Privacy Notice
PRIVACY NOTICE
Effective Date: April 2023
Scope
This Privacy Notice applies to your use of www.gorewear.com. GOREWEAR is a brand of W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc.
Introduction
W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc. is a global company, providing a variety of services and products to consumers, customers, vendors, and suppliers.
We are committed to the privacy and security of the personal information (PI) entrusted to us and process it in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations in the jurisdictions in which we operate or conduct business. Our commitment to privacy extends beyond compliance to ensure we are collecting and processing PI in a transparent and ethical manner.
This Gore Privacy Notice describes how W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc. and its affiliate and subsidiary companies globally (together, “Gore”, “we”, “us”, “our”) process personal information which is subject to applicable laws.
For questions about this Notice you may contact the Gore Privacy Office.
Information We Collect
Information Collected Directly
We collect information that you provide to us or share on the sites, including:
Registration Information and Requests.
Many of our sites and other information available on our sites can be accessed without registering. However, you will be required to register in order to use or access some of our services. The information that we collect will vary depending upon the context of your request, but for general inquiries, we require your first and last name and contact information, such as address, telephone number and email address and other relevant information relating to your request. Generally, fields marked with an asterisk are mandatory for processing your inquiry or your registration, other details are optional.
Communications.
When you email us, call us or contact us, we maintain records about our interactions and communications with you.
Customer Service and Support.
We also maintain records related to customer support and customer service-related requests, including the nature of the request, in order to process questions or comments directed to our customer service team, or to settle complaints. For questions or comments directed to our customer service team relating to an order or invoice, or in the event of a product complaint, we may require additional information about the product, for example, product size, gender, time and place of purchase and additional information about previous inquiries.
Comments and Content.
Some areas of the sites may allow you to comment, share or post other content. When you view this content, we keep a record of our content, and it may be viewable by other users of the sites. You may ask us to remove such content as set out below.
Marketing and Surveys.
If you participate in our direct marketing activities, for example, if you fill out a participation or answer card or register for a Gore newsletter, we will process the personal information required for each of these. If you used our online store and a purchase process is not completed, we may send you a reminder email. If you have signed up to participate in a competition or similar advertising campaign, we may use the personal information provided by you to process your participation. For more information, please refer to the conditions of participation for the respective campaign. Where required by applicable law, we will obtain your consent prior to sending you any direct marketing. If you have given consent to receive direct marketing email communications Gore will use the personal information provided by you to further discuss your interest in the company or our products and services; and to send you information that may be of interest regarding the company, its affiliates, and its partners, such as information about special offers, events, e-commerce activities, market research, consumer or customer surveys, competitions and similar advertising campaigns.
E-Commerce.
If you purchase products from us directly, for example from our online stores for GORE® Wear or ELIXIR® Strings, we will require additional information, such as billing and delivery address, and bank and/or credit card details. When you use our online store, we will use personal information to process contracts and orders that you have placed through our website, any inquiries relating to contracts and orders, as well as assess your creditworthiness when purchasing a product, for which we may contract a third-party service provider. When you purchase a product, we may contact you in order to ask you for your opinion on the purchase or the product.
Collected from other sources
Business Relationship Information.
We work with external professionals, contractors, suppliers, experts, consultants and others in the operation of our business. For example, when we deliver our services and otherwise make our products and services available, we may engage with suppliers, contractors, consultants and others who provide services or products to us. We also engage with customers and partners related to the provision of our products and services. We may collect information through these third parties. We collect information such as business contact information, accounting and payment related information and other information related to our business relationship with a third party. We may also conduct due diligence and background checks subject to applicable law to ensure the reliability of third parties with whom we conduct business.
Automatically Collected Information
When you visit the sites, some data is automatically transferred from your browser to our server, in order to offer you a better service with personalized information and to make it easier for you to use our sites. We use cookies, pixel tags, web beacons, and similar technologies to automatically collect information when users access or use the sites unless you update your tracking preferences through our cookie banner, which can be found under Cookie Settings. This data is collected and processed by us or by external service providers on our behalf and includes: information about you collected through your use of our services, including log files, IP address, app and device identifier, advertising ID, location info, email address, browser type and operating system, device type, domain name, the website that led you to our services, the website to which you go after leaving our services, the dates and times you access our services, and the links you click and your other activities within the services.
Purposes and Legal Bases
Specified below are the anticipated purposes of our use of personal information and the legal bases. When the purpose of use is notified or announced separately, the purpose of use shall be included.
Verifying Identity and Authorization
Purposes
• To verify the identity of contacts, customers, and others with whom we do business or with whom we are considering a business relationship.
• To confirm or verify that individuals are authorized to access, use, or provide information or services.
Legal Bases
Perform/Enter into Contract with You; Comply with Legal Obligation; Legitimate Business Interest; Consent
Services, Events, and Customer Service
Purposes
• To provide and operate our services and the sites (including membership site); communicate with you about your use of the services; respond to your enquiries; fulfil your orders and requests; process your payments; manage complaints and inquiries; provide technical support.
• To plan and operate events, seminars, training sessions and other programs (including registration and management of participants and provision of upcoming event information).
• For other legitimate customer service and support purposes.
Legal Bases
Perform/Enter into Contract with You; Establish, Defend, Protect Legal Rights; Legitimate Business Interests
Operate our Business
Purposes
• To identify usage trends in the use of our sites and analyze the effectiveness of our communications.
• To detect, prevent, investigate fraud and including (cyber) security monitoring and prevention.
• To validate your ability to access or use certain products or services.
• To operate and expand our business activities.
• Where necessary to the administration of our general business, accounting, recordkeeping, and legal functions.
• As part of our routine business administration, such as training, compliance auditing and similar internal activities.
• For management and maintenance of IT infrastructure and security.
• To fulfil our corporate obligations to provide a safe and hygienic work environment for visitors, contractors and associates.
Legal Bases
Legitimate Business Interest; Consent; Comply with Legal Obligation; Establish, Defend, Protect Legal Rights
Research. Development and Reporting
Purposes
• To develop, enhance, improve, or modify our products and services.
• To better understand how our products and services impact you and those for whom you care.
• To track and respond to concerns, including engaging in regulatory monitoring and reporting obligations related to adverse events, product complaints and patient safety.
• To conduct data analysis and audits.
• To provide and gather information relating to the safety, effectiveness and quality of our products, and information relating to the proper use of our products.
• To provide and gather scientific or medical information.
Legal Bases
Legitimate Business Interest; Consent; Comply with Legal Obligation; Public Interest
Personalized Support and Content
Purposes
• To tailor content we send or display on the sites in order to offer location customization and personalized help and instructions.
• To otherwise personalize your experiences with us.
Legal Bases
Legitimate Business Interest; Consent
E-Commerce
Purposes
• To process and manage any purchases you make in our online stores, including payments.
• To improve our online store.
Legal Bases
Perform/Enter into Contract with You; Legitimate Business Interests
Marketing, Surveys, and Promotions
Purposes
• For direct marketing and promotional purposes, including its follow up.
• To send you newsletters, special offers or promotions, and contact you about our products or services or information we think may interest you.
• To administer any competitions, advertising campaign seminar, event promotion or other marketing activities into which you applied or entered.
• To conduct market research, consumer or customer surveys, competitions and similar advertising campaigns.
• Analysis for internal purposes, such as data analyses, product planning, development and enhancement, sales promotion planning, customer satisfaction survey, improvement of our pages and services, identification of user behavior and users’ needs and to check the effectiveness of our advertising activities.
• For sales and sales expansion activities of our products.
• To investigate the usage of our products.
Legal Bases
Legitimate Business Interests; Consent
Evaluating and Engaging with Third Parties
Purposes
• To identify, evaluate, and engage with third parties such as contractors, suppliers, and business partners
• To conduct due diligence in accordance with applicable law.
• To outsource evaluations and surveys to a third party for the above evaluation and due diligence.
Legal Bases
Perform/Enter into Contract with You; Comply with Legal Obligation; Legitimate Business Interests; Consent
Protecting Our Legal Rights and Prevent Misuse
Purposes
• To protect the sites, services, and our business operations; to prevent and detect fraud, unauthorized activities and access, and other misuse.
• To safeguard us, including information and assets of Gore and information and assets belonging to you or other individuals, and adopt appropriate measures for the purpose.
• For the management and access control of your entrance and exit from our facilities.
• To manage the history of and monitor your access to or use of our network, system and/or other IT resources.
• To investigate or prevent violations, and to enforce our terms of use and agreements, or this Privacy Notice.
Legal Bases
Establish, Defend, Protect Legal Rights; Legitimate Business Interests
Complying with Legal Obligations
Purposes
• To fulfill legal obligations in accordance with laws or legal proceedings, including those under jurisdictions outside of your place of residence.
• For notification or reporting to government bodies or to respond to legal process or law enforcement requests (e.g., warrants and subpoenas)
Legal Bases
Comply with Legal Obligation; Establish, Defend, Protect Legal Rights; Legitimate Business Interest
Monitoring of Communications
With your consent and subject to applicable laws we may monitor and record your calls, emails, and other communications with us. We do this for a variety of purposes which include the following: to maintain the security of our communications systems and procedures, for quality control and staff training purposes, fraud detection and prevention, and when We need to review our communications to provide you with a better customer service experience.
Use of Personal Information
In the course of conducting our business, we use (with your consent where required by applicable law) personal information to provide and improve our services, to process employment inquiries, to provide information about our products and services, to respond to requests and to otherwise communicate with you and others.
Providing Support and Services:
to provide and operate our services and the sites, communicate with you about your use of the sites, respond to your inquiries, provide troubleshooting, fulfill your orders and requests, process your payments, and complaints and inquiries, provide technical support, and for other customer service and support purposes.
Operating our Business:
we may use your information to identify usage trends in the use of our sites and analyze the effectiveness of our communications; to detect, prevent, investigate fraud and including (cyber) security monitoring and prevention; to validate your ability to access or use certain products or services; to operate and expand our business activities; where necessary to the administration of our general business, accounting, record keeping and legal functions; and as part of our routine business administration, such as training, compliance auditing and similar internal activities.
Research, Development and Reporting:
we may use information to develop, enhance, improve or modify our products and services; to better understand how our products and services impact you and those for whom you care; to track and respond to concerns, including engaging in regulatory monitoring and reporting obligations related to adverse events, product complaints and patient safety, or to conduct data analysis and audits.
Personalization:
to tailor content we send or display on the sites in order to offer location customization and personalized help and instructions, and to otherwise personalize your experiences.
Analytics and Improvement:
to better understand how users access and use the sites and other products and services, and for other research and analytical purposes, such as to evaluate and improve our services and business operations and to develop additional products, services and features.
Evaluating and Engaging With Third Parties:
to identify, evaluate and engage with third parties such as contractors, suppliers and business partners; to conduct due diligence, such as background checks on contractors and suppliers in accordance with applicable law.
General Business Operations:
where necessary for the administration of our general business, accounting, record keeping and legal functions.
Anonymous and De-identified Information:
We may de-identify information and create anonymous and aggregated data sets and reports in order to assess, improve and develop our business, products and services, prepare benchmarking reports on our industry, and for other research and analytics purposes.
Marketing, Surveys and Promotions:
for direct marketing and promotional purposes, to send you newsletters, special offers or promotions, and contact you about our products or services, or information we think may interest you. If you are located in a jurisdiction that requires opt-in consent to receive electronic marketing messages, we will only send you such messages if you opt-in to receive them.
Protect Our Rights:
to protect the sites and our business operations; to prevent and detect fraud, unauthorized activities and access, and other misuse; where we believe necessary to investigate, prevent or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety or legal rights of any person or third party, or violations of our Terms of Use or this Notice.
Legally Required:
to comply with the law or legal proceedings, such as subpoenas, court orders, and other lawful requests by regulators and law enforcement, including responding to national security or law enforcement disclosure requirements.
We will, where required by applicable law, obtain consent from you if we wish to use your personal information for purposes other than those stated in this Notice.
Disclosure of Information
Gore is a global enterprise that consists of numerous and various entities worldwide. To facilitate Gore’s global operations, personal information may need to be shared with and transferred between Gore affiliates. Gore affiliates may access and use your personal information as described in this Notice. In general, we disclose the personal information we collect as follows:
Gore Affiliates.
As a global company, your personal information may be shared amongst
our affiliated and subsidiary companies, who are subject to this Notice when processing your personal information.
Service Providers.
We may share your information with third party service providers, whose services we use for data storage and analytics, for web hosting, data analysis, IT technology, infrastructure, and security, including without limitation with third parties whose services we use to provide customer services, for example for communicating with you by email or phone, for market research, carrying out surveys, handling payment transfers, advisory services, maintenance, and other similar services. We take steps to confirm that our service providers are capable of providing appropriate security and protection and will agree to adequate privacy and security contractual terms.
Third-Party Advertising and Marketing.
Third-party companies that we work with to display advertising and conduct direct marketing that is more relevant may collect cookie IDs, IP address and other identifiers as well as information about the pages you visit on our sites and other websites, to enable them to display and offer direct advertising such as mailings for products and services that may be of interest to you when you visit our website or other websites.
Business Transfers.
We may disclose or transfer information, including personal information, as part of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets, or stock (including without limitation in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings), including related to due diligence conducted prior to such event were permitted by law.
Legally Required.
We may disclose your information if we are required to do so by the law (e.g., to law enforcement, courts, or others, e.g., in response to a subpoena or court order) of any jurisdiction.
Protect our Rights.
We may disclose information where we believe it necessary to respond to claims asserted against us or, comply with legal process (e.g., subpoenas or warrants), enforce or administer our agreements and terms, for fraud prevention, risk assessment, investigation, and protect the rights, property or safety of Gore, our customers, or others.
Anonymized and Aggregated Data.
We may share aggregate or de-identified information with third parties for research, marketing, analytics, and other purposes, provided such information does not identify a particular individual.
Interest-Based Advertising
On some of our sites, we may work with third party ad networks, analytics companies, measurement services and others (collectively “ad companies”) to display advertising on our sites, and to manage our advertising on third party sites, mobile apps and online services.
Direct Marketing
From time to time, we may send periodic promotional content that we think may be of interest to you, including newsletters, catalogs, special offers, or promotions.
We may also share your name and email address with other entities within Gore so that we or they may send you information that may be of interest regarding them and their special offers, events, e-commerce activities, market research, consumer or customer surveys, competitions and similar promotional campaigns. You may opt-out of these communications at any time, and where required by law we will obtain your prior consent to send you such communications.
We may engage service providers to combine your information with other sources of information to provide you with relevant promotional content via direct mail.
If you would like to opt-out of receiving further communication from Gore, and/or wish to stop Gore from disclosing your personal information for marketing purposes you may opt-out of such communications by following the opt-out instructions contained in the communication, or you can contact us to withdraw your consent. If you opt-out of receiving communications about recommendations or other information we think may interest you, we may still communicate information relating to your account or any services you have requested or received from us.
International Transfers
As a global company, we may transfer your personal information to, access or store it in in which we (or our service providers) operate. Some of these jurisdictions, may not provide equivalent levels of data protection as your jurisdiction. We will take steps to ensure that your personal information receives an adequate level of protection comparable to the protection under applicable law in the jurisdiction from which we collect such personal information, including through appropriate written data processing terms and/or data transfer agreements.
Security
We have implemented specific organizational, technical, and physical security measures to protect personal information under our control . While the security safeguards we have put in place are routinely reviewed and updated, the security of any data transmissions and data storage systems cannot be completely guaranteed.
Retention
In accordance with our data retention practices , we will retain your personal information as long as needed to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Notice, and as otherwise necessary to fulfill our legal obligations, resolve disputes, maintain appropriate business records, enforce our agreements or for such longer period as required by applicable law. The retention period depends on the information and the reason for which we have collected it.
Third-Party Sites
This Notice does not address, and we are not responsible for, the privacy practices, information collected or other activities and practices of any third parties. The inclusion of a link on the website does not imply endorsement of the linked site by us or by our affiliates. In some cases, we may permit you to use third-party payment services to make payments. If you wish to make a payment using a payment service, you will be directed to a webpage that is hosted by the payment service and not by us. Any information that you provide through this page will be subject to the applicable payment service’s privacy policy, rather than this Notice. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, any payment service’s use of information collected through any payment service page.
Use of Website by Minors
Our sites are not directed towards and we do not encourage minors to participate in providing us with any personal information. We do not knowingly collect any personal information from minors without verifiable parental consent. If you have reason to believe that a minor , without a parent or guardian's consent, has provided personal information to us through the sites, please contact us at DataPrivacyOffice@wlgore.com. We will take steps to delete the information as soon as possible.
Your Privacy Rights
Gore takes reasonable steps to keep your personal information accurate, up to date and complete. under certain circumstances and subject to applicable law You may have a right to request access to, correction of, and deletion of your personal information. Subject to applicable law, you may also have the right to withdraw your consent or change your scope of consent. If you wish to exercise these rights, please contact us. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with us and with a supervisory authority if you consider that the processing of your personal information infringes applicable law.
To the extent required by applicable law, you may be able to request that we inform you about the personal information we maintain about you and, where appropriate, request that we update, correct and/or suppress personal information about you that we maintain in our active database. We will make all required updates and changes within the time specified by applicable law and, where permitted by law, may charge an appropriate fee to cover the costs of responding to the request. In addition, in some circumstances based on applicable law, you may request that we cease using or sharing personal information about you with our business partners or Gore Affiliates, by contacting us as explained below We will seek to honor those requests consistently with applicable law.
Additional Information for the European Union
This section applies and provides you with further information if your personal data is processed by one of our companies located in the European Economic Area.
Data Controller
The specific company identified on this page as being the operator of this website is the data controller in the meaning of the General Data Protection Regulation for the processing activities described in this Privacy Notice.
In the course of our business relationship with you, we may share Business Partner contact information with affiliated Gore companies. We and these Gore companies are jointly responsible for the proper protection of your personal data (Art. 26 General Data Protection Regulation). To allow you to effectively exercise your data subject rights in the context of this joint controllership, we entered into an agreement with these Gore companies granting you the right to centrally exercise your data subject rights under the “Your Rights” section of this Privacy Notice against Gore.
To exercise your rights, you may reach out to: dataprivacyoffice@wlgore.com.
International data transfers
In the event that we transfer your personal data outside the European Economic Area, we ensure that your data is protected in a manner which is consistent with the General Data Protection Regulation. Therefore, and if required by applicable law, we take the following measures:
We share your personal data with affiliated companies outside the European Economic Area only if they have implemented an intragroup data transfer agreement enabling sufficient guarantees for the protection of personal data including international transfers.
We transfer personal data to external recipients outside the European Economic Area only after establishing that appropriate safeguards exist between us and the recipient. You may request further information about the safeguards implemented in relation to specific transfers by contacting dataprivacyoffice@wlgore.com.
Your competent data protection authority
In case of data privacy related concerns and requests, we encourage you to contact our Data Privacy Organization at dataprivacyoffice@wlgore.com. Besides contacting the Data Privacy Office, you always have the right to approach the competent data protection authority with your request or complaint.
A list and contact details of local data protection authorities is available here.
Additional Information for the United Kingdom
This section applies and provides you with further information if your personal data is processed by one of our companies located in the United Kingdom.
Data Controller
The specific company identified on this page as being the operator of this website is the data controller in the meaning of the UK General Data Protection Regulation for the processing activities described in this Privacy Notice.
In the course of our business relationship with you, we may share Business Partner contact information with affiliated Gore companies. We and these Gore companies are jointly responsible for the proper protection of your personal data. To allow you to effectively exercise your data subject rights in the context of this joint controllership, we entered into an agreement with these Gore companies granting you the right to centrally exercise your data subject rights under the “Your Rights” section of this Privacy Notice against Gore.
To exercise your rights, you may reach out to: dataprivacyoffice@wlgore.com.
International data transfers
In the event that we transfer your personal data outside the United Kingdom, we ensure that your data is protected in a manner which is consistent with the General Data Protection Regulation. Therefore, and if required by applicable law, we take the following measures:
We share your personal data with affiliated companies outside the United Kingdom only if they have implemented an intragroup data transfer agreement enabling sufficient guarantees for the protection of personal data including international transfers.
We transfer personal data to external recipients outside the United Kingdom only after establishing that appropriate safeguards exist between us and the recipient. You may request further information about the safeguards implemented in relation to specific transfers by contacting dataprivacyoffice@wlgore.com.
Your competent data protection authority
In case of data privacy related concerns and requests, we encourage you to contact our Data Privacy Organization at dataprivacyoffice@wlgore.com. Besides contacting the Data Privacy Office, you always have the right to approach the competent data protection authority with your request or complaint.
Contact details of UK Information Commissioners Office
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Changes to this Privacy Notice
We may update this Notice from time to time to reflect changes and will indicate changes by updating the Notice (and effective date) on this page. We encourage you to periodically review this website and our Notice to understand how Gore protects your personal information.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this Notice or complaints regarding the processing of your personal information, please contact the Gore Privacy Office at DataPrivacyOffice@wlgore.com.