Privacy Policy

Last updated: Oct】,【1, 2024

Previous versions

Beijing Watchdata Co. Ltd and its affiliates (collectively, ” Watchdata “, “we”, “us”, and “our”) respect your privacy. Please read the following to learn more about our Privacy Policy (“this Policy”). This Policy applies to Watchdata websites, products, and services that display or provide links to this Policy.


This Policy describes how Watchdata processes your personal data, but it may not address all possible data processing scenarios. Watchdata may inform you of product- or service-specific data collection through supplementary policies or notices provided before collection.

This Policy describes:

1. How We Collect & Use Your Personal Data

2. Cookies & Similar Technologies

3. How We Disclose Personal Data

4. Your Legal Rights under This Policy

5. How We Protect Your Personal Data

6. How We Process Children’s Personal Data

7. Third-Party Providers and Their Services

8. International Transfers of Your Personal Data

9. Updates to This Policy

10. How to Contact Us


1. How We Collect & Use Your Personal Data

Personal data means any data that, either on its own or jointly with other data, can be used to identify a natural person. You directly provide us with such data when you use our websites, products, or services, or interact with us by, for example, when you contact us for support by filling out feedback;. We may also obtain data by recording how you interact with our websites, products, or services. For example, we may use technologies like cookies or receive use data from software running on your device. As permitted by law, we may also obtain data from public and commercial third-party sources, for example, purchasing statistics from other companies to support our services. The personal data we collect includes name, enterprise name, job position, postal and email addresses, phone number, login information (account and password), photos, and certificate information, depending on how you interact with Watchdata, for example, the website you visit or the products and services that you use. We also collect the information you provide to us and the content of messages you send us, such as the query information you provide, or the questions or information you provide for customer service support.

Before using Watchdata’s products or services, you may need to provide personal data.  In some cases you may be able to opt not to disclose your personal data to Watchdata. However, if the personal data you choose not to provide is necessary for delivering products or services to you, we may be unable to provide you with the relevant products or services and may also be unable to respond to or resolve any issues you encounter.

We may use your personal data for the following purposes:

  1. Providing training and certification; managing and processing training and certification exams; participating in onsite or virtual activities; fulfilling your requests for changes or providing you with the requested information (such as marketing materials for products and services, and white papers); and providing technical support. For this purpose, we may use your data, including Name, Enterprise Name, Title, address, E-mail, and Telephone Number.
  2. Contacting you with your consent; sending you information about products and services that may interest you with your consent; inviting you to participate in Watchdata activities (including promotional activities), market surveys, or satisfaction surveys with your consent; or sending you marketing information with your consent. If you do not want to receive these types of information, you can opt out at any time. For this purpose, we may use your data, including Name, Enterprise Name, Title, address, E-mail, and Telephone Number.
  3. Sending you important notices, such as installation of and updates to operating system or application. For this purpose, we may use your data, including Name, Enterprise Name, Title, address, E-mail, and Telephone Number.
  4. Providing you with customized user experience and content.For this purpose, we may use your data, including Name, Enterprise Name, Title, address, E-mail, and Telephone Number.
  5. Qualifying and managing suppliers and business partners, and communicating or working with suppliers and business partners. For this purpose, we may use your data, including Name, Enterprise Name, Title, address, E-mail, and Telephone Number.
  6. Improving our products and services through internal audits, data analysis, and research. For this purpose, we may use your data, including Name, Enterprise Name, Title, address, E-mail, and Telephone Number.
  7. Analyzing the efficiency of our business operations and evaluating market share. For this purpose, we may use your data, including Name, Enterprise Name, Title, address, E-mail, and Telephone Number.
  8. Troubleshooting when you send us error reports.For this purpose, we may use your data, including Name, Enterprise Name, Title, address, E-mail, and Telephone Number.
  9. Synchronizing, sharing, and storing the data you upload or download and the data needed for the uploading and downloading. For this purpose, we may use your data, including Name, Enterprise Name, Title, address, E-mail, and Telephone Number.
  10. Ensuring the security of our products, services and customers or users, executing and improving our loss prevention and anti-fraud programs. For this purpose, we may use your data, including Name, Enterprise Name, Title, address, E-mail, and Telephone Number.
  11. Complying with and enforcing applicable legal requirements, industry standards and our policies.

Watchdata may also collect and use non-personally identifiable information (Non-PII). Non-PII is information that cannot be used to identify a particular individual. For example, Watchdata will collect statistical data, such as the numbers of visits to its website. We collect this data to understand how users use our websites, products, and services so that we can improve our services and better satisfy your needs. Watchdata may collect, use, process, transfer, or disclose non-PII for other purposes at its own discretion.

We will endeavor to isolate your personal data from non-PII and ensure that the two types of data are used separately. If personal data is combined with non-PII, it will still be treated as personal data during processing.

Watchdata will process your personal data following the requirements of applicable laws on an appropriate legal basis, including:

  • Processing your personal data to fulfill the contract when responding to service request;
  • Processing your personal data with your consent;
  • Processing based on the legitimate interests of Watchdata or a third party when we use your personal data to contact you, conduct marketing or market surveys, improve our products and services, execute and improve our loss prevention and anti-fraud programs, and other purposes. Legitimate interests include enabling us to more effectively manage and operate our business and provide our products and services; protecting the security of our businesses, systems, products, services, and customers; internal management; complying with internal policies and processes; and other legitimate interests described in this policy;
  • Processing your personal data as necessary to comply with and fulfill legal obligations.

2. Cookies & Similar Technologies

2.1 Cookies

To ensure our website works correctly, we may at times place a small piece of data known as a cookie on your computer or mobile device. A cookie is a text file stored by a web server on a computer or mobile device. The content of a cookie can be retrieved or read only by the server that creates the cookie. The text in a cookie often consists of identifiers, site names, and some numbers and characters. Cookies are unique to the browsers or mobile applications you use, and enable websites to store data such as your preferences.

Like many other websites or Internet service providers, Watchdata uses cookies to improve user experience. Session cookies are deleted after each visit, while persistent cookies remain in place across multiple visits. Cookies allow websites to remember your settings such as language, font size on your computer or mobile device, or other browser preferences. This means that a user does not need to reset preferences for every visit. On the contrary, if cookies are not used, websites will treat you as a new visitor every time you load a web page. For example, if you are redirected to another web page from a website you are already logged in to and then return to the original website, it will not recognize you and you must log in again.

Watchdata will not use cookies for any purposes not stated in this Policy. You can manage or delete cookies based on your own preferences. For details, visit AboutCookies.org. You can clear all the cookies stored on your computer, and most web browsers provide the option of blocking cookies. However, by doing so, you have to change the user settings every time you visit our website. Find out how to manage cookie settings for your browser here:
Internet Explorer
Google Chrome
Mozilla Firefox
Safari
Opera

2.2 Web Beacons and Pixel Tags

In addition to cookies, we may also use other similar technologies on our websites such as web beacons and pixel tags. For example, when you receive an email from Watchdata, it may contain a click-through URL that links to a Watchdata web page. If you click the link, Watchdata will track your visit to help us learn about your preferences for products and services and improve our customer service. A web beacon is a transparent graphic image embedded in a website or in an email. We use pixel tags in emails to find out whether an email has been opened. You can unsubscribe from the Watchdata mailing list at any time if you do not want to be tracked in this manner.

We will not apply the aforementioned technologies and process your personal data until you have read and acknowledged how we collect and process personal data related to cookies, website beacons, and pixel tags and give us your consent to the collection and processing of personal data by using the said technologies.

3. How We Disclose Personal Data

We will not share your personal data with other companies, organizations, or individual, unless we have your explicit consent. Currently, we will share and disclose your personal data in the following circumstances:

(1) With your consent, in cases where certain services are provided by authorized partners of Watchdata, Watchdata will share your personal data with that partner as described in this Policy, in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. The said partner shall be authorized to process personal data within the scope of the processing purposes, methods, and types of personal data that have been communicated to you. If the recipient changes the original processing purposes or methods, they must obtain your consent again, unless otherwise provided by laws and regulations.  

(2) As a multinational company, with your consent, we may share personal data among Watchdata’s affiliated companies in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.  

(3) In compliance with applicable laws and regulations or in response to legal processes, Watchdata may also disclose your personal data to law enforcement or other governmental agencies.

(4) In certain jurisdictions, if Watchdata is involved in restructuring, mergers, or bankruptcy and liquidation proceedings, your personal data may also be disclosed to transaction parties. We will inform you of the relevant circumstances and continue to protect or require the new controllers to protect your personal data in accordance with laws and regulations and at least to the standards required by this Policy.

(5) Watchdata may also disclose your data, when necessary, in accordance with applicable laws and regulations, after informing you of the purposes and types of personal data being disclosed and obtaining your consent. For example, to fulfill the obligation under any contract or to prevent physical harm or property loss or to investigate potential or actual illegal activities. And we will only disclose your data when neccessary and we will ensure to disclose your data in an appropriate manner. 

4. Your Legal Rights under This Policy 

It is your responsibility to ensure that all personal data submitted to Watchdata is correct. Watchdata is dedicated to maintaining the accuracy and completeness of personal data and keeping the data up-to-date.

Under applicable laws, you have the right to (1) access your personal data held by us; (2) request us to delete your personal data.(3) request our assistance in transferring your personal data to other data processors. If you wish to exercise these rights, please contact us. For security reasons, you may need to provide a written request. If we have reasonable grounds to believe that such requests are deceptive, impracticable, or infringe on the privacy rights of others, we will refuse to process the request. When it is unrealistic for you to exercise the aforementioned legitimate rights due to technical issues or legal requirements, we will cease processing your personal data, except for storage and necessary security protection measures.”

If allowed by applicable laws, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time when Watchdata processes your personal data based on your consent. However, withdrawal does not affect the legitimacy and effectiveness of how we process your personal data based on your consent before the withdrawal is made; nor does it affect any data processing based on another justification other than your consent.

If you believe that our processing of your personal data does not comply with applicable data protection laws, you can contact us promptly using the methods provided in term 10 of this Policy to exercise your legal protection over your personal data.

You can obtain the information for contacting EU data protection authorities at http://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/structure/data-protection-authorities/index_en.html

5. How We Protect and Retain Your Personal Data

The security of your personal data is important to us. The risks of user data mainly include data leakage, data misuse, data tampering, illegal access, etc. These risks may lead to personal privacy leakage and property loss.We use appropriate physical, management, and technical measures to protect your personal data from unauthorized access, disclosure, use, modification, damage, or loss. For example, we use cryptographic technologies for data confidentiality, protection mechanisms to prevent attacks, and access control mechanisms to permit only authorized access to your personal data. We also provide training on security and privacy protection for employees to raise their awareness of personal data protection. Watchdata is committed to protecting your personal data; however, please note that no security measure is perfect.In the event of a personal data security incident, we will act following applicable law and, where necessary, notify you or the competent data protection authority of any such security incident and take steps to mitigate any resulting risks.

We will retain your personal information for no longer than is necessary for the purposes stated in this Policy, unless otherwise extending the retention period is required or permitted by law. The data storage period may vary with scenario, product, and service. The standards Watchdata uses to determine the retention period are as follows: the time required to retain personal data to fulfill business purposes, including providing products and services; maintaining corresponding transaction and business records; controlling and improving the performance and quality of products and services; ensuring the security of systems, products, and services; handling possible user queries or complaints and locating problems; whether the user agrees to a longer retention period; and whether the laws, contracts, and other equivalencies have special requirements for data retention; etc. We will maintain your registration information as long as your account is necessary for service provision. You can choose to deregister your account. After you deregister your account, we will stop providing you with products and services through your account and delete your relevant personal data, provided that deletion is not otherwise stipulated by special legal requirements.

6. How We Process Children’s Personal Data

The term “children” in this Policy refers to minors under the age of 18. Our products, websites, and services are primarily aimed at adults and are not intentionally offered to children. A child must not create a Watchdata account without the consent of a parent or guardian. If a child’s personal data is collected with prior parental consent, we will only use or disclose the data as permitted by law, with the explicit consent of the child’s parents or guardians, or when necessary for the protection of the child. If we accidentally collect a child’s personal data without verified prior consent from the child’s parents, we will attempt to delete the data as soon as possible.

If any guardian realize that we have collected personal data from a minor without obtaining the guardian’s consent, please contact us, and we will make reasonable effort to delete the relevant data as soon as possible.

7. Third-Party Providers and Their Services

To ensure a positive user experience, you may receive content or web links from third parties other than Watchdata and its partners (“third parties”). Watchdata does not have the right to control such third parties, but you can choose whether to use the links, view the content and/or access the products or services provided by third parties.

Watchdata cannot control the privacy practices and data protection policies of third parties that are not subject to this Policy. When you submit personal information to such a third party, please read and refer to the privacy protection policy of the third party.

8. International Transfers of Your Personal Data

As a global company, your personal data collected by Watchdata may be processed or accessed in the country/region where you use our products and services or in other countries/regions where Watchdata or its affiliates, subsidiaries, service providers or business partners have a presence. The personal data collected by us may be stored and processed in your region, China, and any other jurisdictions where we or our affiliated companies, subsidiaries, or service providers have facilities. We have primary data centers in China and Singapore. The main storage location is usually in the customer’s region or China, with backups stored in another data center in a different region. The selection of these storage locations facilitates efficient operations and service delivery, improves performance, and creates redundancy to protect your personal data in the event of failures or other issues, ensuring your normal use of our services. We take measures to process the data collected under this Policy in accordance with the provisions of this statement and the requirements of applicable laws.

We transfer personal data from the European Economic Area, the UK, and Switzerland to other countries or regions, some of which have not been determined by the European Commission to provide an adequate level of data protection. Watchdata will take measures to ensure that your personal data is processed as required by this Policy and applicable laws, which includes when transferring the data subject’s personal data from the EU to a country or region which have been acknowledged by the EU commission as having an adequate level of data protection, we may use a variety of legal mechanisms, such as signing standard contractual clauses approved by the EU Commission, obtaining the consent to the cross-border transfer of a data subject in the EU, or implementing security measures like anonymizing personal data before cross-border data transfer. You can click here to obtain a copy of the EU’s standard contractual clauses.

9. Updates to This Policy

  • Watchdata reserves the right to update or change this Policy at any time. We will release the latest Privacy Policy on this page for any changes. If major changes are made to the Privacy Policy, we may notify you through different channels, for example, posting a notice on our website or sending you direct notification.We will not diminish your rights under this Policy without your consent. For significant changes, we will also provide prominent notice outlining the specific changes to this Policy and re-obtain your informed consent regarding our processing of your personal data.
  • For clarification, the said significant changes include but not limited to:

a. A major change in our service model, such as the purposes of processing personal data, types of personal data processed, and how personal data is used;  

b. Significant changes in our ownership structure or organizational structure, such as changes in ownership due to business adjustments, bankruptcy, or mergers;  

c. A change in the main entities with whom personal data is shared, transferred, or disclosed publicly;  

d. Significant changes in your rights related to the processing of personal data and how those rights are exercised;  

e. Changes in the department responsible for handling personal data security, contact information, or complaint channels;  

f. When the personal data security impact assessment report indicates a high risk.

10. How to Contact Us

If you have any privacy complaints or issues, and want to contact Watchdata Data Protection Officer (DPO), please contact us by https://www.watchdata.com/contact/.

Where Watchdata processes your personal data in accordance with this Privacy Policy, the Watchdata entity that responds to your request, contacts you, provides you with products or services, or has signed or is about to sign a contract with you is the controller of the related personal data. You can click here to obtain the contacts of Watchdata entities.