Your privacy on Accenture’s site
What information do we gather?
How do we use information that we collect from the site?
Will we share your personal data with outside parties?
What about sensitive personal data?
What about data security?
Where will your personal data be processed?
Your rights
Cookies
Your privacy on Accenture’s site
The primary purpose of Accenture’s site is to be a dynamic resource and business tool to help you learn more about Accenture. We want you to feel secure when visiting our site and are committed to maintaining your privacy when doing so. This policy (together with our Terms of Use and data privacy notices on the site) explains how any personal data we may collect from or about you through this site, will be processed and protected by Accenture. By using our site you are consenting to Accenture’s use of your data as described below. Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page.
What information do we gather?
Accenture collects information at its sites in two ways: (1) directly (for example, when you provide information to sign up for a newsletter or register to comment on a forum site); and (2) indirectly (for example, through our site's technology).
We may collect and process the following information:
- Information that you provide by filling in forms on our site. This includes registering to use the site, subscribing to services, newsletters and alerts, registering for a conference or requesting a white paper or further information. Pages that collect this type of information may provide further information as to why your data is needed and how it will be used. It is completely up to you whether you want to provide it.
- If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence.
- We may ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them.
- Any postings, comments or other content that you upload or post to an Accenture site.
- Our site collects information about your computer, including (where available) your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration, to filter traffic, to look up user domains and to report on statistics.
- Details of your visits to our site and resources you access (including but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data). Please see the Cookies section below for more information.
When this information relates to or identifies you, we will treat it as “personal data”.
How do we use information that we collect from the site?
We use personal data to provide you with information you request, process online job applications, and for other purposes which we would describe to you at the point where it is collected or which will be obvious to you. For example:
- To fulfill your requests for white papers, articles, newsletters or other content
- For surveys or research questionnaires
- To personalize your site experience
- To contact you for marketing purposes where you have agreed to this.
We analyze your IP and browser information to determine what is most effective about our site, to help us identify ways to improve it and, eventually, to determine how we can tailor our site to make it more effective. Please see the Cookies section below for more information.
Will we share your personal data with outside parties?
We will not sell personal data to third parties. We generally only share personal data with our contracted service providers and advisors. However, there will be other times when we need to share or disclose personal data you provide for a specific purpose, for example:
- In the case of an event where we need to provide our caterer with meal preference information or we are running a joint event and have informed you that the data will be shared with our partners. But again, we will notify you as to why we are asking for specific information and it is completely up to you whether you want to provide it;
- We may need to disclose your personal data to third parties in the event that we sell or liquidate any part of our business or assets;
- We will disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our Terms of Use; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Accenture, our clients, or others.
What about sensitive personal data?
We do not generally seek to collect sensitive personal data through this site. In the limited cases where we do seek to collect such data, we will do this in accordance with local data privacy law requirements. If you choose to provide us with unsolicited sensitive personal data, you consent to our using the data, subject to applicable law as described in this privacy policy. The term "sensitive personal data" refers to the various categories of personal data identified by European and other data privacy laws as requiring special treatment, including in some circumstances the need to obtain explicit consent. These categories may include personal identity numbers, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious, philosophical or other similar beliefs, membership of a trade union or profession or trade association, physical or mental health, biometric or genetic data, sexual life, or criminal record (including information about suspected criminal activities).
What about data security?
We take appropriate steps to maintain the security of personal data collected via Accenture’s site. You should understand that the open nature of the Internet is such that information and personal data may flow over networks connecting you to our systems without security measures and may be accessed and used by people other than those for whom the data is intended.
Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the sites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these sites, please note that these sites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies or sites. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these sites.
Where will your personal data be processed?
As a global organization, personal data we collect may be transferred internationally throughout Accenture's worldwide organization. We have internal policies in place to ensure an equivalent level of protection is in place across our organization.
Your rights
You are entitled to know whether we hold personal data about you and, if we do, to have access to that personal data and require it to be corrected if it is inaccurate. You can do this by using our Contact Us form.
You can exercise your right to prevent marketing communications to you by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your personal data. You can also exercise the right to discontinue marketing communications to you at any time by using our Contact Us form.
Cookies
What are cookies?
Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you visit a site. Cookies are then sent back to the originating site on each subsequent visit, or to another site that recognizes that cookie. Cookies are useful because they allow a site to recognize a user’s device. You can find more information about cookies at: www.allaboutcookies.org and www.youronlinechoices.eu. For a video about cookies visit www.google.co.uk/goodtoknow/data-on-the-web/cookies.
Cookies do a lots of different jobs, like letting you navigate between pages efficiently, remembering your preferences, and generally improve the user experience. They can also help to ensure that the advertisements you see online are more relevant to you and your interests.
The cookies used on this site have been categorized on the basis of the categories found in the ICC UK Cookie guide issued in April 2012. A list of all the cookies used on this site by category is set out below.
For some of our cookies we use Omniture (part of Adobe) as a third party to host optimization products and services for us to provide us with web analytics and intelligence about our site. For further information on how Omniture collects and uses information on our behalf, please refer to the Omniture Products and Services Privacy Statement at www.omniture.com/privacy/product. We may also use web beacons or other technologies for similar purposes and we may include these in marketing e-mail messages or our newsletters in order to determine whether messages have been opened and links clicked on. Web beacons do not place information on your device, but may work in conjunction with cookies to monitor site activity.
What if I don’t want cookies?
By using our site you agree that we can place cookies on your device as explained below. If you want to remove existing cookies from your device you can do this using your browser options. If you want to block future cookies being placed on your device you can change your browser settings to do this. When you review your browser settings or options, you can identify the Accenture cookies by the fact they include “.accenture” in the name. For more information on managing cookies see www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies, Current “Do Not Track” initiatives are not recognized by our site.
Please bear in mind that deleting and blocking cookies will have an impact on your user experience as parts of the site may no longer work. Unless you have adjusted your browser settings to block cookies, our system will issue cookies as soon you visit our site, even if you have previously deleted our cookies.
Turning off cookies will also prevent any web beacons from tracking your user activity on our site. The web beacon will still account for an anonymous visit, but your unique information will not be recorded.
What types of cookies are there and which ones does the site use?
Strictly necessary cookies - These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around the site and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the site. Without these cookies services you have asked for cannot be provided.
We categorize the following cookies as strictly necessary:
- Registered Visitor Cookie - A unique identifier given to each registered user, used to recognize them through their visit and when they return to the site. (see also Functionality cookies below).
Performance cookies - These cookies collect information about how visitors use a site, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies don't collect information that identifies a visitor. All information these cookies collect is anonymous and is only used to improve how a site works.
We categorize the following as performance cookies:
- Referrer URL (internal page) - Used to store the URL of the previous page visited. Allows us to track how visitors navigate through our site.
- Referrer URL (external page, including if you click on links on Accenture social media pages) Used to store the URL which refers a visitor to our site so we may understand what URLs are referring visitors to our site.
- URL history - Used to store the page visited by a user before that user submits a form. Also, used to display recently viewed articles to each visitor.
- Unregistered Visitor Cookie – A unique identifier given to each visitor to allow analysis on how unregistered visitors use our site.
- Session management cookies — These cookies allow us to follow the actions of a user during a browser session. A browser session starts when a user opens the browser window and finishes when they close their browser window. Our session management cookies are created temporarily. Once you close your browser, our session management cookies are deleted.
Functionality cookies - These cookies allow a site to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. For instance, a site may be able to provide you with local information or news by storing in a cookie the region in which you are currently located. These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to text size, font and other parts of web pages that you can customize. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog. We may use information collected from our cookies to to identify user behavior and to serve content and offers based on your profile. In some cases we pass this information on to others within Accenture for marketing or analysis purposes. In most cases we will not be able to track individuals by name, only if a user is a registered user will we associate the cookie information with a named individual.
These cookies cannot track your browsing activity on other websites. They don’t gather any information about you that could be used for advertising or remembering where you’ve been on the internet outside our site.
We categorize the following as functionality cookies:
- Recently viewed pages - Stores pages visited by the user on our site and displays them in right hand navigation for easy reference.
- Search history - Stores searches on our site conducted by the user and displays them for the user in the right hand navigation for easy reference.
- Registered Visitor Cookie - A unique identifier given to each registered user to our site, used to serve them content and offers based on their profiles. Also used for analysis and marketing purposes (see also Strictly necessary cookies above).
Targeting cookies - These cookies are used to deliver advertisements more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. They are usually placed by advertising networks with the site operator’s permission. They remember that you have visited a site and this information is shared with other organizations such as advertisers. Quite often they will be linked to site functionality provided by the other organization.
We partner with ShareThis on the site. ShareThis is a widget on the site that enables users to share content from the site with others through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. ShareThis includes cookies on the site which collect information on how users use the site and associate users with topics of interest, based on the content they share. This data will be used for analytics on the site (creating statistics as to what is most popular and how many people are sharing particular content) and to determine how to target advertising on other external sites. ShareThis may share its analytical data with Accenture. ShareThis does not use personal identifiers of users (such as names and e-mail addresses) for these purposes and identification is solely by an anonymous identifier. For further information about ShareThis, the cookies it uses and how to opt out of ShareThis cookies, please refer to their website [www.sharethis.com/privacy].
Apart from ShareThis, at Accenture we do not have third party advertising on our site so we do not use these targeting cookies. If you click on an Accenture advert on a non-Accenture site, a cookie may be used to log which site you are on to measure the effectiveness of our advertising. Accenture currently uses www.DidIt.com to monitor our advertising in this way.
Third party social media sites may log information about you, for example if you click an “Add This” or “Like” button for a social media site while on our site. We do not control such sites or their activities. You may be able to find information about social media sites on the sites themselves. We recommend you read the terms of use and privacy policy of such sites before using them.
That's it in a nutshell. The short of it is—we are interested in maintaining your privacy and creating a valuable, robust site, with the best user experience possible.
If you have any questions now or during your visit, please contact us using our Contact Us form.
This privacy policy is effective May 23, 2012.