Sony Europe may collect information about you in several different ways, for example: when you complete text fields or upload documents.

Information that you provide us

Whenever you interact with Sony Europe, you may be asked to provide us with information relating to you. For example:

• Some of our services require you to create an account, such as our My Sony or Community and Sony Professional Solutions Europe services. When creating your accounts, we may ask you to provide a range of information, such as your name, date of birth, email addresses, contact details, interests, account and newsletter preferences
• When you purchase, register, send for repair or return one of our products online, we may record the call and/or ask you to provide information such as your contact details, delivery date and place of purchase and payment information
• When you contact our customer service centres for assistance, we may keep information about the call, including your name, the product(s) you bought, the reason why you contacted us and the advice we gave you
• When you join one of our loyalty programs, we may collect information relating to your use of the loyalty program and the rewards that you claim
• When you participate in one of our prize draws or competitions, we may collect your name, address, age, artistic input,
• When you visit us at a public event, such as trade show or exhibition or participate in one of our surveys, we may ask for information, such as your business card, name, contact details, interests and preferences
• When you use our online services, we may receive content that you choose to upload, such as product reviews, comments, photos and forum posts, or details of your interests and preferences that you choose to tell us about when, for example, selecting the services that you wish to receive
• When you participate in surveys and research, we may ask you for information, such as your email address and information about you

Information we may collect from other sources

We may also collect information from publically available sources and third parties, including:

• When you seek to make a purchase from us, we may carry out credit and financial checks to ensure payment is not made fraudulently and that you have a suitable credit rating
• If you purchase products or services from a Sony Centre or other retailer, we may receive certain information about your purchase from that retailer.
• We may also receive information about you from other Sony group companies that you interact with; in particular, when you link your accounts for certain Sony group services (for more information about linked Sony accounts”, see the “Linked Sony accounts” section below).
• When carrying out business to business sales calls, we may use business contact details that are publically available
• When carrying out research and development, we may use information about you that are publically available

Information we may collect in relation to social networks

If you use any of our social network applications, pages or plugins or you use one of our products or services that allow interaction with social networks, we may receive information relating to your social network accounts.

For instance:

• If you log-in to one of our websites or services using your social network account, we may receive basic details from your social network profile. The basic details we receive may depend on your social network account privacy settings, however, they might include your social network ID, name, profile picture, gender and locale. We may also receive additional information from your profile if you give us permission to access it
• If you click on a 'like', '+1' or 'tweet' or similar button in one of our websites or services, we may record the fact that you have done so. In addition, the content that you are viewing may be posted to your social network profile or feed. We may receive information about further interactions with this posted content (for example, if your contacts click on a link in the posted content), which we may associate with the details that we store about you
• If you 'like', '+1' or similar one of our pages on a social network site, we may receive information about your social network profile, depending on your social network account privacy settings

For more information and for details about how you can control access to your social network profile, you should view the privacy policy and other guidance available on your social network’s website.

Information we may collect when you use websites, products and services from Sony

Some of our websites, internet-enabled products and online services provide Sony Europe with information about your use of them, including:

• Details of the content that you view and interact with. For example, when you use our website, we may collect information about your visit, such as your browser software, which pages you view and which items you ‘clicked’ on or added to your shopping basket
• Service, product or server logs, which hold information about your use of our service, product or websites, such as your IP address, browser information (including HTTP user agent strings), HTTP client request information and the time and location of your activities, domain, device and application settings, errors and hardware activity
• Device information such as your device ID(s) and/or information about where your device is physically located. For example, when you are using a geo-location service or application and you have provided consent to your location being shared
• Interests and preferences that you specify during setup of the Internet enabled product or service
• Details of your linked Sony accounts and when and how you used them (for more information about linked Sony accounts, see the “Linked Sony accounts section below).
• Emails communications that you have with our call centres or other Sony personnel may be monitored and logged.

In general, this information is collected using digital identifiers such as a device number, browser cookie or your IP address. These identifiers are used to distinguish the information provided by your browser or device from that of another user’s browser or device,

We may associate the collected information with one of your accounts, if for instance you are logged into a service when the information is collected. Please see our Cookie policy for further details.

Sony Europe may use the information it collects for the following purposes:

Service provision

When we use personal information to offer our products and services to you, the processing is based on an agreement between you and Sony Europe. In this context, we may use personal information to:

• Provide you with a product or service you have requested, including checking that a payment is not made fraudulently, delivering your purchase to you or ensuring that you benefit from any relevant special offer or promotion (and fulfil its obligations under any other agreement it may have with you)
• Provide customer care, warranty, returns and other after sales services
• Facilitate and process your searches and requests for information when you contact us about Sony Europe and its products and services
• Provide our Checkout assistance service. When you use our online stores, details of any products that you seek to purchase and your email address may be collected as you fill in the checkout form. If you do not complete your purchase, we may contact you using these details to offer our assistance (in case, for instance, you were suffering from technical difficulties). This is an optional service. You can choose not to receive our checkout assistance emails at any time by following the link at the bottom of each assistance email.

Product and service development

We work constantly to improve our products and services. We either base this processing on our legitimate interests to develop our products and services to better meet customer requirements, to ensure data quality, to develop identity management, and to strengthen network and information security, or on your prior consent. In this context, we may use personal information:

• For staff training and quality assurance purposes, particularly in relation to our customer relations staff at our call, email and other support centres
• To measure our performance or ask for your opinions on Sony products and services and conduct product surveys
• To carry out research and development activities to and create and improve new and existing Sony products and services, recommendations, advertisements and other communications and learn more about customers in general.

Marketing

When we use personal information for marketing purposes, either, we base the processing on our legitimate interests to know our customers, keep you up-to-date about Sony Europe's latest products and services, and to personalise your customer experience, or on your prior consent, e.g. for sending marketing messages and to personalise your customer experience.

In particular, we may collect, store, track and profile your information to:

• provide you with newsletters and other communications by email, if you have provided your prior consent or we are otherwise permitted to do so under applicable law. See the Marketing communication section below for more details.
• Conduct prize draws, contests and other promotional offers
• Show you personalised content, recommendations and advertisements and more effectively target Sony stores, services, content, recommendations, adverts and communications. You may notice this personalisation and targeting when you use Sony products and services, when we contact you with marketing communications and when you visit our and third party websites and services that show advertisements from us or our advertising partners (for example, you might see an advertisement for a Sony product that you have recently viewed on one of our websites). The personalisation and targeting that you see on our websites, on third party websites or in our online advertisements and communications may make use of your AdID, pixels, tags or cookies or other digital trackers set by us or our third party advertising partners. Please see our Cookie policy for more information. This personalisation and targeting may also be based on lookalike audiences created through advertising platforms (see further information below). In other cases, our services may have specific settings to control personalised content and you should consult the privacy policy of the relevant service for more information.
• Create lookalike audiences through tools provided by advertising platforms in order to identify other potential Sony customers with similar interests or demographics as those identified in the lookalike audience exercise and deliver advertising to those other potential Sony customers.
• Create anonymous, aggregated statistics about the use of our websites, products, services and loyalty programs, which we may share with third parties and/or make available to the public.
• Use product reviews, comments or content you have uploaded to our websites or services and made publically visible to link to, publish or publicise elsewhere including in our own advertisements. Each time you create or reply to a post or thread on a website forum from Sony Europe, in addition to providing this forum service, we may also record the forum name and the time and date of your post or thread with your account details. We do this to better understand the ‘typical users’ of our forums and to select or tailor our marketing communications to reflect your forum activity. We do not use the content of your forum posts or threads for these additional purposes.

Security

We may use information collected from monitoring our websites, online services and emails for security purposes. This information may be passed to the police or to other appropriate authorities. We base this processing on our legitimate interests to protect you and our company, systems, employees and partners, or on a legal obligation to cooperate with competent authorities.

Fraud prevention and investigation

Sony Europe may use personal information to prevent fraud and to investigate violations or our policies. For example, we may use your information such as your device ID(s) to ensure that any vouchers or discounts relating to any promotions or campaigns are not being redeemed fraudulently, and to check that a payment is not made fraudulently. In this case, we base the processing of personal information on our legitimate interest to prevent fraud and to provide benefits only to our customers.

We may also use personal information to comply with applicable laws, regulations and court orders and to comply with valid legal information requests from such bodies. We may use your personal information to enforce or defend the legal rights of any Sony group company or the terms and conditions of any Sony product or service. In this case, we base the processing on a legal obligation to which Sony Europe is subject or on our legitimate interest to defend our legal rights.

Other purposes

Combining the information we collect

We may link or combine the information that we collect from the different sources outlined above in the “Information that we collect” section above (including information received from other Sony group companies about your use of other Sony group products and services). Information may be linked via a unique identifier, such as a cookie or account number (particularly when you link Sony accounts - for more information about linked Sony accounts, see the “Linked Sony accounts section below). Alternatively, we may decide to combine two or more databases into a single database of customer information.

We may do this for your and/or our convenience (for example, to allow you to more easily register for a new service), to allow us to provide a more seamless customer support whenever you contact us and to provide you with better, personalised services, content, marketing and adverts.

Sharing of information by Sony Europee

In general, Sony Europe does not sell, rent or otherwise disclose information about you to third parties without your consent. However, there are exceptions:

Other Sony group companies

We may disclose information about you to other Sony group companies. They may combine this information with other details they hold about you. Unless they provide you with their own privacy policy, they may use your personal details for the purposes explained in this policy.

Sony Centres

If you choose to purchase products or services from a Sony Centre (whether in store, through our website or over the telephone), your purchase information may be shared by Sony Europe with that Sony Centre. Your purchase information may be combined with other data that that Sony Centre holds about you as a customer, such as details of other purchases you have made and will be processed in accordance with Sony Centre privacy policy available on their website.

Our service providers

We may use third party service providers (either data processors or data controllers) to process your personal information for the purposes outlined above. For example, for fulfilling orders, delivering packages, sending postal mail and emails, sending text messages (SMS), providing marketing assistance, processing credit card payments, providing fraud checking services and providing customer services.

Our data processors operate only in accordance with our instructions, in line with this policy, and are subject to appropriate confidentiality and security obligations.

Third Party Advertising Partners

Where you download and/or use any of Sony applications and/or services, we may share personal data we collect about your usage of the applications and services with our advertising partners so that they can better target and/ or personalise advertisements displayed within any Sony service, or any application used by you (whether Sony or not). Some of our third party advertising partners act independently, and thus will handle shared data under the terms of their own privacy policies. Additionally, you can control personalised ads in your browser’s cookie settings (for more information see our Cookie Policy).

Third party newsletters

If you request or agree to receive information or newsletters from one of our business partners, we may provide that third party with your details so that they can respond to your request.

Legal and business purposes

We may use and/or disclose to third parties information about you:

To government bodies and law enforcement agencies to prevent fraud, to comply with the law and to meet a reasonable request from such bodies

To third parties (including professional advisors) to enforce or defend the legal rights of any Sony group company or the terms and conditions of any Sony product or service

To a third party purchaser or seller, and its and our professional advisors, in connection with a corporate event such as a merger, business acquisition or insolvency situation

Anonymous statistics

We prepare anonymous, aggregate or generic data (including “generic” statistics) for a number of purposes as outlined above. As we consider that you cannot reasonably be identified from this information, we may share it with any third party (such as our partners, advertisers, industry bodies, the media and/or the general public).

Sharing of information by you

A number of our online services allow you to upload and share messages, photos, videos and other content and links with others and/or create a publically accessible profile for your account. For example:

The communities and forums area of our website, allows you to post comments (with your account name), which are visible to other users of that service

Other services allow you to share a link which if clicked on may allow the recipient to access your uploaded content

You should not expect any information that you make available to others via Sony Europe’s online services to be kept private or confidential. Content and links that you share might, for instance, be forwarded by your recipients to others. You should always exercise discretion when using such services.

What are linked Sony accounts

Your accounts for different Sony online services can be linked together so you can use the same sign in details (email address and password) to access them all (“One Sign In”). Other basic account details are also synchronised across your linked accounts, so you can more easily manage your accounts.

How are they used by Sony group companies?

This privacy policy applies to our use of information relating to your linked account(s) and your use of our online services.

Other online services from Sony are operated by different Sony group companies. The privacy policy of each service will tell you how your account details will be used in connection with that service, and which Sony group company is responsible (you can find the privacy policy for a service on its website).

However, Sony group companies may generally use information relating to your linked Sony accounts for the following purposes:

Linking accounts / synchronised basic account details

We will share basic account details with another Sony group company when you:

• We will share basic account details with another Sony group company when you:
• make changes to your basic account details (as these details are synchronised, changes will automatically be made across all of your linked accounts).

Customer Support

When you have linked accounts for Sony services, any Sony call, email or other support centre for those services may access your basic account details to handle your queries. As above, changes you make via customer support will automatically be made across all of your linked accounts.

News, competitions and offers from Sony

You may be offered the opportunity to sign up to receive information about Sony group news, competitions and offers. If you do, companies in the Sony group may send you their news, competitions and offers and may use your linked Sony accounts details to make this information more relevant to you.

Customer analysis

Information relating to your linked accounts may be collated and analysed by the Sony group (in a manner that does not directly identify you) for product and service development, business promotion and research purposes and the results shared with other Sony group companies and third parties (even if you do not use any of their services).

Use and disclosure for legal and corporate reasons

Any Sony group company may use and/or disclose the details of your linked Sony accounts:

To government bodies and law enforcement agencies to prevent fraud, to comply with the law and to meet a reasonable request from such bodies

TTo third parties (including professional advisors) to enforce or defend the legal rights of any Sony group company or the terms and conditions of any Sony product or service

To a third party purchaser or seller, and its and our professional advisors, in connection with a corporate event such as a merger, business acquisition or insolvency situation

Your rights in relation to linked accounts

After you have linked your accounts, the Sony group company operating each service you are accessing will continue to control your account for that service (and any data collected when you use that service) in accordance with its privacy policy. Linking your accounts does not change this.

If you wish to exercise any personal information rights (as set out in the section 'access to your information and your rights' below) in connection with an individual account, you will need to contact the relevant Sony group company controlling that account using the details given in its privacy policy.

In the event that you wish to cancel or terminate some or all of your linked accounts, you will need to follow the account cancellation process for each individual service or account you wish to cancel. It will not be possible for you to cancel some or all of your linked accounts by contacting just one Sony group company. Each Sony group company can only process and action account cancellation requests for their own particular services.

Sony Europe is part of the Sony group, which is a global organisation. For the purposes explained in this policy, your information (including your linked account details - for more information about linked Sony accounts, see the “Linked Sony accounts” section above) may be transferred to Sony group companies (including service providers operating on their behalf) and other third parties in countries which do not have the same level of data protection laws as those in the country where you are located.

Sony Europe uses a variety of legal mechanisms, including EU Standard Contractual Clauses, to help ensure that your rights and protections will travel with your data. This is why each of those Sony group companies (and their authorised data processors) will comply with Sony Europe’s internal policy relating to processing of personal information which complies with the key data protection principles of fair handling of personal information and ensuring adequate level of protection of personal information.

Please contact us if you want to receive further information regarding international data transfers. You will find contact information at the end of this policy.

When you provide us with contact details, such as when you purchase a product, contact our customer support call centres or create an account for one of our services, you may be given the opportunity to opt-in to (or in certain cases where applicable law allows, opt-out of) receiving various newsletters and other communications by post, email, telephone and/or text message (SMS) from Sony Europe and/or other Sony group companies. These communications may include, for instance, details about the latest Sony products and services, including upgrades and special offers in which you may be interested.

Sony Europe may also use your information to personalise and to target more effectively its marketing communications as set out in this policy. When we use customer profiles for direct marketing purposes, you have the right to object to this kind of personal information processing at any time you wish to do so, or to withdraw your consent, if you have given consent to this. You can contact us using the details in the “Contact us” section below to change your preferences.

You can change your marketing communication preferences at any time:

• If you would like to unsubscribe from an email sent to you, follow the ‘unsubscribe’ link and/or instructions placed (typically) at the bottom of the email. But note that:
• If you use more than one e-mail address to shop or contact Sony Europe, you will need to unsubscribe separately for each email address
• This method will only unsubscribe for newsletter or other communication that you have received and you should use one of the other methods if you wish to opt-out of all our marketing communications
• If you have registered with Sony Europe online and have a "My Sony" account, you may log-in and amend your marketing communication preferences in the account settings
• You can contact us using the details in the “Contact us” section below in order to change your marketing communication preferences

Please note that we may occasionally send you important information about Sony Europe products and services that you are using or have used (such as order confirmations, product safety announcements and service changes) or your accounts. These emails are not affected by your marketing communication preferences.

What we do to protect your information

We take a number of steps to protect your information from accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure or access, including where appropriate:

• Using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption when collecting or transferring sensitive information, such as credit card details (SSL encryption is designed to make the data unreadable by anyone but us)
• Limiting access to the information we collect about you (for instance, only those of our personnel who need your information to carry out our business activities are allowed access)
• Putting in place physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards in line with industry standards

What you should do to protect your information

As general best practice on the Internet, it is recommended that individuals take great care with user accounts, and follow some basic rules:

• • Do not use trivial passwords (such as single dictionary words)
• • Do not use the same password for multiple accounts
• • Do use very long passwords (at least 10 characters, but preferably much longer)
• • Do use passwords which contain a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters e.g. $%^& etc.
• • Do keep passwords securely (never written down, or shared with anyone) and changed periodically

Our websites use industry-wide technologies, such as “cookies” and “web beacons”, to collect information about the use of our websites and email communications. For instance, these technologies may tell us which visitors clicked on key elements (such as links or graphics) on a website or email and recognise your browser the next time you visit our websites. More information about our use of cookies and web beacons can be found in our Cookie policy.

If you would like a copy of the personal information that we store about you in our customer databases, please contact us using the details given in the “Contact us” section below.

This is in addition to your legal rights, including the right to access a copy of your personal information, the right to request the deletion or updating of any inaccurate personal data and the right to object, in some cases, to our processing of your personal data. You can exercise these rights by contacting us using the details given in the “Contact us” section below.

Where we base processing on your consent, you have the right to withdraw consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.

You may also have, for some data processed by us, a right to data portability, i.e. the right to receive your personal information in a structured, commonly used machine-readable format and transmit your personal information to another data controller.

You can exercise these rights by contacting us using the details given in the “Contact us” section below. You may be asked to provide some proof of identification so that we can verify that it is you making the request.

If you are concerned that we have not complied with your legal rights or applicable privacy laws, you may contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (www.ico.gov.uk) (which is the regulator responsible for data protection in the United Kingdom, where Sony Europe is located). Alternatively, if you are located outside of the United Kingdom, you may contact your local data protection authority.

We will only retain your personal information for as long as is reasonably necessary for the various purposes set out in this policy or to otherwise comply with any applicable laws and regulations concerning the mandatory retention of certain types of information.

Does this privacy policy extend to websites visited when following links on our website?

Some of our websites may contain links to other websites that are not operated by Sony Europe, including websites operated by other Sony group companies.

While Sony Europe tries to link only to sites that share Sony Europe’s high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content, security or privacy practices of those other websites. You should view the privacy and cookie policies displayed on those websites to find out how your personal information may be used.

Sony Europe considers a child to be anyone under the age of 16. We do not knowingly seek or collect personal information from or about children without the consent of a parent or guardian.

If Sony Europe becomes aware that personal information that has been submitted to us relates to a child without the consent of a parent or guardian, Sony Europe will use reasonable efforts to:

• Delete that personal information from its files as soon as possible
• Ensure, where deletion is not possible, that this personal information is not used further for any purpose, nor disclosed further to any third party

Any parent or guardian with queries regarding our processing of personal information relating to their child should contact us using the details provided in the “Contact us” section.

Sony Europe, a Dutch company with its business address at Taurusavenue 16, 2132LS Hoofddorp, the Netherlands, is the controller of your personal information.

You can contact us in the following ways:

1. Via our online web form:

/support/en/contacts/pim/email

2. By email:

You can also contact us by emailing privacyoffice.SEU@sony.com.

3. By mail:

If you are in the EU

You can write to us at our business address above, or at The Privacy Office c/o Sony Europe Legal Department, The Heights, Brooklands, Weybridge, Surrey KT13 0XW, United Kingdom.

If you are in the UK

You can write to our UK branch at The Privacy Office c/o Sony Europe Legal Department, The Heights, Brooklands, Weybridge, Surrey KT13 0XW, United Kingdom.

4. By telephone:

If you are calling from England, Wales & Scotland, please dial 0844 8466 555

9am to 6pm, Monday to Friday.

4p per minute from a standard BT line, charges from other networks may vary.

If you are calling from Northern Ireland or Eire, please dial (00 353) 1 413 1771 9am to 6pm, Monday to Friday.