Privacy Policy

The Privacy Policy informs all users of LifeWatch Italy’s website on the management and treatment of their personal data, and includes activities related to actual data collection and monitoring of website visits.

1. Who we are

When we say “we,” “us,” and “LifeWatch Italy,” we’re referring to the Joint Research Unit LifeWatch Italy, Italian node of the European Research Infrastructure Consortium LifeWatch ERIC, coordinated by the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) in the person of Antonello Provenzale.
Our servers and offices are located in Italy, a member of the European Union and are compliant to European Legislation in terms of privacy. Data collected from sources outside the EU will anyway be treated with the same regulations adopted for EU member states.

2. Contact Point

The digital platforms of LifeWatch Italy have been developed and strengthened as part of the project “LifeWatchPLUS – LifeWatch, eScience infrastructure for research on biodiversity and ecosystems – Progetto di rafforzamento infrastrutturale”. The project was jointly proposed by the National Research Council, represented by the Department of Earth System Science and Environmental Technologies (DSSTTA) and the Institute of Nanotechnology (NANOTEC), the University of Salento, the University of Bologna and by the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN).
In accordance and under the conditions of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) articles 13 and 14, the Contact Point is the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) and its premises, having its registered office at Piazzale Aldo Moro (Rome, Italy) – VAT Number 02118311006 and Fiscal Code 80054330586.
Ai sensi e per gli effetti dell’art. 26 del Regolamento Generale sulla Protezione dei Dati (GDPR), il Punto di Contatto per gli interessati è il Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) e le sue strutture, con sede legale in Piazzale Aldo Moro (Roma, Italia) – P.IVA 02118311006 e Codice Fiscale 80054330586.
In compliance with the aforementioned legislation, the Controller provides the following information:
the appointed responsible person with function of Controller’s representative and contact point for the user rights is Antonello Provenzale, Director of the Geosciences and Earth Resources (IGG) of the CNR, e-mail: antonello.provenzale@cnr.it.
The contact details of the data protection officer (c.d. RPD or DPO, Data Protection Officer), appointed following the implementation of the article 37 of the Regulation (EU) 2016/679, can be reached at: rpd@cnr.it or at the Registered Electronic Mail (REM) Services: rpd@pec.cnr.it.

3. Purpose of this Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy will inform you on how we process your personal data when you visit our websites, social media, platforms, systems and applications which belong to or are used by us to collect and handle your personal data (regardless of where you visit it from) and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
There are other terms that may apply to you:

Our Terms and Conditions.
Our Data Policy.
Our Cookies Policy.

It is important that you read this Privacy Policy together with any other Privacy Policy or fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you, so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This Privacy Policy supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.

4. Changes

In case of any kind of updates and/or change to this Privacy Policy, you will be notified (by email or with a pop-up notice on the LifeWatch Italy websites). Subscribers may object to any changes within 20 days after they are posted on our website or delivered to them. If they object to changes in our Privacy Policy, we will have to terminate their account.

5. Information we collect

We collect the minimum amount of personal information needed to achieve the purpose of your interactions with us.
We do not collect any special categories of personal data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, genetic and biometric data, etc.).
We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you:

a) Information you provide to us: when you register and/or use any of our services or platforms, send us an email, visit our website, fill in forms or surveys, or communicate with us in any way, you are giving us information that we collect. Such information may include your IP address, name, country, email address, employer, job. By providing this information, you give us the consent to collect, use, store your data, as described in this Privacy Policy.

b) Cookies and tracking: when you use any of our services or platforms, we may store “cookies”, which are strings of code, on your computer. We use these cookies to store data about web site navigation, user preferences, and to guarantee access to reserved areas. You may turn off cookies that have been placed on your computer by changing the appropriate settings on your browser. Please note that, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies), you may not be able to access some parts of the website. You are advised to read our Cookies Policy that can be found at: LINK

c) Web Beacons: If we send emails to Members, we may track behaviour such as who opened the emails and who clicked the links. We do that to measure the performance of our newsletter and to improve our features for specific segments of Members. To do this, we include single pixel gifs, also called web beacons, in emails we send. Web beacons allow us to collect information about when Subscribers open the email, their IP address, browser or email client type, and other similar details.

d) Website and newsletter analytics: when you navigate our websites and platforms, we may process data about your use of our website and services (“usage data”). The usage data may include your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views and website navigation paths, as well as information about the timing, frequency and pattern of your service use. The source of the usage data is the Google Analytics tracking system and MATOMO. These usage data may be processed for the purposes of analysing the use of the website and services, for the monitoring and improving our website and services. The same when you interact, or not, with our newsletter we collect personal data (clicked links per user, who opened the newsletters, user IP address / geolocation / browser version / platform) through the AcyMailing system to allow detailed statistics and a tailored communication.

6. Account creation

If you choose to create an account to access our services, we will collect information on name, last name, email address and username. The registration of new accounts is allowed only if subscribers accept this Privacy Policy. You can ask us to delete or remove your account and the associated personal data by contacting us at lifewatchitaly@gmail.com.

7. How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to and we may use and disclose your personal information only as follows:

a) to send system alert messages. For example, we may let subscribers know about temporary or permanent changes to our services, like planned outages, new features, version updates, releases, abuse warnings, and changes/updates to our Privacy Policy;

b) to communicate about subscribers’ accounts and provide customer support;

c) to enforce compliance with our Terms of Use and applicable law. This may include developing tools and algorithms that help us to prevent violations;

d) to protect the rights and safety of subscribers;

e) to meet legal requirements like complying with court orders, valid discovery requests, valid subpoenas, and other appropriate legal mechanisms;

f) to provide information to representatives and advisors, like attorneys and accountants, to help us to comply with legal, accounting, or security requirements:

g) to prosecute and defend a court, arbitration, or similar legal proceedings;

h) to provide, support, and improve the services we offer. This includes aggregating information from subscribers’ use of the services and sharing such aggregated information with third parties;

i) to provide suggestions to subscribers. This includes asking subscribers if they will join similar services that might be of interest.

We will retain personal data we process as long as needed to provide services to subscribers or to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, prevent abuse, and enforce our agreements.

8. Public information and third parties

Social media platforms and widgets. Our websites and platforms include social media features, like sharing buttons. These features may collect information about IP addresses and the page the user is visiting on our site, and they may set a cookie to make sure the specific feature works properly. Social media features and widgets are hosted by a third party. We also maintain presences on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Any information, communications, or materials you submit to us via a social media platform is done at your own risk without any expectation of privacy. Users’ interactions with those features and platforms are governed by the privacy policies of the companies that provide them. We cannot control the actions of other users of these platforms or the actions of the platforms themselves.
Links to third-party sites. Our websites and platforms include links to other websites, whose privacy practices may be different from ours. If you submit personal information to any of those sites, your information is governed by their privacy policies. We encourage you to read carefully the Privacy Policy of any website you visit.

9. Newsletter and email distribution list

We will send our newsletter only with your consent. You are free to change your subscription preferences at any time and remove consent for LifeWatch Italy news and information emails by unsubscribing to it. When you interact, or not, with our newsletter we collect personal data that can be used for statistical and technical aims as anonymous or aggregated data.
We store the LifeWatch Italy mailing list on a secure server, where only authorised employees have access. We will use and disclose the information in the mailing list only for the reasons described in the section “How we use your personal data”. We do not, under any other circumstances, disclose nor sell the mailing list.

10. Data security

We put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. If a security breach causes an unauthorised intrusion into our system that materially affects you, we will notify it as soon as possible and later report the action we took in response.

11. Data retention

We will only retain your personal data for a period of time that is necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

12. Your legal rights

In accordance and under the conditions of the EU GDPR, we inform you that you have the right to:

a) Request access to your personal data. This enables you to send us a request (by contacting us at lifewatchitaly@gmail.com) to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it. We will give you individual access to any personal information we store about you within 30 days of your request.

b) Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us. There is no charge for accessing or updating your own personal information we store.

c) Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

d) Object to processing of your personal data. This enables you to object to the processing of your personal data for serious and legitimate reasons. However, please note that you cannot object to the processing of personal data which are necessary for us to carry out a legal obligation, the performance of the contract or our legitimate interest, and this as long as these data are necessary for the purposes for which they were collected.

e) Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:
− If you want us to establish the data accuracy.
− Where our use of data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
− Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
− You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

f) Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

g) Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide some services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
You may also have a right to lodge a complaint with the Italian Data Protection Authority (https://www.garanteprivacy.it)

13. Accuracy of data

We do our best to keep your data accurate and up-to-date, to the extent that you provide us with the information we need to do that. If data change (e.g., a new email address), then you are responsible for notifying us of those changes.