Privacy notice

MET Alumni Club
Version: 3.0
Date: 05.02.2024

MET Alumni Club is an exclusive community designed to connect and engage with the people who worked for MET Group in the past or served as a Board of Directors’ member. The MET Alumni Club consists of among others, the MET Alumni Club online platform and online and offline events. In this privacy notice, we would like to provide you with details and information on how your personal data will be handled during and in connection with your MET Alumni Club membership. Under ‘MET’ we generally mean MET Holding AG, as your primary data controller in relation to the MET Alumni Club, however, in certain situations this may mean another MET entity as well, as MET group companies act as joint data controllers for the MET Alumni Club (see details below).

During the data processing, we fully comply with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council as well as the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection, furthermore, we also strive to comply with local laws in other third countries outside the EEA. These rules require us to provide data subjects with adequate information about the processing of their personal data.

What data we collect and for what purposes?

In general, the purpose of data processing is the operation of the MET Alumni Club, connection between members as well as members and MET in accordance with the Terms of Use, communication, content sharing, event organisation, technical issues relating to the use of the online application. It is important to note that if individual members collect and process data differently from the Terms of Use, this is not MET's responsibility. The processing of data by any other entity (outside the MET group of companies) is considered as separate data processing, and MET is not responsible for such data processing. You should therefore be careful when sharing your data during your membership at the MET Alumni Club

Before registration: If you have agreed to this when you left MET, we will continue to process your private email address after the termination of your employment or other legal relationship with MET for the purpose of contacting you to invite you to join the MET Alumni Club. We will not contact you or use your e-mail address for any other purpose. If you would like us to delete your email address, please let us know and we will delete it. If you join the MET Alumni Club, the legal basis for processing your email address will no longer be your consent, but the performance of your contract with MET as described in this policy. We may also contact you through your public LinkedIn or Facebook profile for the purpose of inviting you to join to the MET Alumni Club.

Registration: when you register, you provide your name, phone number, email address and the name of the MET company you used to work for. We need these details to identify you and to check that you have actually worked for a MET company. We need your e-mail data to be able to communicate with you and to set up your MET Alumni Club account.

You can fill in a free field during registration to provide any information you think may be useful for your MET Alumni Club membership. This could be your current employer, position, experience, etc or you can even provide a CV. Please only provide information that is relevant to the MET Alumni Club membership in the context of the MET Alumni Club objectives.

MET may ask you additional questions or check your publicly available business profile to verify that you are not subject to any disqualifying conditions under the Terms of Use (e.g. your current activities do not jeopardize the legitimate economic interests of MET, you do not qualify as a politically exposed person, you are not in litigation with MET or its entities, etc). We may also verify the termination of your employment with the relevant MET entity (e.g. whether your employment was terminated during a probationary period or for reasons unrelated to your conduct) by requesting information from your former MET employer. If you sign up with your LinkedIn profile, we will receive public data from your LinkedIn profile and process it for the purpose of assessing your membership. All of the above information will be used to assess and decide on your membership.

Record of membership: once your membership is approved, we will of course keep a record of your membership. For this purpose, we process your name, contact details, former MET employer and current employment data.

Profile: you will have a profile on the MET Alumni Club online platform including your basic data provided for the purpose of the membership. You can provide here data in relation to your professional career such as certificates, professional qualifications, references etc. You can set a photo to your profile. You can access and modify or amend the data in your profile. You can set which data will be disclosed to other members.

Customary data in relation to online membership activity: during your membership, we process customary data related to your membership activity. For example, you may share content on the online application, in which case the personal data in the content and your profile will be shared with other members.

In case you give your specific consent, we may publish your story, including your photo, also on external sites that are publicly available, such as on the MET Alumni Club platform, MET Group webpage, MET Group LinkedIn page, MET Group Facebook page and on MyMet (MET intranet). We will ask for your specific consent, typically in a separate email, just to make sure you will be aware of the publishing of your story and photo not only within MET Alumni Club members but on external platforms, too. The purpose of sharing a story on external platforms is boosting the MET Alumni Club number of registrations and to reach as many former employees as possible for this purpose. In case of external platforms, the data will be available also for other third-party recipients who visit or follow the webpages or read the articles on these platforms.

We may also select your story to share with MET Alumni Club members and current employees of MET group too, by way of sending newsletters from the highlights of the MET Alumni Club news, including the stories shared by MET Alumni Club members.

You can also comment on different content or place a ‘like’ for certain contents, express interest regarding jobs, offers, trainings, offline events etc.

We also process your requests for contacts and connections, memberships in groups, notifications, communication with staff members etc.

MET Alumni Directory: in the MET Alumni Directory, your name, contact details and current position will be processed and published among the MET Alumni Club members in order to enable members to easily contact each other, as this is one of the main objectives of the MET Alumni Club. MET Alumni Directory is only accessible for MET Alumni Club members. If you do not wish to be listed in the MET Alumni Directory, please let us know by sending an email to alumni@met.com.

Data related to moderation, content review: MET has the right, but not the obligation, to moderate, modify or remove content shared on the MET Alumni Club platform, or to request the member to modify or remove content. In this context, we will process the member's name, contact details and the content shared by the member.

Access to and use of MET Alumni Club platform (also for system administrators): We also process your access data related to your account on the MET Alumni Club platform for providing access to the platform and information security purposes. (In the context of a software application for administrative and testers: name, e-mail address, phone number, assigned authorization, username, password. Other general use data: log-in data, IP address, retrieval of certain contents/pages such as articles, documents, events etc.) We also use your location data (on a country level) to personalize content language on the MET Alumni platform (both on our website and our mobile application). This, however, only means an automatic language selection adjusted to your country (which you can change manually). No ads and other personalized contents will be shown on our website and mobile application.

Cookies, and identifiers on our website and MET Alumni Club application: when you use the MET Alumni Club platform, i.e. the online application of the MET Alumni Club, we also perform certain technical processing to provide the service (cookies and identifiers that are essential for the use of the service), and we may also place cookies and identifiers for the purpose of statistical or analytical purposes and to provide personalized advertising, subject to your consent. This includes cookies and identifiers from third parties.

Our mobile application can be downloaded from Google Play Store or Appstore. There are a few additional technical processing activities which we pursue in order to ensure safe and smooth operation of our MET Alumni Club mobile application both on Android and on iOS-based tools. For instance, we measure product interaction (taps, clicks, video views, article views, data that shows activity in the app) for analytic purposes, to evaluate user behaviour in connection with existing app features and to amend existing or to develop new features accordingly.

The app sends push notifications to those who have agreed to receive such notifications from the app. Notifications can be related to comments, mentions, chat notifications and similar events. You can give or withdraw your consent in the device settings. We use Google's Firebase app tool to send the push notifications to our users’ devices. The data we collect includes your device ID and your unique user ID, which allows Google Firebase to identify whether you have consented to receive notifications.

We inform you about the data processing in relation to cookies on our website separately: MET Group Alumni Club.

Both our website and our mobile application use Google Analytics. The cookies used by Google Analytics allow the analysis of the use of the website. We will use these data to understand how our visitors use our website and thus we may improve our website’s features and functionality. More information about the Google Analytics can be found here.

To provide website visitors the ability to prevent their data from being used by Google Analytics, Google has developed the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on for web-sites using the supported version of Google Analytics JavaScript (analytics.js, gtag.js). If you want to opt-out, download and install the add-on for your web browser. The Google Analytics opt-out add-on is designed to be compatible with Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Microsoft Edge. In order to function, the opt-out add-on must be able to load and execute properly on your browser. Learn more about the opt-out and how to properly install the browser add-on here.

In general, you may enable or block the use of cookies by changing the setting of the In-ternet browser. For more information, see the User's Guide for the browser or visit www.aboutcookies.org for information on how to change the Internet browser settings.

Keeping contact, communication: during your membership, we may use your email and phone contact details to keep in touch with you, to ask for your specific consent in certain cases as indicated in this notice, to contact you with news, opportunities, future or past events related to the MET Alumni Club, and consider business opportunities or tailor listed job offers that may be suitable for you. We can contact you to share relevant content on the MET Alumni Club platform and send you newsletters. We can also contact you for technical details on organising offline events.

Offline events: we process your data that are necessary to organise offline events. This can vary depending on the nature of the event. In any case, we will process your registration and participation data. The information on who participates in an offline event may be public to other members. If we offer catering at the event, we may manage your food preferences if you indicate this data to us, including any potential food intolerance which you may share with us based on your explicit consent to process your potential food intolerance as a personal data related to your medical condition. If we organise the travel, we may also process travel-related data (e.g. data needed to book a flight or train ticket). If it is a longer event, we may also process data relating to accommodation reservations, this includes any data that you are required to provide when checking in to accommodation according to the location, e.g. ID card number, birth date etc. If an event is not available to all members, we may also process data on selection criteria. We may share news on our offline events on the MET Alumni Club platform and/or on external platforms which may also contain personal data about you. Sharing news which contain personal data of you in external platforms (i.e. that is available also for non-members) will require your specific consent which we will typically ask in email. For sharing photos or videos of offline events, please refer to the point below.

Photos and videos: we may take photos and videos during an offline event, subject to the relevant information provided and agreed in the Terms of Use. Generally, if you are displayed in a crowd, as one of many people, with a non-unique display, then we will not ask your specific consent to take and use such photo or video. If we want to show you separately in a photo or in a video with a unique appearance, we may use this photo internally within the MET Alumni Club, displayed only for the members, also without your specific consent, as such use (providing information to members) is consistent with the purpose of the MET Alumni Club. However, if we want to use such unique photo or video in any external channels (e.g. website, Facebook page, LinkedIn page, YouTube, MyMet etc., online and print media) and disclose it in public, then we will ask for your specific prior consent to use the given photo or video, typically in an email. The purposes of taking and using photos and videos are information, marketing, company and employer branding, recruitment, encouraging others to join to the MET Alumni Club, and other lawful purposes related to the MET Alumni Club. In any case, if you do not wish to be captured during an offline event, please notify us by email in advance (alumni@met.com). The individual photo selected by the member may also be included in the content sharing when sharing a story on internal (i.e. MET Alumni Club platform) and external platforms (e.g. website, Facebook page, LinkedIn page, YouTube, MyMet etc.). Sharing photos or videos indicating you with a unique appearance on external platform will only occur in case you provided a specific consent to such sharing of your personal data.

Terms of Use compliance, infringement of law: if a member breaches the Terms of Use or commits any other violation, we may require the member to comply with the Terms of Use or the law and remedy the breach, or (either instead of or afterwards) exclude the member from membership. To this end, we will process the member's name, contact details and information relating to the member's breach.

Termination of membership and list of excluded members: if you cease to be a member for any reason, we will keep a record of this so that we have information about your previous membership (e.g. whether you have been excluded and why) in case of any subsequent membership applications. The list also includes data on individuals who have applied to join the MET Alumni Club but for some reason their application has been rejected.

From what source do we get the information?

The data is primarily collected from you, as the data is generally provided by you when you apply for joining the MET Alumni Club, set your profile or share content.

As described above, we can obtain information from your former MET employer about the position you held and whether there are any disqualifying conditions (e.g. if your employment was terminated during a probationary period or in connection with misconduct).

If you sign up with your LinkedIn profile, we will receive public data from your LinkedIn profile.

Who are the data subjects?

The persons concerned with our data processing are the MET Alumni Club applicants and the members whose applications have been approved. Former members who have for some reason ceased to be members are also considered as data subjects.

Furthermore, our system administrators are also considered as data subjects in relation to the MET Alumni Club platform.

What is the legal basis of our data processing?

We process your personal data on different legal bases.

Typically, the legal basis for data processing is the performance of the contract between MET and you, which is based on your approval of the Terms of Use, e.g. for the following processing activities: membership registration, data received from your former MET employer, processing your name, name of former MET and current employer, contact details, data shared in the MET Alumni Directory, publishing any content or story from you within the MET Alumni Club, data in connection with organizing offline events, MET Alumni Club platform access and use data, use of photos and videos taken of you as part of a crowd (not with a unique appearance); use and sharing of any story from you, photograph and videos of you solely with the membership as it relates to the purposes of the MET Alumni Club; moderation, modification, removal of content; compliance notices, etc.

The legal basis may include our (or any MET entity’s or business partner’s) legitimate interest, which is to avoid jeopardising or harming MET's or a MET entity’s legitimate economic interests. Such legal basis includes the assessment of membership requirements, processing of data relating to exclusion circumstances, assessment of membership, keeping log files of consent forms and other activity on the MET Alumni Club platform. Legitimate interest is also the legal basis for keeping records of membership terminations and exclusions.

We also use consent as a legal basis. For example, where we want to use a photograph for external platforms (i.e. not just for the MET Alumni Club membership but e.g. on Facebook, LinkedIn, MET’s webpage or intranet) in which you appear in a unique way, not just as part of the crowd, we will ask for your individual consent to use such images. You also give your consent to the processing of your e-mail address after you leave MET for the purpose of inviting you to join to the MET Alumni Club.

We relay on your explicit consent in relation to your personal health data, such as information on your food intolerance (to manage catering in an offline event). You may give your explicit consent for processing this data during the whole membership period, so that we will not have to ask you before each event, or you can choose to give your explicit consent in relation to only one event.

Who has access to and to whom can we transfer personal data?

Internal recipients (recipients within MET’s organisation) include in particular: Management, Marketing and Communications, HR, Security, IT, Legal & Compliance, Management and HR or former MET employer (for checking eligibility criteria).

External recipients (outside MET’s organisation) include in particular:

In connection with the organisation of an offline event, we may transfer data to the external company that organises the event and with whom we have a valid contract, until the event and settlement are completed. Event organizers will generally act as data processors.

In case we engage an external photo and video contractor to make photos and videos at an offline event, these contractors will generally act as data processors.

If we do media coverage, we may transfer certain data about an event to online and print media (e.g. photos, event summary), who act as independent data controllers.

The company that provides the MET Alumni Club platform available to us in the form of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and therefore host the application is PeoplePath GmbH (address: Friedenheimer Brücke 20, 80639 Munich, Germany) which company qualifies as a data processor. This company uses AWS (Amazon Web Services) as its cloud platform and has a contractual obligation to use AWS servers within Europe, so for this reason personal data will not be transferred to third countries. Approved sub data processors may also provide services in connection with the MET Alumni Club platform, such as Google, Inc. (providing unique identifier used to track user activities on alumni website), One Trust, LLC (providing unique identifier used to track user preferences) and HubSpot Ltd (providing ticketing system for customer support requests). These sub data processors have contractual obligations with our data processor to store data exclusively in Europe.

If stories, photos or videos will be published on LinkedIn, the operator of the LinkedIn website, LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company (Wilton Place, Dublin 2, Ireland) may have access to the photos and videos. For the data processing of LinkedIn Ireland their own privacy policy applies which is available via the following link: https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy.

If stories, photos or videos will be published on Facebook, the photos and videos may be accessed by the operator of the Facebook page, Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd., 4 Grand Canal Square, Grand Canal Harbour, Dublin 2. Meta Platforms Ireland is governed by its own privacy policy, which can be found at https://hu-hu.facebook.com/privacy/explanation.

If stories, photos or videos will be published on YouTube, the photos and videos may be accessed by Google Ireland Limited, the operator of the YouTube site (Gordon House, Barrow Street Dublin 4, Ireland). Google is governed by its own privacy policy, which can be found at https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801895?hl=hu.

As mentioned above, our website uses Google Analytics, thus Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street Dublin 4, Ireland) is considered as a data processor also for this reason. You can find detailed information about the geographical location of Google's data servers at this link and detailed information about Google's data processing operations at this link.

In case we share stories, photos or videos on MET group webpage, we will also use the following company as data processor:

ALLWIN Informatikai Kft. (Hungary, 1111 Budapest, Zenta utca 1. I/1., contact: contact@allwin.hu), operator of the MET group website (https://group.met.com)

In case we share stories, photos or videos on MyMet (MET intranet which is available for current MET employees), we will also use the following company as data processor:

MelorIT Számítástechnikai és Szolgáltató Kft. (Hungary, 1011 Budapest, Corvin tér 10., contact: info@melorit.hu), operator of the MyMET (MET intranet) platform (https://metenergy.sharepoint.com/sites/MyMET/)

Details of data transfers to third countries outside the EU

The primary data processor MET Holding AG is located in Switzerland. As the data subjects provide their data directly to this company, there is no formal transfer of data from the EU to a third country. However, we inform our members residing in the EU that there is an adequacy decision of the European Commission 2000/518/EC in place in relation to data transfers from the EU to Switzerland. The adequacy decision is available under the following link: https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/ee76f93d-4545-4878-87cb-7750d7f59987/language-en. Please also note that Swiss data protection law is fully compliant with EU data protection law.

When transferring data to another MET company that is not established in an EU Member State, the transfer will be governed by the Standard Contractual Clauses according to the COMMISSION IMPLEMENTING DECISION on standard contractual clauses for the transfer of personal data to third countries pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/679, included in the contract applicable to intra-group transfers between the MET group entities.

Transfers to a recipient in a third country, i.e. outside the EU and the EEA, other than set out herein, is not planned to take place.

How long do we keep your personal data?

Data will generally be retained for the duration of your membership, except for the fact of your membership and the fact of its termination and the reason for its termination, which will be retained for the general 5-year limitation period. The fact of rejection of applications and the reasons for rejection will also be kept for 5 years.

The content you have shared on the MET Alumni Club platform will remain visible after your membership ends, unless you have deleted it. You can delete content you have shared, if it is a post or comment. Photos and videos will be retained and may be used even after your membership, but we will delete photos and videos of you that have been taken and not used if you so request personally or by e-mail. If these have already been shared, we can only delete photos and videos from the pages we manage. You may withdraw your consent to use a photo or video taken of you individually any time, but this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing that took place before you withdrew your consent.

Administrative data related to the organisation of events (not including the participation itself) will only be processed until the end of the event. Health data related to food intolerance will be processed in line with your explicit consent, which means that by principle you only give your consent to one event, in which case your data will be deleted after the event, but you can also choose to provide your explicit consent for your entire membership period so that this information will be recorded together with your other data so that we will not have to ask again.

Consequences of not providing your personal data and other details

Providing the personal information required for membership is a prerequisite of the contract between us, so we cannot admit you to the MET Alumni Club if you do not provide the information required for the application (name, contact details, previous MET employer) or you do not answer to our potential additional questions (to assess the membership conditions).

Providing consent (e.g. in relation to the use of unique photos from you) is not a condition of any contract. If you do not give your consent, the consequence may be that we will not be able to share and use the image, but there will be no negative consequences for you.

We further inform you that no decision-making based solely on automated processing takes place and no profiling is carried out by MET. The photos and videos to be taken are not suitable for biometrical identification.

Data controller and contact details of our Data Protection Officer

MET group companies act as joint data controllers for the MET Alumni Club, as it is in the interest of all MET companies to build an alumni community and they specify the purposes and means of data processing jointly. However, personal data will be collected and processed by MET Holding AG and will be primarily accessed by its Management, Marketing and Communications, HR, Security, IT, Legal & Compliance department. MET Services Kft takes a decisive role in specifying the means of data processing, too, as MET Services Kft is the operator of the MET Alumni Club platform, MET group website and MyMet (these latter platforms are relevant in case of external content sharing).

An agreement on joint controllership exists between the members of the MET group. MET Holding AG is designated as the primary controller in relation to the processing of your personal data and as the controller responsible for the lawfulness and security of the processing. Therefore, MET Holding AG is the primary contact point for you to enforce your rights.

Members of the MET group are listed on the following link: https://group.met.com/en/about-us/met-group-facts (‘Joint Controllers’).

This notice applies to all companies in the MET group, therefore you will not receive separate privacy notices from each of the controllers.

Contact details of MET Holding AG, as primary data controller:

Address: Neuhofstrasse 24, 6340 Baar, Switzerland

E-mail: alumni@met.com

Contact details of MET Services Kft, as primary data controller in relation to the used platforms:

Address: Budapest, Dombóvári út 26, 1117, Hungary

E-mail: alumni@met.com

You can contact our Data Protection Officer using the following e-mail address:

E-mail address: MET-DPO@simonlegal.hu

The DPO is registered in relation to specific Hungarian MET entities. For other companies, the DPO acts as a common point of contact for enquiries about data protection issues.

What rights do you have in relation to data processing?

You may request MET to do the following actions:

a)    provide detailed information on the processing of your personal data.

b)    provide access to personal data. In this context, you have the right to be informed whether personal data are being processed, to obtain access to and a copy of the personal data processed and to obtain information relevant for data protection purposes (e.g. categories of recipients, storage period).

c)    rectification of personal data. In this context, you may request the correction of incorrect data or the completion of incomplete data.

d)    erasure of personal data.

e)    restriction of data processing, if, (i) the accuracy of the personal data is contested by the data subject, for a period enabling MET to verify the accuracy of the personal data; (ii) the processing is unlawful and the data subject opposes the erasure of the personal data and requests the restriction of their use instead; (iii) MET no longer needs the personal data for the purposes of the processing, but they are required by the data subject for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims; (iv) the data subject has objected to processing pending the verification whether the legitimate grounds of MET override those of the data subject.

f)    object to the data processing, on grounds relating to your particular situation, at any time, to the processing of personal data concerning you which is based on legitimate interest. In such a case, MET shall no longer process the personal data unless MET demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override the interests, rights and freedoms of the data subject or if data processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.

Consent may be withdrawn at any time: if the legal basis for the processing of data is your consent, you may withdraw your consent at any time, without prejudice to the lawfulness of the processing before the withdrawal.

Requests to exercise the above rights may be sent to MET or any MET group entity using the contact details set out herein, in form of a written request (via e-mail) in which we can identify you. We will comply with the request as soon as possible, but within a maximum of one month, and will inform you of the action taken and, in case your request is refused, the reasons for refusing the request. You may exercise your rights under the GDPR in relation to and against each controller (either MET Holding AG or a specific MET entity).

Right to lodge a complaint: If you consider that the processing of your personal data by MET or any of the MET entities infringes the provisions of the data protection legal regulations, especially the General Data Protection Regulation, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the competent data protection supervisory Authority in the State of your habitual residence, place of work or the place of the alleged infringement. You can find a list of the national data protection authorities in the EU here.

Before submitting a complaint to the authority, we recommend that you first send your request to MET or any of the MET group entities so that the request can be examined by MET group in the first instance and that we can resolve the problem quickly.

Judicial remedy: you can also turn to the relevant court if your rights are infringed.