Privacy Policy | Earth Hour

EARTH HOUR / WWF-World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-International)

Last Modified: February 16, 2024

At Earth Hour / WWF - WORLD WIDE FUND FOR NATURE (FORMERLY WORLD WILDLIFE FUND) - or “WWF International” - we rely on the support of individuals like you to carry out our vital conservation work.

This Privacy Policy applies to all the personal data we collect about you. We are committed to transparency, data minimization and accountability and below we explain how your personal data is collected when you engage with us and how we will use these data.
Data Protection compliance is very important to us and we respect your rights by taking all reasonable steps to make sure your information is safe.
We collect personal data as you browse our webpage, or when we do research on prospective donors to contribute to our cause and whenever you engage with us. Collecting these necessary personal data helps to make our communications more effective and to achieve our goals and mission.

Who we are and what we do

The WWF Network is a global non-profit organization whose mission is to stop the degradation of the earth’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature.
WWF International is the Secretariat of the WWF Network, with headquarters located at Rue Mauverney 28, 1196 Gland, Switzerland.
The role of the Secretariat is to lead and coordinate the WWF Network of offices around the world.
This Privacy Policy only relates to the data which are obtained and processed by WWF-International. For the privacy policies of the other WWF offices, please refer to the respective WWF office’s Privacy Policies on their respective webpages.

The data we collect about you

We may collect and process personal data every time you interact with us.

We may collect these personal data about you:

Your name, your country/territory , and/or email address
Information you personally enter onto our webpage
Details of your visit to our website, including technical information such as the IP address you use to access the website, your geolocation, your browser type Internet Service Provider (ISP) and version
Images or audio-visual content if you take part in an event promoted or held by us
Your active participation in Earth Hour campaigns
Financial information for donations as part of know -your-customer (KYC) and know-your-business (KYB) due diligence processes which help us to prevent fraud and anti-money laundering
We might also obtain personal data about individuals who may be interested in donating for our organization. In these limited cases only, in addition to information you give us directly, we may also collect information about you from publicly available sources such as your work or interests

Minors under 14 years

Not yet 14 years old? Then ask your parents (or the person who is responsible for you) for permission to engage with us on our webpage. Have them read this Privacy Policy with you. WWF International does not target minors specifically. However, we cannot check the age of the visitors of our website every single time. If you think we may have inadvertently collected data of a minor without parental permission, please contact us and we will delete these data from our records.

When we collect your Data

For example, we collect data when you:

Become a supporter of WWF or of Earth Hour
Participate in an event of WWF or of Earth Hour
Volunteer with us
Make a donation to us to support to our cause
Request information from us or subscribe to our newsletters or the newsletters of our WWF local offices.
Sign a petition or become involved with one of our Earth Hour or WWF campaigns
Visit one of our websites
Visit our social media pages
When you attend Earth Hour or WWF events
When you contact us or become involved with us to become a supporter of WWF in any other way than as stated above

Social Media

Depending on your settings or the privacy policies for social media and messaging services like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and Twitter, you might give us permission to access personal data such as your name and Email address from those accounts or services.
Social Media Plug-ins and Ad-Pixels are used in our social media channels, like Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram. If you activate them by clicking it, the operators of respective social networks can register that you are on our webpage and use this information for their purposes and under their own responsibilities.
Websites of third parties, including the social media channels of third parties, have their own privacy policies. When you provide personal data at one of the websites, you are subject to the Privacy Policy of that website, not the WWF Privacy Policy. We encourage you to read their Privacy Policy before submitting any personal data online.

Cookies

When you visit any of our WWF websites, we collect personal information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. This information collected is to improve our website’s functionality and performance with the analysis of events based data and data parameters and enhance and customize your experience with us.

Some cookies are necessary to use our website and can’t be switched off (“Necessary Cookies”) but other cookies used for a range of purposes like marketing, analytics and statistics are not essential.
You have the choice to opt-in and click on one of these buttons: “Accept All cookies”, “Reject All cookies (except Necessary cookies)” or “Manage My Choices” to decide clearly which non-essential cookies you want to select.
By clicking “Reject All cookies” you will be able to access our website however your experience may be impacted. Please read our Cookies Policy for full details.

Our legal basis for processing your personal data

All of our use of personal data has a legal basis to be processed and is in accordance with the applicable national Data Protection laws and Regulations, especially the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Federal Swiss Data Protection Act.
These laws require us to only process personal data where we have a valid legal basis for doing so.
We collect and process personal data with these legal bases:

Perform a contract: Where we need to or have entered into a contract with you, such as to provide you with a service you have requested, or to engage you as a consultant, a service provider or an employee.

Legitimate Interest: Where it is necessary for our WWF International legitimate interests as a non-profit organization for the environment and your interests and fundamental rights,interests and liberties do not override those interests. WWF International’s legitimate interests include administering our organization, which includes raising funds to implement our operations and strategic work, which include advocacy, campaigns, building awareness about environmental challenges and solutions, and raising funds for the conservation work. This involves sending you marketing materials, and understanding better our supporters.

Legal Obligation: Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
Consent: We need to collect your specific consent for processing and collecting any audio-visual material where you can be identified.
We also need to collect a consent to process any personal data related to minors, or any special categories of processing personal data defined by data protection laws and regulations.

Why we collect and use these personal data

We use your personal data to:

Enable the administration of our supporters
Enable our fundraising programs to raise contributions to WWF’s cause
Inform you about our actions and campaigns
Engage volunteers and activists
Comply with legal obligations and for our internal operational purposes

We do not provide personal data to third parties for commercial purposes.

Who we may share your data with

Our auditors
Our IT service providers
Our WWF network offices
Our partners or service providers entrusted to implement or organize our projects or events. These partners or service providers are not permitted to use your personal data for any purpose other than providing services to us.
If necessary, to law enforcement, court, regulatory and governmental authorities.

Cross-Border Transfer

Your personal data might be shared within our WWF network offices and our sub-processors, who on our behalf might process your personal data outside Europe under a Data Processing Agreement.
WWF International will process personal data outside the EEA and in accordance with applicable national data protection laws of the country of residence of the data subject or the country location enabled by the VPN (Virtual Private Network).
We use adequate recognized mechanisms for international data transfer, such as the EU Standard Contractual Clause Model to comply with data protection laws and related regulations.

How we keep your personal data safe

We aim to ensure we have adequate safeguard measures to keep your personal data safe and protect your personal data from data exposure, data loss, unauthorized access or data breaches.

We use appropriate physical, technical and managerial controls which correspond to adequate mechanisms to protect your personal data. For example, we use encryption to protect data in transit and our IT infrastructure is protected and routinely monitored against cybersecurity threats.

We use data pseudonymization techniques to ensure the personal data is no longer identifiable to you.

How long we keep your personal data – Data Retention

We will only keep your personal information for as long as is necessary for the purpose for which it is originally collected.
A valid secondary purpose, such as statistical or historical analysis, or satisfying any legal, regulatory, accounting or reporting requirements may apply.
Each category of personal data collected has a specific retention period considering the nature of the personal data, the amount, and the specific purpose for collecting and processing these personal data.

Marketing preferences

Our communications have clear marketing preference questions, and we include information on how to opt out when we send you directly relevant marketing materials, which in the case of emails is by means of an unsubscribe link.
You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us.

Newsletter Unsubscription

You can unsubscribe at any time for us to stop sending you marketing materials and newsletters. You can contact us under this E-mail address: supportercare@wwfint.org. We will keep a record of your contact details and the appropriate relevant information to enable us to comply with your request not to be contacted by us.
Any time you’d like us to change the way we contact you, please email us at supportercare@wwfint.org, or follow the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you.

What are your rights

Under the applicable Data Protection Laws and Regulations, you have different rights over your personal data as follows:

Right to Access - The right to request to be informed and provided what personal data we have about you. This enables you to receive a copy in electronic format of the personal data we hold about you.
Right to Rectification - The right to require us to correct, update or modify the personal data we hold about you. This enables us to have your personal data up to date, and accurate. This enables you to have incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected.
Right to be Forgotten/ to Erasure - The right to ask us to delete personal data when there is no legitimate reason for processing and in certain circumstances. If we are unable to comply with your request because we are legally required or entitled to retain it, we will notify you.
Right to Restrict Data Processing - The right to require us to restrict personal data processing when applicable.
Right to Request Data Portability - The right to request transfer of your personal data from one service provider to another in electronic format and machine-readable.
Right to Object to Processing - The right to object to the processing of your personal data if you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. Note that in some cases, there will be compelling reasons in which we are legally required or entitled to continue processing your personal data and are able to demonstrate them to you.
Right to Withdraw Consent at any Time - The right to withdraw your consent at any time where we have asked for your consent to process your data.

Under GDPR (Art 17 (c)) and the Swiss Federal Data Protection Act (FDPA) (Art. 20) exceptions and limitations may apply.

Complaints

We are committed to working with you to obtain a fair resolution of any complaint or any concern you might have about privacy and your personal data processed by us. You can exercise your rights and raise your complaint with us directly and we revert to you promptly to resolve your complaint without undue delay. In this case, please contact us at the E-mail: privacy@wwfint.org.

If however, you believe that we have not been able to assist with your complaint or concern, you are entitled to make a complaint to the Supervisory Authority where you work or live, or where the data processing took place.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

This policy was last updated in February2024.

We reserve the right to amend or update this Privacy Policy from time to time.

Any changes to this Privacy Policy will become effective when the revised Privacy Policy is published in this webpage.

You may wish to check this policy from time to time to see our latest version.

How to contact us

Any time you’d like us to change the way we contact you, please email us at contact@wwfint.org, or follow the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you.

If you have any questions, complaint and requests about this Privacy Policy, please contact our Privacy team using the contact details below:

Email: privacy@wwfint.org

Key Contact: Maithe Lopez Santaella

Address: Rue Mauverney 28, 1196 Gland, Switzerland

If you are based in Europe, you can contact our appointed European Representative using the contact details below:

E-mail: EUrepresentative.WWF@twobirds.com

Key Contact: Bird & Bird GDPR Representative Services SRL

Address: Avenue Louise 235, 1050 Bruxelles - Belgium

If you are based in the United Kingdom, you can contact our appointed UK Representative using the contact details below:

E-mail: UKrepresentative.WWF@twobirds.com

Key Contact: Bird & Bird GDPR Representative Services UK

Address: 12 New Fetter Lane, EC4A 1JP London - United Kingdom