Last updated: 22 October 2024
At AWard Legal, we respect your need for online privacy and protect any Personal Information that you may share with us, in an appropriate manner and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations, including UAE Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021 on the Protection of Personal Data or “PDPL”, Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament, known as the “General Data Protection Regulation” or “GDPR”. Our practice with respect to use of your Personal Information is as set forth below in this Privacy & Cookies Policy (the “Policy”).
LEGAL DISCLAIMER
This Policy sets out the basis on which AWard Legal Consultancy FZ-LLC and its affiliates (“AWard Legal ” or “we/us”) collect Personal Data from you and how it will be processed and protected by Us when you use our Site at www……….. (our “Site”) or any of our services, or where We enter into any other business relationship with you. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.
By accessing AWard Legal Site and ticking “OK” box in the consent message, you confirm that you agree to this Policy. If you do not agree with the terms of this Policy, please do not provide any personal details to us.
Please note that the Policy may change from time to time at our sole discretion. The new version will be posted on our Site with the effective date of the amended version and you are encouraged to review it regularly.
This Site is not intended to be used by persons under the age of 18. We wish to provide visitors to our Site with detailed information about the “Cookies” we use, what they are and their purpose.
DEFINITIONS
Personal Data is any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘Data Subject’); an identifiable natural personal is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural, or social identity of that natural person (voice, photo, etc.)
Data Subject is a living individual to whom personal data relates.
Consent of the Data Subject means any freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous indication of the Data Subject’s wishes.
Data Controller means the natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data.
Data Processor means a natural or legal person, which processes personal data on behalf of the data controller.
For the purpose of this Policy and in compliance with GDPR, AWard Legal is a “Data Controller” of the Personal Data. In some cases, we may act as Data Processor.
1. INFORMATION WE MAY COLLECT FROM YOU AND ITS RETENTION
1.1 We collect Personal Data from you when you contact us via our Site, email or when you otherwise correspond with us (e.g. by standard mail to our company address, social networks pages, telephone calls, personal contact, business meetings and other similar situations).
Ways in which you may be providing us with Personal Data include, for example:
1.1.1 Applying for Services;
1.1.2 Sending us an Enquiry;
1.1.3 Applying for a job advertisement;
1.1.4 Reporting a problem;
1.2.5 Delivering us goods / services; etc.
1.2 The information we also collect from you includes, but is not limited to, data concerning traffic on our Site, location data, weblogs and other communication data (whether this is required for our billing purposes or otherwise), and the resources that you access (“Usage Data”).
1.3 By providing any Personal Data to us, you fully understand and clearly consent to the transfer, collection and processing of such Personal Data. Such transfer, collection and processing will comply with the terms of this Policy.
1.5 We will retain your Personal Data for 6 (six) to 12 (twelve) months or for a longer period whilst we have a business relationship with you or need to enforce any agreements with you, or must comply with any legal obligations.
When we no longer need to use your Personal Data and they are not needed for any legal or regulatory obligations, we will erase any existing copy or use any anonymization technique in order to irreversibly prevent identification so that we can't identify you.
In case you withdraw your consent for processing your Personal Data, they will be erased without any undue delay, unless there will be other legal ground for processing (e.g. for compliance with a legal obligation, exercise of legal claims).
2. PURPOSE OF PROCESSING YOUR DATA
2.1 We may use Personal Data collected from you for the following purposes:
2.1.1 To conduct due diligence check on clients, suppliers, business partners;
2.1.2 In delivering services to you;
2.1.3 For enforcement of contracts we have entered into with you, if needed;
2.1.4 For suppliers’ performance evaluation;
2.1.5 For employment purposes;
2.1.6 To provide you with news and general information about our services, unless you have opted not to receive such information, and for our own internal marketing analysis, for example, to assess trends amongst our consumers or to measure the amount of traffic to our Site;
2.1.7 To maintain and improve our Site and notify you about changes to our Site, to detect, prevent and address technical issues;
2.1.8 Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
3. THIRD PARTY RECEPIENTS OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA (PERMITTED DISCLOSURE)
3.1 AWard Legal can disclose your Personal Data, without your specific consent, to the below third parties only for the purposes specified above in this Privacy Statement, such as to the following:
3.1.1 We may use your Personal Data, or permit selected third parties to use your Personal Data, to provide you with information about goods and services which may be of interest to you, and we or they may contact you about these by post, telephone or e-mail.
3.1.2 Any statistics relating to our business that we disclose to others will not identify you personally. We may, for example, perform statistical analyses of the behaviour of the users of our Site in order to measure interest in the various areas of our Site. This information, and any other general information about our users that we share with others, will not contain personal information about you.
3.1.3 We may provide your Personal Data to selected third parties for the purpose of carrying out any services we have undertaken to provide or oversee pursuant to any agreement we may have with you. We may give your personal information to ground handlers, government authorities, credit companies, marketing and advertising, financial advisors, banks, insurance companies, credit card and data processing companies or other sub-contractors as may be necessary under our agreement.
3.1.4 We may provide your data to selected third parties for the purpose of enforcing any agreement we may have with you. This may include lawyers, debt collectors, accountants, auditors, or other government or semi-government authorities.
3.1.5. We may disclose your Personal Data in some cases to governmental agencies or entities, regulatory authorities or other persons in line with any applicable law, regulations, court order or official request. For example, (i) your data may be shared with these entities where AWard Legal would be expected to cooperate in the event of a criminal investigation; (ii) your data may be shared with tax authorities and regulators for reporting purposes.
3.1.6 We may disclose your Personal Data when we need to protect the rights, property, or safety of AWard Legal , our clients, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
3.1.7 In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, we may disclose your Personal Data to the prospective buyer or seller.
3.2 Your Personal Data is not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with purposes set forth in Sections 2 and 3 without your specific consent.
4. STORAGE AND PROTECTION OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA
4.1 We have implemented appropriate technical and organizational measures to reduce the risks of loss, unauthorized access, unauthorized disclosure of Personal Data and other unauthorized alteration of Personal Data. Personal Data that we collect from you is stored in Dubai and not transmitted elsewhere. All persons involved in the processing of Personal Data are based in Dubai. We make sure that your Personal Data are processed only by employees, who are authorized and are familiar with applicable personal data protection rules.
4.2. By submitting your Personal Data, you agree to such collection, storage and processing.
4.3 Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your Personal Data, we cannot guarantee the security of your Personal Data transmitted to our Site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your Personal Data, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorized access.
5. YOUR RIGHTS
5.1 Right of access which means (i) the right to know whether data concerning you is being processed and (ii) if so, access it.
5.2 Right to rectification. When Personal Data are inaccurate, you may request us to correct it.
5.3 Right to erasure (“right to be forgotten”) which means you may request us to delete any Personal Data we obtained from you.
5.4 Right to restriction of processing. You may limit the processing of your Personal Data.
5.5 Right to be informed. You may ask how and for which purposes we process your Personal Data and which third party recipients got your Personal Data.
5.6 Right to data portability. You have the right to be provided with a copy of your Personal Data in a structured, machine-readable and commonly used format.
5.7 Right to object. You may request us not to process your Personal Data.
5.8 Right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you.
6. CONSEQUENCES OF NON-PROVISION OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA
6.1 Should you decide not to provide us with Personal Data we requested from you or should you decided to exercise your rights to erasure, restriction or to object against processing of your Personal Data, AWard Legal may not be able to continue with its contractual / employment agreement with you.
7. CONTACTS
7.1 Any questions, complaints, comments and requests regarding this Policy or relating to your Personal Data are welcomed and should be addressed to info@award.legal.
7.2. If you prefer to complain to a higher authority, please contact your local data protection commissioner.
8. IP ADDRESSES AND COOKIES
8.1 Like many other Sites, we use “cookies” to help us gather and store information about visitors to our Site.
8.2 We may collect information about your computer, including your IP address, operating system and browser type for system administration. This is statistical data about our Site users’ browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify you as an individual.
8.3 A “cookie” is a small text file which is downloaded on to your computer’s hard disk when you access certain Sites. Cookies allow the Site to recognize your computer. A cookie can identify the
pages that are being viewed and this can assist us to select the pages that the visitor sees. The data read from these cookies may be linked to personally identifying (PII) and non-personally identifying (non-PII) information.
8.4 “Session” cookies only exist whilst visitors are online on a particular occasion. These are temporary cookies that aid your journey around the Site and remember the preferences you have selected during your “session”.
8.5 “Persistent” cookies, which are not session-based, remain on a visitor’s computer, so that you can be recognized as a previous visitor when you next visit our Site. This allows us to collect information about your browsing habits whilst on our Site, and this can be useful in assisting us to monitor and improve our services.
8.6 We do not store sensitive information such as account numbers or passwords in “persistent” cookies, and cookies in themselves, do not contain enough information to identify you. You will only become personally identifiable in relation to your browsing habits after you have formally provided us with your personal data for the purposes outlined in Section 1.2 above.
8.7 In addition to using cookies, we might also use GIFs and other web tools, such as Google Analytics, to collect information about your browsing activities whilst on our Site. In this respect the information that is provided is similar to the information supplied by cookies, and we use it for the same purposes.
8.8 Any information that we acquire about you using cookies, GIFs, or other web tools is subject to the same restrictions and conditions as any other information we collect about you, as outlined in this Policy.
8.9 Some third parties who are linked to our Site are also likely to use cookies, GIFs, or other web tools that are set by other people such as advertising agencies, or the businesses to which the advertisements relate. We do not have access to any information that might be collected in this way, and, if you are concerned, you should contact such third parties for more information.
9. THE COOKIES USED ON OUR SITE
9.1 Cookies used on our Site fall into 3 categories:
(1) Essential Cookies – these are used for a specific purpose and are essential for secure use and navigation. The Site will not operate as efficiently as we or you would like if such cookies are not utilized as it would lose certain fundamental functions and features. User information such as server preferences, single-session data and corresponding identifier, web beacons, log files, and other credential-related information are collected. Note: For EU individuals, these cookies help notify AWard Legal whether you require, or have already been sent, an affirmative consent form in connection with the GDPR. These type of cookies are also utilized for analytics and can aid AWard Legal to better understand its users and improve the Site.
(2) Preference Cookies – these cookies collect and process information regarding your preferences and choices while visiting the Site (e.g., utilizing customized location settings). They include social media cookies, which identify when you access the Site through a social media Site and collect information about your social media usage and other data you may have provided. Settings for your social media cookies can be changed via your social media account.
(3) Advertising Cookies – these cookies are used by AWard Legal , its sponsors and advertisers (and/or their external analytics providers) to tailor content/ads. Such content/ads use cookies to
provide advertisements more consistent with your interests. Some AWard Legal advertising partners may also use cookies to monitor the performance of their advertising content. AWard Legal does not provide user information to advertising partners except in connection with the Site or as required by law.
9.2 We encourage you to maintain cookies as enabled. If you disable cookies, you may not be able to use or benefit from certain features of the Site, particularly the features that are designed to personalize your experience.
9.3 Cookies set by Google Analytics include:
Cookie Name
_utma, _utmb, _utmc, _utmz, or others within the range _utma to _utmz.
Purpose
Google Analytics is a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. By default, Google Analytics sets four performance cookies in order to evaluate your use of the Site, including number of visits, duration of browsing and referring sites, and compiles reports for us on activity on the Site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous.
Google stores the information collected by the cookie on servers in the United States. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google state that they will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.
For more information about the way in which Google Analytics uses these cookies please visit the following link –http://developers.google.com/analytics/resources/concepts/ga ConceptsCookies
_utma expires 2 years from being set or updated. _utmb expires 30 minutes from being set or updated. _utmz expires 6 months from being set or updated. _utmv expires 2 years from being set or updated.
9.4 If you wish to know all the cookies we have set and how to delete or manage them, please refer to www.allaboutcookies.org
10. HOW TO DISABLE/ ENABLE COOKIES
10.1 You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by modifying the settings in your browser or by not pressing the “Understood” button on the drop-down banner that will appear on the first page you see on our Site. For example, in Internet Explorer, you can go to Tools and then Internet Options, where there is the option to change your settings to disable cookies. However, you may not be able to use all the interactive features of our Site if the cookies are disabled.
10.2 You also have the ability to delete cookies that have been installed in the cookie folder of your browser. To do this you should search for “cookies” in your “Help” function for information on where to find your cookie folder.
10.3 To delete only the cookies set by our Site, for example in Internet Explorer, you must do the following:-
In Internet Explorer, click the Tools button, and then click Internet Options.
On the General tab, under Browsing history, click Settings.
Click the View files button.
Click the Name column heading to sort all the files alphabetically, and then scroll down until you see files that begin with the prefix Cookie:. All cookies will have that prefix, and they usually contain the name of the Site that created the cookie.
Right-click the cookie you want to delete, click Delete, and then click Yes.
Close the window that contains the list of files, and then click OK twice to return to Internet Explorer.
You should note that some Sites store your member name, password, or other information about you in a cookie. If you delete that cookie, you might need to re-enter your personal information again the next time you visit the Site.
10.4 To delete only the cookies set by our Site, for example in Firefox, you must do the following:-
At the top of the Firefox window, click on the Firefox button and then click Options
Select the Privacy panel.
Set Firefox to Use custom settings for history.
Click Show Cookies…. The Cookies window will appear.
In the Search field, type the name of the site whose cookies you want to remove. The cookies that match your search will be displayed.
Select the cookie(s) in the list to remove and click Remove Cookie
Select the first cookie and press Shift + End to select all the cookies in the list.
Click Close to close the Cookies window.
10.5 Unless you have adjusted your browser settings so that it will refuse cookies, our Site will issue cookies when you log on.
10.6 To prevent Google Analytics cookies being set, you may install the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-On by clicking on this link – http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout and following the instructions.
11. LINKS TO OTHER SITES
This Policy only covers this Site only. If you follow a link from this Site to another Site, you must refer to and read the privacy statement on that other Site which you visit. 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. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these Sites.
12. INTERACTIVE AREAS OF OUR SITE/ BLOGS
12.1 Information that you post on or through the public areas of this Site, for example, in chat rooms, discussion groups, blogs, or via social networking (including but not limited to Facebook and Twitter) is generally accessible to, and may be collected by, others and may result in unwelcome
communications. For your own safety and security, you should not provide information about yourself on the aforementioned areas of our Site or via social networking.
12.2 If you disclose any information by posting on or through the public areas of this Site, for example, in chat rooms, discussion groups, blogs, or via social networking, we do not accept any responsibility or liability for any breach of privacy, loss, damage, effect on your reputation or otherwise whatsoever.