Privacy Policy

PBV Monitor connects the world’s leading business Lawyer and Tax Professionals allowing them to be more productive and successful.

PBV Monitor, with its closed and secure system, is fully committed to be transparent about the data it collects and processes about you, how your data are being used and with whom they are shared.

This policy (“Privacy Policy”) describes the practices of PBV Monitor (“Company“, “we” or “us“) for collecting, using, maintaining, and disclosing information collected from you or provided directly by you when you visit our website, use our network – along with the access to any services made available by us (“Services”).

Please read carefully this Privacy Policy in order to fully understand our policies and practices concerning the collection and treatment of your information and data. The use of information collected through our Services shall be limited to the purposes described under this Privacy Policy. By accessing or using the Services, you agree to this Privacy Policy. If you are using the Services on behalf of an entity, you are agreeing to this Privacy Policy for that entity and are representing to us that you have the authority to do so (in which case “you” will refer to that entity). If you do not agree with our policies and practices, your choice is not to use the Services.

Premise

PBV Monitor is a social network and online platform for business Lawyers and Tax Professionals. People use our Services to find and be found for business opportunities, to connect with others and find information. Our Privacy Policy applies to any Member of our Services.

PBV Monitor registered users (“Members”) share their professional identities, engage with their network, exchange knowledge and professional insights, post and view relevant content, and find business and career opportunities.

PBV Monitor uses the term “Designated Countries” to refer to countries in the European Union (EU), European Economic Area (EEA), and Switzerland.

Services

This Privacy Policy, including our Cookie Policy applies to your use of our Services.

This Privacy Policy applies to PBVMonitor.com, PBV Monitor-branded apps, and other PBV Monitor-related sites such as Global Legal Chronicle, apps, communications and services (“Services”), including off-site Services but excluding services that state that they are offered under a different privacy policy.

Data Controllers and Contracting Parties

As Member of our Services, the collection, process and sharing of your personal data is subject to this Privacy Policy and other documents referred in this Privacy Policy, as well as its updates.

PBV Monitor will be the controller of your personal data provided to, or collected by or for, or processed in connection with our Services.

Change

PBV Monitor reserves the right to change this Privacy Policy. In case of adjustments, we will notify you through our Services or e-mail and provide you the revised Privacy Policy to give you the opportunity to review the changes before they become effective, as required by law. The changes will be available also in the update section.

Your continued use of our Services after the published or notified changes of this Privacy Policy means that you agree for the collection, use, sharing of your personal data to be subjected to the updated version of the Privacy Policy, as of its active date.

If you reject the changes, your membership will be suspended but the data collected so far will be kept stored.

Data We Collect

Data You Provide To Us

The data you provide to us will be used to create your profile.

Registration

The information collected to create your account comprises:

  • Name
  • Phone number
  • E-mail address
  • Password
  • Payment information (e.g., credit card)
  • Billing information

You can help PBV Monitor maintain the accuracy of your Personal Information by updating your account. Please update your account when you change your email and billing address, payment information, and phone number.

Profile

You create your PBV Monitor profile (a complete profile helps you get the most from our Services). You choose the information you want to make public on your profile – education, work experience, skills, field of practice, photo, contact information, etc.

You are not obliged to provide additional information on your profile; however, profile information helps you to get more from our Services, including helping recruiters and business opportunities find you. It’s your choice whether to include sensitive information1 on your profile and to make that sensitive information public.

Please do not post or add personal data to your profile that you would not want to be publicly available.

Please do consider that you might give us additional data by, for instance, syncing your address book or calendar.

Information Collected Through Use of the Services: Posting and Uploading

PBV Monitor collects personal data from you when you provide, post or upload it to our Services: if you use our Services, we collect information about how you use and interact with the Services and the data and information that is collected or provided by you through or in connection with your use of the Services – such as when you fill out a form, (e.g., with demographic data or salary), respond to a survey, or submit a resume or again when you fill out a job application on our Services.

You are free to post or upload your personal data, as well as not to; though if you don’t, it may limit your ability to grow and engage with your network over our Services.

1. Data From Others

Others may post or write about you.

1.1 Content and News

PBV Monitor, Global Legal Chronicle Journalists, you and other users may post content that includes information about you (as part of articles, posts, comments) on our Services.

1.2 Partners

PBV Monitor receives personal data (e.g., your job title and work email address) about you when you use the services of our customers and partners, such as employers or prospective employers and applicant tracking systems providing us job application data.

1.3 Related Companies and Other Services

PBV Monitor receives data about you when you use some of the other services provided by us or our affiliates.

Service Use

PBV Monitor logs your visits and use of our Services (mobile apps included).

We log usage data when you take any action on our Services – visit, view and/or click on specific contents, comments, share articles, apply for a job, etc. We use log-ins cookies, IP addresses, device information to identify you and log how you interact with our Services.

1.4 Cookies and Similar Technologies

We collect data through cookies and similar technologies.

As further described in our Cookie Policy we use cookies and similar technologies (e.g., pixels and ad tags) to collect data (e.g., device IDs) to recognize you and your device(s) on, off and across different services and devices where you have engaged with our Services. We also allow some others to use cookies as described in our Cookie Policy. 

If you are outside the Designated Countries, we also collect (or rely on others who collect) information about your device where you have engaged with our Services (e.g., ad ID, IP address, operating system and browser information) so we can provide our Members with relevant ads and better understand their effectiveness.

You can opt out from our use of data from cookies and similar technologies that track your behaviour on the sites of others for ad targeting and other ad-related purposes.

If you choose to disable your cookies, your user experience may be limited.

1.5 Your Device and Location

PBV Monitor receives data from your devices and networks, including location data.

When visiting or leaving our Services (including some plugins, our cookies or similar technology on the sites of others), we receive the URL of both the site you came from and the one you go to and the time of your visit. We also get information about your network and device (e.g., IP address, proxy server, operating system, web browser and add-ons, device identifier and features, cookie IDs and/or Internet Service Provider, or your mobile carrier). If you use our Services from a mobile device, that device will send us data about your location based on your phone settings.

1.6 Messages

If you communicate through our Services, we learn about that.

PBV Monitor collects information about you when you send, receive, or engage with messages in connection with our Services. For example, if you get a PBV Monitor connection request, we will track whether you have acted on it and will send you reminders. We also use automatic scanning technology2 on messages to support and protect our Users and our Platform. For example, we use this technology to suggest possible responses to messages and to manage or block content that violates our User Agreement or Professional Community Policies from our Services.

1.7 Workplace and School Provided Information

Others buying our Services for your use, such as your employer or your school, provide us with personal data about you and your eligibility to use the Services that they purchase for use by their workers, students or alumni. For example, we will get contact information for “Lawyer / Law Firm Dossier” administrators and for authorizing users of our premium Services, such as our recruiting, sales or learning products.

1.8 Sites and Services of Others

PBV Monitor receives data when you visit sites that include our ads, cookies or similar technologies, some of our plugins (such as “Apply with PBV Monitor”) or when you log-in to others’ services with your PBV Monitor account.

1.9 Other

PBV Monitor is improving its Services, which means we continuously get new data and create new ways to use data.

PBV Monitor Services are dynamic, and we often introduce new features, which may require the collection of new information. If we collect materially different personal data or materially change how we collect, use or share your data, we will notify you and may also modify this Privacy Policy.

2. How PBV Monitor Uses Your Data

PBV Monitor uses your data to provide, support, personalize and develop our Services in the best way.

How we use your personal data will depend on which Services you use, how you use those Services and the choices you make in your settings .

We use the data given by you to provide and personalize our Service so that our Services (ads included) can result more relevant and useful to you and others. Automated systems and inferences created by PBV Monitor can be used too.

2.1 Services

Our Services help you connect with others, find and be found for work and business opportunities, stay informed, get training and be more productive.

Your data will be used to authorize the access to PBV Monitor and our Services, while honouring your settings.

Stay Connected

Our Services allow you to stay in touch and up to date with colleagues, partners, clients, and other professional contacts. To do so, you can “connect” with the professionals who you choose, and who also wish to “connect” with you. Subject to your and their settings, when you connect with other Members, you will be able to search each other’s connections in order to exchange professional opportunities.

We use data about you (provided by you through your profile, profiles you have viewed or data provided through address book uploads or partner integrations) to help others find your profile, suggest connections for you and others (e.g. Members who share your contacts or job experiences) and enable you to invite others to become a Member and connect with you. You can also opt-in to allow us to use your precise location or proximity to others for certain tasks (e.g. to suggest other nearby Members for you to connect with, calculate the commute to a new job, or notify your connections that you are at a professional event).

It is your choice whether to invite someone to our Services, send a connection request, or allow another Member to become your connection. When you invite someone to connect with you, your invitation will include your network and basic profile information (e.g., name, profile photo, job title, region).

Stay Informed

Our Services allow you to stay informed about news, events and ideas regarding professional topics you care about, and from professionals you respect. We use the data we have about you (e.g., data you provide, data we collect from your engagement with our Services and inferences we make from the data we have about you), to personalize our Services according to your needs and demands , such as by recommending or ranking relevant content and conversations on our Services.

We also use the data we have about you to suggest skills you could add to your profile and skills that you might need to pursue your next opportunity. We use your content, activity and other data, including your name and photo, to provide notices to your network and others. For example, subject to your settings, we may notify others that you posted content, took a social action, used a feature, made new connections or were mentioned in a new article.

2.2 Career

Our Services allow you to explore careers, evaluate educational opportunities, seek out, and be found for, career opportunities. PBV Monitor will use your data to recommend jobs or mentees, show you and others relevant professional contacts (e.g., who work at a company, in an industry, function or location or have certain skills and connections). You can signal that you are interested in changing jobs and share information with recruiters.

We will use your data to recommend jobs to you and you to recruiters. We may use automated systems to provide content and recommendations to help make our Services more relevant to our Members, Visitors and customers. Keeping your profile accurate and up-to-date may help you better connect to others and to opportunities through our Services.

2.3 Productivity

We allow you to collaborate with colleagues, search for potential clients, customers, partners and others to do business with. Our Services allow you to communicate with other Members and schedule and prepare meetings with them. If your settings allow it, we scan messages to provide “bots” or similar tools that facilitate tasks such as scheduling meetings, drafting responses, summarizing messages or recommending next steps.

2.4 Premium Services

Our Premium Services provide our subscribers with customized-search functionality and tools (including messaging and activity alerts). Customers can export limited information from your profile, as name, headline, current company, current title, and general location (e.g., Milan), such as to manage sales leads or talent, unless you opt out.

All the information concerning you are not provided to premium Services customers without your consent: the data they stored about you (such as resume, contact information) is subject to the policies of those customers.

Communications

PBV Monitor contacts you and enables communications between Members.

We will contact you through email, mobile phone, notices posted on our websites or apps, messages to your PBV Monitor inbox, and other ways through our Services, including text messages and push notifications. We will send you messages about the availability of our Services, security, privacy policy changes or other service-related issues. We will also send notices about how to use our Services, network updates, reminders, job suggestions and promotional messages from us and our partners. We also enable communications between you and others through our Services as invitations, Direct Messages, groups and messages between your connections3.

You have the right to choose and control what messages you receive and how often you receive some types of messages. You might change your communication preferences at any time. However, bear in mind that you cannot opt out from receiving service notices from us, including security and legal notices.

Advertising

We serve you tailored ads both on and off our Services. We offer you choices regarding personalized ads, but you cannot opt out from seeing other ads.

We target (and measure the performance of) ads to Members and others both on and off our Services directly or through a variety of partners, using the following data, whether separately or combined:

  • Data from advertising technologies on and off our Services, pixels, ad tags, cookies, and device identifiers;
  • Information provided directly from PBV Monitor Members;
  • Data from your use of our Services (e.g., search history, feed, content you read, who you follow or is following you, connections, groups participation, page visits, videos you watch, clicking on an ad, etc.), including as described in Section 1.3;
  • Information from advertising partners, vendors and publishers; and
  • Information inferred from data described above.

Moreover, we will show you sponsored content. If you take a social action on these ads (like, comment or share), your action will be associated with your name and others will be able to see it, advertiser included. According to your setting, if you take a social action on PBC Monitor Services it might be mentioned with related ads.

Ad Choices

We adhere to self-regulatory principles4 for interest-based advertising and participate in industry opt-outs from such ads. This does not opt you out of receiving advertising; you will continue to get other ads by advertisers not listed with these self-regulatory tools. You can opt-out specifically from our uses of certain categories of data to show you more relevant ads.

Info to Ad Providers

We do not share your personal data with any third-party advertisers or ad networks except for: (i) hashed IDs or device identifiers (to the extent they are personal data in some countries); (ii) with your separate permission or (iii) data already visible to any users of the Pbv Monitor Service. However, if you view or click on an ad on or off our Services, the ad provider will get a signal that someone visited the page that displayed the ad, and they may, through the use of mechanisms such as cookies, determine it is you. Advertising partners can associate personal data collected by the advertiser directly from you with hashed IDs or device identifiers received from us. In such instances, we seek to contractually require such advertising partners to obtain your explicit, opt-in consent before doing so.

2.5 Developing Services and Research

We constantly develop our Services and conduct research.

Service Development

We use data, including public feedback, to conduct research and development for our Services in order to provide you and others with a better, more intuitive and personalized experience, drive membership growth and engagement on PBV Monitor Services, and help connect professionals to each other and to economic opportunity.

Other Research

We wish to create economic opportunity for Members of the global workforce and to help them be more productive and successful. We use the personal data the Members provided to us to research social, economic and workplace trends. It may happen that we work with trusted third parties to perform this research, under controls[6] that are designed to protect your privacy. We publish or allow others to publish legal insights, presented as aggregated data rather than personal data.

Surveys

Polls and surveys are conducted by us and others through our Services. You are not obligated to respond and have choices about the information you provide.

2.7 Customer Support

We use data (which can include your communications) to investigate, respond to and resolve any complaints and for Services issues in order to help you and fix problems.

2.8 Insights That Do Not Identify You

We use your data to produce and share insights that do not identify you which means that we may use your data to create statistics about our Members and our Services but your personal information will not be shown.

2.9 Security and Investigations

PBV Monitor uses your data (including those related to your communications) for security purposes or to prevent or investigate possible fraud or other violations of our User Agreement and/or any attempt to harm our Members.

3. How We Share Information

3.1 Our Services

Any data that you include on your profile, any content you post or any social action you take on our Services will be seen by others, consistent with your settings.

Profile

Your profile is fully visible to all Members and customers of our Services.

Posts, Likes, Follows, Comments, Messages

Our Services allow viewing and sharing information through posts, likes, follows and comments.

  • When you share an article,  post publicly, re-share or comment on another’s content (ads included), others will be able to view these “social actions” and associate it with you as well as re-shared anywhere on our Platforms (subject to your settings). Members and our Partners will be able to find and see your publicly-shared content.
  • When you follow a person or organization, others and the “owner” itself will be able to see it.
  • We let senders know when you act on their message, as well as when you view their profile, subject to your settings where applicable.

3.2 Enterprise Accounts

  • Subject to your settings, when you use workplace tools and services (e.g., interactive employee directory tools) certain of your data may also be made available to your employer or be connected with information we receive from your employer to enable these tools and services.

3.3 Others’ Services

You may link your account with others’ services so that they can look up your contacts’ profiles, post your shares on such platforms, or enable you to start conversations with your connections on such platforms.

3.4 Related Services

Your data will be shared across all PBV Monitor different Services.

Moreover, we will share your personal data with our affiliates in order to provide and better develop our Services. We may combine information, such as your learning history, internally across the different Services covered by this Privacy Policy to help our Services be more relevant and useful to our Members.

3.5 Service Providers

We may use others to help us with our Services (e.g., maintenance, analysis, payments, fraud detection, etc.) thus they will have access to your information as reasonably necessary to perform these tasks on our behalf. They are obligated not to disclose or use your data for any other purposes than helping us.

3.6 Legal Disclosures

If we believe it necessary to protect the rights and safety of you, us, and anyone using our Services or if required by law then PBV Monitor may need to disclose your information.

This might happen when:

  1. required by law, subpoena, or other legal process
  2. if we firmly believe disclosure is reasonably necessary to (a) investigate, prevent or take action regarding suspected or actual illegal activities (b) assist government enforcement agencies; (c) enforce our agreements with you; (d) investigate and defend ourselves against any third-party claims or allegations; (e) protect the security or integrity of our Services (such as by sharing with companies facing similar threats); or (f) exercise or protect the rights and safety of PBV Monitor, our Members, personnel or others.

If we find it appropriate and it is not prohibited by law or court order or when the request is an emergency, we will try to notify the Members about legal demands for their personal information.

We attempt to notify Members about legal demands for their personal data when appropriate in our judgment, unless prohibited by law or court order or when the request is an emergency.
We may dispute such demands when we believe, in our discretion, that the requests are overbroad, vague or lack proper authority, but we do not promise to challenge every demand. To learn more see our Data Request Guidelines and Transparency Report.

3.7 Change in Control or Sale

In case Our business is sold to others, we may share your data.

Any other entity who buys our business, or even a part of it, will have the right to access and continue to use your data, but only as set out in this Privacy Policy, unless you agree otherwise.

4. Your Rights and Obligations

4.1 Data Retention

We keep most of your personal data for as long as your account is open.

We generally retain your personal data as long as you keep your account open or as needed to provide you Services. This includes data you or others provided to us and data generated or inferred from your use of our Services. In some cases, we choose to retain certain information in a depersonalized or aggregated form.

4.2 Rights to Access and Control Your Personal Data

You can access or delete your personal data. You have many choices about how your data is collected, used and shared.

We provide many choices concerning the collection, use and sharing of your data – being it about your profile, your posts and social actions.

As for the personal data we have about,

  1. You can ask us to erase and/or delete all or some of your personal data in our possess (Art. 17, GDPR);
  2. You can change any information through your account; or ask to change, update, correct, any data that might be inaccurate (Art. 16, GDPR);
  3.  You can ask us to stop using all or some of your data, or ask us to limit the use of it (Art. 18, GDPR);
  4. You can ask us for a copy of your personal data and can ask for a copy of personal data you provided in machine readable form (Art. 15, GDPR).

Residents in the Designated Countries and other regions may have additional rights under their laws.[7]

4.3 Account Closure

We keep some of your data even after you close your account.

If you choose to close your PBV Monitor account, your personal data will generally stop being visible to others on our Services within 24 hours.

We generally delete closed account information within 30 days from the account closure.

There are some important exceptions. We retain your personal data even after your account is closed if:

  • reasonably necessary to comply with our legal obligations (including law enforcement requests);
  • meet regulatory requirements;
  • resolve disputes;
  • maintain security;
  • prevent fraud and abuse;
  • enforce our User Agreement;
  • fulfill your request to “unsubscribe” from further messages from us.

Information you have shared with others (e.g., through DMs or updates) will remain visible after you close your account or delete the information from your own profile or mailbox, and we do not control data that other Members have copied out of our Services.

We will retain de-personalized information after your account has been closed. Also, please do bear in mind that all the public information related to you will not be considered as “personal” and thus might be retained even after your account is eliminated and not visible anymore to the other Members.

5. Other important informations

5.1. Security

We monitor for and try to prevent security breaches. Please use the security features available through our Services.

We implement security safeguards designed to protect your data by regularly monitoring our systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks. However, we cannot warrant the security of any information that you send us. There is no guarantee that data may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards, and we cannot be held responsible for unauthorised or unintended access that is beyond our control.

5.2. Cross-Border Data Transfers

We store and use your data outside your country.

We process data both inside and outside of Italy and the EU and rely on legally provided mechanisms to lawfully transfer data across borders.[8]

Countries where we process data may have laws which are different from, and potentially not as protective as, the laws of your own country.

5.3 Lawful Bases for Processing

We have lawful bases to collect, use and share data about you. You have choices about our use of your data.

At any time, you can withdraw consent you have provided by going to settings.

We will only collect and process personal data about you where we have lawful bases – which means that you gave us your consent, that the processing is necessary to perform a contract with you (e.g., to deliver the PBV Monitor Services you have requested) and for “legitimate interests”.

You have the right to withdraw or decline your consent at any time and as well as the right to object when we rely on legitimate interests.

If you have any questions about the lawful bases upon which we collect and use your personal data, please contact our Data Protection Officer here. 

5.4. Direct Marketing and Do Not Track Signals

We currently do not share personal data with third parties for their direct marketing purposes without your permission.

5.5. Contact Information

You can contact us or use other options to resolve any complaints.

If you have questions or complaints regarding this Policy, please first contact PBV Monitor online. You can also reach us by e-mail. If contacting us does not resolve your complaint, you can contact our Data Protection Officer [SC17] .

Contact:

CEO
Ambrogio Visconti – ambrogio.visconti@pbvmonitor.com

Contrada Salvini, 5
Cocquio Trevisago (Varese)
Italy

+39 0332 700 542


1 Your profile is fully visible to anyone who joined our Platform but you can control what appears on your profile, notifications to your network, and your profile privacy preferences under the Profile Privacy section in the Settings & Privacy page.
There are some exceptions:
– Your contact and personal information, provided by you in the Contact Section, is available only to your 1st-degree connections or members with whom you connected or shared messages.

Unless you make your connections only visible to you, your 1st-degree connections and the members with common connections will be able to see who you are connected with. 
PBV Monitor does not require for you to include any sensitive data (e.g., race, ethnicity, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, membership of a trade union, physical or mental health, sexual life or criminal record) in your profile. However, if you choose to post any such data to your profile, understand that it is visible to others as noted above.
When any member of the Network searches by your first or last name, they can see your full profile – unless you have blocked them.

2 Message Content Automation:
PBV Monitor uses automated systems to recognize patterns on our messaging platform. These patterns help us make your professional communications more efficient and informed.
For example, our software does the following:

  • Looks for specific strings of characters that indicate an emoji to render it as an image.
  • Looks for text that indicates a web link to provide a preview of the linked page.
  • When you start typing a name in the addressee field, it attempts to anticipate who the recipient may be and provides auto-complete options.
  • Looks for mentions of member or company names to add links to their profiles and PBV Monitor Profiles, respectively.
  • Checks links shared in messages for malicious sites and looks for blacklisted keywords to detect spam.
  • Scans the text of messages to infer potentially relevant responses (smart replies).
  • Scans attachments for viruses or other harmful code.
  • Looks for certain characters (e.g. question mark at the end of a message) and context-specific keywords to propose relevant responses (smart replies).
  • Looks for mentions of weekdays or dates to see if our software can help you set up a meeting.

Although recognizing text patterns in a message is often done at a very basic level (e.g. recognizing a string of characters that make an emoji), our systems sometimes use machine learning to develop and provide more complex functionality. This means that our analytical models and algorithms are improved over time based on members’ usage. For instance, whether and how members use smart replies, or our messaging assistant helps refine the replies or other assistance and when they are presented. The refinement of our spam detection models is another example of machine learning based on user feedback.

With respect to the messaging assistant and similar bots, you have the choice to opt-in or not by adding, mentioning, or responding to such bots in a conversation.

3 Communications between PBV Monitor members
Invitations can be sent to anyone you have an email address, the PBV Monitor account information. Once the invitation has been accepted, you can directly message through our Service. Direct Messages are private messages allowing you to directly contact a PBV Monitor user, while protecting the recipient’s privacy. Messages can be sent to your 1st-degree connections from the PBV Monitor messaging page, your Contacts page, or their profile page.

4 How can you manage your PBV Monitor advertising preferences?

Manage your settings: from your PBV Monitor ADS Settings, you can manage your preferences and control data collected about you

Please bear in mind that none of these tools opts you out from seeing advertising. Even though PBV Monitor does not share your personal data (other than hashed or device identifiers, to the extent they are personal data in some countries) with any advertiser without your permission:When you view and interact with an ad, the advertiser or ad-serving company can infer that you belong to the segment of our Services members based in a specific area, working in the legal job sector because they were targeting that kind of audience

If you interact by clicking an ad, the ad poster will know you visited the page

Advertising partners can associate personal data collected by the advertiser directly from you with cookies and similar technologies. In such instances, we seek to contractually require such advertisers to obtain your explicit opt-in consent before doing so.