarly, to the extent that non-personal information is combined with personal information, we treat the combined information as personal information for the purposes of this Privacy Policy.
Ads that are delivered by GEA's advertising platform may appear in GEA News. If you do not wish to receive ads targeted to your interests from GEA's advertising platform, you can choose to enable Limit Ad Tracking, which will opt your GEA ID out of receiving such ads regardless of what device you are using. If you enable Limit Ad Tracking on your mobile device, third-party apps cannot use the Advertising Identifier, a non-personal device identifier, to serve you targeted ads.
If you want to disable cookies and you’re using the Safari web browser, go to Safari preferences and then to the privacy pane to manage your preferences. On your mobile device, go to Settings, then Safari, scroll down to the Privacy & Security section, and tap on “Block Cookies” to manage your preferences. For other browsers, check with your provider to find out how to disable cookies. Please note that certain features of the GEA website will not be available once cookies are disabled.
As is true of most internet services, we gather some information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, browser type and language, Internet service provider (ISP), referring and exit websites and applications, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data.
We use this information to understand and analyze trends, to administer the site, to learn about user behavior on the site, to improve our product and services, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. GEA may use this information in our marketing and advertising services.
In some of our email messages, we use a “click-through URL” linked to content on the GEA website. When customers click one of these URLs, they pass through a separate web server before arriving at the destination page on our website. We track this click-through data to help us determine interest in particular topics and measure the effectiveness of our customer communications. If you prefer not to be tracked in this way, you should not click text or graphic links in the email messages.
Pixel tags enable us to send email messages in a format customers can read, and they tell us whether mail has been opened. We may use this information to reduce or eliminate messages sent to customers.
Disclosure to Third Parties
At times GEA may make certain personal information available to strategic partners that work with GEA to provide products and services, or that help GEA market to customers. Personal information will only be shared by GEA to provide or improve our services and advertising; it will not be shared with third parties for their marketing purposes.
Service Providers
GEA shares personal information with companies who provide services such as information processing, extending credit, managing and enhancing customer data, providing customer service, assessing your interest in our products and services, and conducting customer research or satisfaction surveys. These companies are obligated to protect your information and may be located wherever GEA operates.
Others
It may be necessary − by law, legal process, litigation, and/or requests from public and governmental authorities within or outside your country of residence − for GEA to disclose your personal information. We may also disclose information about you if we determine that for purposes of national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance, disclosure is necessary or appropriate.
We may also disclose information about you if we determine that disclosure is reasonably necessary to enforce our terms and conditions or protect our operations or users. Additionally, in the event of a reorganization, merger, or sale we may transfer any and all personal information we collect to the relevant third party.
Protection of Personal Information
GEA takes the security of your personal information very seriously. When your personal data is stored by GEA, we use computer systems with limited access housed in facilities using physical security measures.
When you use some GEA services, or applications or post on a GEA forum, chat room, or social networking service, the personal information and content you share is visible to other users and can be read, collected, or used by them. GEA cannot be responsible for the personal information you choose to share or submit in these instances. For example, if you list your name and email address in a forum posting, that information is public. Please take care when using these features.
Integrity and Retention of Personal Information
GEA makes it easy for you to keep your personal information accurate, complete, and up to date. We will retain your personal information for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.
Access to Personal Information
You can help ensure that your contact information and preferences are accurate, complete. For other personal information we hold, you have the right to access to the data, to request for correction of the data if it is inaccurate or requests for deletion of the data by withdrawing your relevant consent. We may decline to process requests that are frivolous/vexatious, jeopardize the privacy of others, are extremely impractical, or for which access is not otherwise required by local law. Access, correction, or deletion requests can be made through the regional Privacy Contact Form. We reserves the right to charge you a reasonable fee for the processing of any data access request.
Location-Based Services
To provide location-based services on GEA products, GEA and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your GEA computer or device. Where available, location-based services may use GPS, Bluetooth, and your IP Address, along with crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations, and other technologies to determine your devices’ approximate location. Unless you provide consent, this location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by GEA and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, your device may share its geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services.
International Users
GEA abides by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Cross Border Privacy Rules System. The APEC CBPR system provides a framework for organizations to ensure protection of personal information transferred among participating APEC economies. To learn more about the APEC Certification and Dispute Resolution, please click on the TRUSTe seal.
Our Companywide Commitment to Your Privacy
To make sure your personal information is secure, we communicate our privacy and security guidelines to GEA employees and strictly enforce privacy safeguards within the company.
Privacy Questions
If you have any questions or concerns about GEA's Privacy Policy or data processing or if you would like to make a complaint about a possible breach of local privacy laws, please contact us. You can always contact us by phone at the relevant GEA support number for your country.
When a privacy question or access/download request is received we have a dedicated team which triages the contacts and seeks to address the specific concern or query which you are seeking to raise. Where your issue may be more substantive in nature, more information may be sought from you. All such substantive contacts receive a response. If you are unsatisfied with the reply received, you may refer your complaint to the relevant regulator in your jurisdiction. If you ask us, we will endeavor to provide you with information about relevant complaint avenues which may be applicable to your circumstances.
GEA may update its Privacy Policy from time to time. When we change the policy in a material way, a notice will be posted on our website along with the updated Privacy Policy.