Privacy

Overview of our Privacy Practices

1. Information we collect about you

“Personal Information” means any information about an identifiable individual or any information that may reasonably be linked to an individual.

The types of information that we collect about you depends on your use of our products and services and how you interact with us.

Job Applicants. If you apply to a job or submit your resume through our website, we will collect: 

• Contact and Other Personal Information, such as your age, gender, marital status, mailing address, telephone number and email address;
• Education and Professional Experience Information, such as educational information, areas of interest, specialized knowledge, work history and any information on your resume.
• Information about Diversity and Equity, with your prior express consent, such as information on your gender, disability and ethnicity/ race, as part of our diversity and equity efforts.
  
• Third Party Information, if you choose to import data from your social networking sites, such as LinkedIn, or if you provide us with a link to your profile page, such as information from your publicly available social media profile (e.g. LinkedIn profile and/or your personal website).
• Background and Security Check Information which we may request that you provide to us only if reasonably necessary, (which may include fingerprints, your photo, and details of your criminal record (if any).
  

If you submit a formal application for a position, you will be presented with a separate privacy statement. To the extent that you use any third party platform to apply for a position, this third party platform may have their own privacy policies and we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies.

Clients. In order to provide our services, we may collect some personal information from clients:

• Contact Information, such as name or name of client representatives (if applicable), email address, and phone number; and
• Financial information, such as your credit card information, financial data, and payment information required to provide you with the agreed to services. 

The terms of the professional services engagement, including information regarding our privacy practices, are included in the engagement letter.

Information collected through the Website and Web Forms. PwC may collect Personal Information through web forms (e.g. by providing information through the PwC website). When providing this information, please do not provide any sensitive information. Under Canadian data privacy laws, and for the purposes of this Policy, information that will generally be considered sensitive includes health and financial data, ethnic and racial origins, political opinions, genetic and biometric data, an individual’s sex life or sexual orientation, religious or philosophical beliefs, and information about a minor, although any information may be sensitive depending on the context. To the extent that the EU General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) governs the collection and processing of personal information under this Policy, sensitive information consists of  genetic, biometric and health data, as well as personal data revealing racial and ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or ideological convictions or trade union membership.  

If using an account to access parts of the PwC website, we may also collect registration information and credentials such as your usernames, passwords, password hints, and similar security information used for authentication.

We may also collect cookie and tracking information such as Internet Protocol (IP) address, device identifier, location data, browser type and language, access times, the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), other unique identifiers, and other technical data that may uniquely identify your device, system or browser

In order to offer you a more consistent and personalized experience in your interactions with PwC, information collected through one source may be combined with information PwC obtains through other sources.

We may also collect information via video surveillance, when you attend a PwC location.

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2. How we use your Personal Information

Job Applicants. If you apply to a job with PwC, we or our third party service providers will use your Personal Information in relation to your application for employment, such as evaluating your job application and suitability for employment with PwC.

Clients and Website Users. We provide a range of professional services, some of which require us to process your Personal Information. We may use your Personal Information to: 

• provide you with professional assurance, tax or advisory services;
• invoice and collect payment for professional services and products provided by us to you;
• develop and maintain our relationship with you and communicate with you;
• register you for events and conferences;
• register you for, and facilitate your participation in, certain areas of the PwC website, including our online bulletin boards, discussion or message forums;
• research, develop, manage, protect and improve our professional assurance, tax or advisory services;
• assist PwC with improving its operational efficiency, marketing campaigns and customer service efforts through the use of data analytics;
• customize, analyze and improve our products, services (including the content and advertisements on the PwC website), technologies, communications and relationship with you;
• generate insights about our business, by de-identifying it or anonymizing it and combining with other information in aggregate;
• process and deliver products that you have ordered from us;
• gather your opinion and feedback through surveys;
• enroll you in our contests or promotional programs;
• enforce our conditions of sale, website terms and other agreements (if applicable) with you;
• identify patterns of behaviour to offer relevant suggestions to users. For example, based on data collected through cookies on the PwC website, we may be able to determine that users who viewed certain products may also like other specific products;
• meet our legal and regulatory requirements;
• detect, prevent or suppress fraud or other prohibited or illegal activities;
• with your consent, send you promotional communications about new products and services that may be of interest to you;
• otherwise as disclosed to you at the point of collection; and
• such other uses as may be permitted or required by applicable law. 

With respect to video surveillance on our premises, we use images and footage collected to ensure the safety of our employees, customers, and visitors, monitor and manage the use of our parking lots/other facilities, prevent and detect crimes and investigate accidents, incidents, and claims, investigate potential breaches of PwC policies, and to understand operational efficiencies and challenges.

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3. How we transfer or disclose your Personal Information

We may transfer or disclose the personal information we collect to third party contractors, subcontractors, and/or their subsidiaries and affiliates (collectively, “Third Parties”). Examples of Third Parties we use include providers of identity management, website hosting and management, data analysis, data backup, security and cloud storage services. The servers powering and facilitating our IT infrastructure are located in secure data centers around the world, and personal information may be stored in any one of them. These other jurisdictions may include the United States, India, United Kingdom, Mauritius, Uruguay or the jurisdiction of any other PwC network firm, which latter jurisdiction(s) may be identified upon request. 

The third party service providers may use their own third party subcontractors that have access to personal information (sub-processors). It is our policy to use only third party service providers that are bound to maintain appropriate levels of security and confidentiality, to process personal information only as instructed by PwC, and to flow those same obligations down to their sub-processors.

Please be advised that we, as well as some of the recipients of your personal information referenced in this privacy statement, may process your personal information in any province within Canada or in countries outside of Canada altogether. In some cases, data processing activities may take place where local laws may not provide the same level of data protection that exist in your local jurisdiction. In the event that such transfer occurs, we will ensure that there are adequate safeguards in place to protect your personal information that comply with our legal obligations. 

When transferring your personal data, to our agents, service providers, or controllers (such as our customers) in other countries, we ensure that these recipients commit to upholding the principles of the Canadian privacy law requirements. We may also rely on appropriate standard contractual clauses with such recipients to ensure adequate protection for your personal data.

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4. How we use cookies and other technologies 

We may collect information about your visits to the PwC website, including the pages you view, the links and advertisements you click, search terms you enter, and other actions you take in connection with PwC website and services. We may use cookies, log files and web beacons to collect information regarding the use of the PwC website. 

Cookies: Cookies are text files placed on your device or computer that assist us in providing a more customized website experience. For example, a cookie can be used to store registration information in an area of the site so that a user does not need to re-enter it on subsequent visits to that area. It is PwC’s policy to use cookies to make navigation of our websites easier for visitors and to facilitate efficient registration procedures. If you are concerned about cookies, most browsers permit individuals to decline cookies. Many browsers are set to accept cookies by default. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies as you prefer. The “help” portion of your web browser, most likely found on the toolbar, typically tells you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. In most cases, a visitor may refuse a cookie and still fully navigate the PwC website; however, if you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to sign in or use other interactive features that depend on cookies. 

Log files: In order to properly manage our website, we may anonymously log information on our operational systems, and identify categories of visitors by items such as domains and browser types. These statistics are reported in the aggregate to our webmasters and are generally non-identifiable.

Web beacons: To gather visitor statistics and manage cookies, we use electronic images called a “single-pixel GIF” or “web beacon.” Web beacons allow our third-party tracking tools, Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics and Oracle Marketing Cloud to gather information such as the IP address of your computer, the time the material was viewed and the type of Internet browser used to access the page. This information is tracked on the third party tracking tools’ servers and reported in aggregate to our webmasters. If you are concerned about the use of Web beacons you can turn off your browsers’ cookies. This action will prevent Web beacons from tracking your specific activity; however, the Web beacon may still record a visit from your IP address.

Social Media Features. The PwC website includes social media features, including the ability “follow” us on various social media platforms. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our site, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our website. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.

Targeted Advertising and Marketing Automation: In order to provide you with the most personalized experience and give you access to products and services that are most relevant to you, PwC works with advertising and personalization third parties that use cookies or marketing automation tools, such as Adobe Target, DemandBase and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, to deliver targeted marketing campaigns across multiple PwC platforms (e.g. via web, email, mobile, etc.) and create customer profiles by tracking your behavior and preferences while using PwC platforms. Cookies also assist us with measuring the performance of our advertising campaign and with identifying the pages you view, the links and ads you click on and the site from which you came before arriving at a webpage. Information gathered may be used to personalize and customize future email marketing messages you receive. You may opt out of marketing emails by clicking on the unsubscribe link provided in each email marketing message you receive.

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5. Location and retention of your Personal Information. 

Some of our third party service providers or PwC facilities are located in jurisdictions outside Canada, which means that there is a possibility that Personal Information will be transferred outside of your jurisdiction. These other jurisdictions may include the United States, India, United Kingdom, Netherlands,  Mauritius, Uruguay or the jurisdiction of any other PwC network firm. When your Personal Information is collected, used or processed in another country, it is subject to the laws of that country and may be accessible to the governments, national security, courts or law enforcement or regulatory agencies in that jurisdiction.

The time periods for which we retain your personal information depend on the purposes for which we collected it or as permitted or required by law. We have retention policies in place that govern the destruction of Personal Information. 

Personal Information submitted in support of an application for employment becomes part of your personnel file if you are hired. Otherwise, it is retained for a limited period of time after the end of the recruitment process and then destroyed. If we think your application information could be relevant to a future recruitment process, we will ask your permission to retain your Personal Information on file.

With respect to video surveillance on our premises, CCTV footage is held on our systems for up to ninety (90) days and then overwritten.

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6. Consumer Rights

Depending on where you reside, you may have one or more of the following rights relating to your Personal Information. Some of these rights will be subject to specific requirements or limitations under applicable law. Available rights may include:

• Right to opt-out: You may “opt-out” or withdraw your consent at any time to the collection, use, disclosure or any other form of processing of your Personal Information. Consent may be withdrawn at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice. Depending on the circumstances, however, any withdrawal or amendment to your consent may prevent us from providing you, or continuing to provide you, with our products and services or information that may be of value to you.
• Rights of access, correction and deletion:  You may request access to and obtain a copy of any of your personal information that we hold, to request the correction of any inaccurate, outdated or incomplete information related to you or to request the deletion of your Personal Information under certain circumstances. You also have the right to know the types of Personal Information being collected, the sources of the Personal Information, the categories of individuals who have access to the information within PwC, the retention period for the information, whether your personal information is being sold or shared, and to whom it is being sold or shared.
• Data portability: You may request to receive all Personal Information that we hold in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. You may also require that we share this information to another entity, where this is technically feasible.
• Right to objection or restriction of processing: You may object to or restrict our processing of your Personal Information under specific circumstances. Where your Personal Information is subject to restriction we will only process it with your consent or for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims. You may also have the right to opt-out of the sale of Personal Information to third-parties. In addition, you may have the right to object to processing (including profiling) where we are relying upon legitimate interests to process Personal Information.
• Right to object to direct marketing (including profiling): you may have the right to object to our use of your Personal Information (including profiling) for direct marketing purposes.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us by sending an email to the Chief Privacy Officer at: Privacy Office Inquiry Form.      

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7. How can you can access or amend your Personal Information 

We take reasonable steps to ensure that the Personal Information in our custody is accurate and up-to-date for the purposes for which the information was collected. At any time, you can challenge the accuracy or completeness of your Personal Information in our records.

If you have any questions about the type of Personal Information we hold about you or, where required by law, if you wish to request access or correction of Personal Information we hold about you, please send a written request to our Chief Privacy Officer. The contact details are at the bottom of this Privacy Statement. You must clearly indicate the information that you wish to have access to or wish to have amended.

We may ask you for information to confirm your identity before providing you with access to information or to amend information. If you successfully demonstrate that the Personal Information we have for you is inaccurate or incomplete, we will amend our records of your Personal Information as required.

We will make such Personal Information available to you in a form that is generally understandable, and will explain any abbreviations or codes. We may make commercially reasonable efforts to transmit any amended information to third parties having access to your Personal Information, where necessary in the circumstances.

Note that despite any request for a change to or removal of your Personal Information, we may need to retain certain information for recordkeeping purposes, and there may also be residual information that will remain within our databases and other records, which will not be removed or changed.

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8. How we secure and safeguard your Personal Information

We have implemented appropriate physical, organizational, contractual and technological security measures to help protect your Personal Information from loss or theft, unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification. The ways we do this include:

• Using encryption when collecting or transferring sensitive information, such as credit card details.
• Design our data security safeguards to ensure the ongoing security, integrity, availability, and resilience of processing systems and services.
• Limiting physical access to our premises.
• Limiting access to the information we collect about you.
• Ensuring that our third party service providers have appropriate technical and organizational security measures to keep your Personal Information protected.
• As required by law, destroying or de-identifying Personal Information.

Only authorized PwC personnel and the third parties described in this Privacy Statement are provided access to Personal Information and these employees and third parties have agreed to maintain the confidentiality of this information.

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9. Third Party Websites

The PwC website may include links to third-party websites, as well as content and applications hosted and served by third parties. When clicking on those links, these third-parties may collect your personal information. If you follow a link to a third-party website, we encourage you to read the third-party’s privacy statement for information on its privacy practices.

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10. Children’s Privacy

PwC understands the importance of protecting children’s privacy online. The PwC website and our services are not intentionally designed for or directed at children 13 years of age or younger. PwC does not knowingly collect or maintain information about anyone under the age of 13. If you believe we have collected information from your child in error or have questions or concerns about our practices relating to children, please notify us and we will promptly respond.

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11. Changes to our Privacy Statement

We may make changes to this Privacy Statement for various reasons, including to reflect our current use and treatment of your Personal Information, as a result of feedback from our customers, regulators, industry, or other stakeholders, due to changes in our privacy practices, products, or services or to reflect changes in applicable privacy laws.

If we make changes to this Privacy Statement or make any material changes to the way we handle your Personal Information, we will update this Privacy Statement, revise the Privacy Statement’s effective date and notify you or seek your consent as and when appropriate. We encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Statement. 

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12. Contact Us

All comments, questions, concerns or complaints regarding your Personal Information or our Privacy Statement and practices, should be forwarded to our Chief Privacy Officer using the following webform:

Privacy Office Inquiry Form

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