Privacy Statement

This Social Media Channel is provided by Bayer Public Limited Company (hereinafter "us“ or "we“). For further information regarding the provider of the Social Media Channel, please refer to our imprint.

A. Handling of personal data

In the following we wish to provide you with information on how we handle your personal data when you use our Social Media Channel. Unless otherwise indicated in the following chapters, the legal basis for the handling of your personal data results from the fact that such handling is required to make available the functionalities of the Social Media Channel requested by you (Art. 6(1)(b) General Data Protection Regulation, as amended and incorporated into UK law).

I. Using our Social Media Channel

1. Using comment-, message- or chat-functions

You can contact us directly via the comment-, message- or chat-functions available on our Social Media Channel. The information provided by you in this context will exclusively be processed for purposes of responding to you, unless other purposes are indicated in this Privacy Statement.

2. Information on side effects and quality complaints

This Social Media Channel is not intended or designed for communications regarding undesired side effects, lack of therapeutic effect, medication errors, grey market products/counterfeit medicine, incorrect or off-label use, quality complaints and/or other issues regarding the safeness or quality of Bayer products. If you wish to report side effects or make a quality complaint, please contact your health care professional (e.g. physician or your pharmacist), your local health authority, or use our website[PA1] for the report of undesirable side effects.

If you nevertheless report to us undesirable side effects or other issues regarding the safeness or quality of Bayer products, we will be legally bound to deal with your communication and may have to may contact you for clarification purposes. Subsequently, we have to notify the competent health authorities of the issues reported by you. In this context, your information may be forwarded in pseudonymised form, i.e. no information by which you may be directly identified will be passed on. We may also have to forward these pseudonymised notifications to our group companies and cooperation partners, to the extent these are likewise obliged to notify their respectively competent health authorities.

3. Using a like-button function

Anyone who clicks the "Like"-button sends information to the platform provider, who again provides us with aggregated information about the average age structure, place of residence, gender, language and activity of all users who used the like-button function with regard to our Social Media Channel. At no time do we receive information on individuals. For more details on the data the platform provider collects in this regard, please consult the below (D) referenced privacy statement of the platform provider.

II. Social Media Management Tool

We use a social media management tool to administrate our account and manage the content we share on our Social Media Channel as well as our visitors’ engagement with us (Art. 6(1)(f) General Data Protection Regulation). For this purpose, any of your engagements with our Social Media Channel (e.g. comments, likes, posts, messages) will be transferred and stored in our social media management tool.

The social media management tool allows us to analyse the overall engagement of our visitors with our Social Media Channel to e.g.

  • determine most active visitors;
  • determine sentiment via automated and manual scoring;
  • identify and profile brand advocates and key influencers;
  • filter messages to identify and delete spam.

We keep a record of your engagement with us for as long as you keep regularly engaging with us. We delete your record of engagement if you have not engaged with us for more than 2 years.

III. Social Media Listening

We conduct so called social media listening. Social media listening is the process of identifying and assessing what is being said about a company, individual, product or brand on social media channels. We use social media listening services exclusively on publicly accessible content to

  • perform keyword searches across social media channels;
  • view the volume of conversation whenever users interact with our brand;
  • view visual analytic displays of conversation trends over a specified time range;
  • search, filter and analyse conversation streams and
  • monitor publicly available opinions, statements or other interactions on social media channels from certain individuals or entities that are important for us and our business (so called thought leaders).

We use the insights we receive from social media listening to

  • better understand sentiment, intent, mood and market trends as well as to better understand our customers’ or other stakeholders’ needs and thereby improve our services and products and
  • identify side effects, lack of therapeutic effect, medication errors, grey market products/counterfeit medicine, incorrect or off-label use, quality complaints and/or other issues regarding the safety or quality of our products.

We perform social media listening on the legal basis of the statutory permission which allows a processing that is necessary for pursuing a legitimate interest, namely the above described purposes on what we use the insights of social media listening for (Art. 6(1)(f) General Data Protection Regulation).

IV. Transfer of data for commissioned processing

For the administration of our Social Media Channel we will use specialised service contractors, who will have access to the personal data of all users contacting us via such Social Media Channel. Such service contractors are carefully selected and regularly monitored by us. Based on respective data processor agreements, they will only process personal data upon our instruction and strictly in accordance with our directives.

V. Transfer of data to third parties

We share your data with the following third parties for the following purpose:

Third Party Scope and purpose of transfer

Legal grounds

Bayer Limited (Ireland) purpose description- reason of sharing personal data with them

Bayer's Master Data Sharing Agreement

 

VI. Processing of data outside the EU / the EEA

Your data will in part also be processed in countries outside the European Union(„EU“) or the European Economic Area („EEA“) , which generally have a lower data protection level than European countries. In such cases, we will ensure that a sufficient level of protection is provided for your data, e.g. by concluding specific agreements with our contractual partners (copy available on request), or we will ask for your explicit consent to such processing.

B. Information regarding your rights

The following rights are in general available to you according to applicable data privacy laws:

  • right of information about your personal data stored by us;
  • right to request the correction, deletion or restricted processing of your personal data;
  • right to object to a processing for reasons of our own legitimate interest, public interest, or profiling , unless we are able to proof that compelling, warranted reasons superseding your interests, rights and freedom exist, or that such processing is done for purposes of the assertion, exercise or defence of legal claims;
  • right to data portability;
  • right to file a complaint with a data protection authority;
  • You may at any time with future effect revoke your consent to the collection, processing and use of your personal data.

If you wish to exercise your rights, please address your request to the contact indicated below. (à C.).

C. Contact

For any questions you may have with respect to data protection, please send us a private message via the message function on our Social Media Channel or contact our company data protection officer at the following address:

Data Protection Officer
Legal and Compliance Department
Bayer plc
400 South Oak Way
Green Park
READING
Berkshire
RG2 6AD

D. Processing of personal data by the platform provider

Please note that the platform provider of this Social Media Channel will also process your personal data when you visit our Social Media Channel. For further information, please consult the privacy statement of the platform provider of this Social Media Channel.

E. Amendment of this Privacy Statement

We may update our Privacy Statement from time to time. Updates of our Privacy Statement will be published on our Social Media Channel. Any amendments become effective upon publication on our Social Media Channel. We therefore recommend that you regularly visit the Social Media Channel to keep yourself informed on possible updates.

Last updated: 24.07.2023