Privacy Policy

Effective/Last Updated: January 16, 2023

BNI® Data Protection and Privacy Policy

Who we are and how to contact us

BNI Worldwide Development Ltd, controls your personal data for and on behalf of BNI Global, LLC and BNI Canada, Inc., together with its related affiliates BNI Connect Global, LLC, BNI Enterprise Business Network (Guangzhou) Co Ltd, BNI Franchising, LLC, BNI Global Holdings LLC, BNI Holdings, LLC, BNI Hong Kong Enterprises Pvt Ltd, BNI India Enterprises Pvt Ltd, BNI Intermediate Holdings, LLC, BNI International Holdings CTB, LLC, BNI Lanka Enterprises Pvt Ltd, BNI Networking & Referral Ireland Holdings Limited, BNI Singapore Enterprises Pvt Ltd, Brec S.R.L, Business Network France, Business Networking & Referrals Limited, Chapters France, CorpConnect Enterprises India Pvt Ltd, Corporate Connections Franchising, LLC, Corporate Connections Global, LLC, Corporate Connections Worldwide Development Ltd, Netwerk Organisatie Nederland en Vlaanderen B.V, Network Organization Benelux Ltd, Networking & Business Referrals Limited, Prosperity Brands, LLC, Scion Social Holdings LLC, Scion Social Pvt Ltd, and Scion Social Pte Ltd (‘BNI’, ‘our’ or ‘we’).

This Data Protection and Privacy Policy (‘Policy’) is intended to explain to you, as a user of BNI or our services, what personal data we collect about you, how we use that data, with whom it may be shared, and your options about such uses and disclosures.

If you have any questions about this Policy or our personal data processing practices, or if you would like to request information about our disclosure of personal data to third parties for their direct marketing purposes, please contact us by email, telephone, or mail as follows:

BNI Worldwide Development Ltd
Ballinrobe Road
Castlebar
Co. Mayo
F23 FT28
IRELAND
Phone:  +353 94 902 1553

Email: [email protected]

BNI’s Data Protection Officer can be contacted at the above address or phone number, or by email at [email protected].

We encourage you to read this Policy carefully when using our Site and services or transacting business with us. Site includes bni.com, BNI’s related websites, SMS, APIs, email notifications, applications (web and/or mobile), buttons, widgets, ads, commerce services (‘Site’), and any other related services that can be accessed via our BNI Site or that link to this Policy, and any information, text, links, graphics, photos, videos, or other materials or arrangements of materials uploaded, downloaded or appearing on the Site (collectively referred to as ‘Content’).

Categories of personal data collected about you and others

1. General.  Personal data refers to any information about an identified or identifiable individual. When you engage in certain activities on our Site, such as purchasing a product, submitting content and/or posting content on any of our blogs, or sending us feedback, we may ask you to provide certain information about yourself. Examples of personal data may include your first and last name, email address, mailing address, telephone numbers, age group, gender and other identifying information. When setting up your profile on our Site, you may be asked to provide an e-mail address, phone number, and address.

We gather certain information about you based upon where you visit on our Site, and what other sites may have directed you to us. This information, which is collected in a variety of different ways, is compiled and analyzed on both a personal and an aggregated basis. This technology enables us to determine (i) your IP Address of your computer and its geographic location from installing the applications onto your computer or mobile device; (ii) your search terms or interactive behavior via BNI Site; (iii) your purchasing behavior; (iv) source of the information sought by you during your search; and (v) the age of your results data (collectively, ‘Shared Information’).

2. Other Information You Provide.  We may also collect and store any personal data you enter on our Site or provide to us in some other manner, including personal data that may be contained in any comment you post to our Site. This includes your images (both still and moving).

3. Information About Others.  We may also collect and store personal data about other people provided to us by users, potentially including their businesses, contact details including email addresses and/or IP addresses. This data is used in the legitimate interests of providing information to potential members, for the purposes of generating invitations to Chapter meetings and other BNI events, and for the provision of certain other information related to the potential purchase of goods or services from BNI.

4. Automatic Collection of Data.  Information concerning your computer hardware and software is automatically collected and may be shared with other BNI or affiliated websites. This information may include: your IP address, browser type and language, domain names,  access  times,  referring  website  addresses  and  the  content  of  any undeleted cookies that your browser previously accepted from us (see ‘Cookies’ below).

5. Cookies.  When you visit our Site, if you provide opt-in consent, we may use one or more ‘Cookies’ to make our Site easier for you to use and to personalize your online experience. Through the use of a cookie, we also may automatically collect information about your online activity on our Site, such as the web pages you visit, the links you click, and the amount of time you spend on the Site. You can withhold or withdraw consent, but if you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to sign in or use some of the features offered on our Site. For more information about cookies and how to change your preferences, please read our Cookie Policy.

6. Other Technologies.  We may use the ever-evolving Internet technology, such as web beacons and other similar technologies, to track your use of our Site. We also may include web beacons in company e-mail messages, newsletters, or notifications to determine whether messages have been opened and/or acted upon. This enables us to customize the services we offer our Site visitors to deliver targeted advertisements and to measure the overall effectiveness of our online advertising, content, programming or other activities.

7. Information From Other Sources.  We sometimes supplement the information that we receive that has been outlined in this Policy with information from other sources and companies. Such outside information includes updated delivery and address information from carriers or third parties, which enables us to correct our records and deliver, for example, future communications more easily; account information, purchase or redemption information, and page-view information from some merchants with which we operate co-branded businesses or for which we provide technical, fulfilment, advertising, or other services; search term and search result information from some searches conducted through the Web search features; search results and links, including paid listings (such as Sponsored Links from Google); and credit history information from credit bureaus, which we use to help prevent and detect fraud and to offer certain credit or financial services to some customers.

How your personal data is used and the legal basis for its processing

We primarily use your personal data to provide support or service offerings to you.

1. Contractual Necessity.  On the basis of contractual necessity, we process the personal data of members and membership applicants to:

• manage your account and provide you with customer support;
• enforce our terms and conditions;
• manage our business;
• enable and leverage applications such as BNI Connect to provide user functionality;
• process payment for any purchases, subscriptions or sales made on our Site, and to protect you and ourselves against, or identify, possible fraudulent transactions, and otherwise as needed to manage our business.

2. Legitimate Interest.  In our legitimate interests in the maintenance and development of our business, we may process your data to:

• perform research and analysis about your use of, or interest in, our products, services, or content, or products, services or content offered by others; this information may be used, by way of example only, to help us understand the demographics of potential members, identify chapters with openings for certain professions, inform future marketing campaigns, and judge the success of marketing strategies;
• cross market your services/products with our services and our affiliates’ services;
• verify your eligibility and deliver online and/or offline in connection with contests and sweepstakes;
• protect and defend the rights or property of BNI or one of BNI’s referral networks.

3. Consent.  You may consent to us:

• providing your email address and other information to our business partners for offers to you of products, services, promotions, contests and/or sweepstakes;
• sending you email notifications and/or newsletters.
• Creating and operating cookies on your devices when you visit our websites.

You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time by emailing us at [email protected]. 

4. Legal Necessity.  When legally necessary, we may also process your personal data:

• to establish or exercise our legal rights, or to defend against legal claims;
• in the vital interests of staff, members and users of BNI, or the public, to protect their personal safety.

Data retention

Your data will only be retained for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was obtained and/or to meet any applicable legal obligations. Please see our Data Retention Policy, accessible at http://bnitos.com/retention.html for more information.

How your personal data is disclosed

We may share your personal data with:

1. Authorized Service Providers. Authorized service providers performing services on our behalf, e.g., processing credit card payments, delivering products and services, providing customer service and marketing assistance, performing business and sales analysis, supporting our Site’s functionality, and supporting other features and promotions offered through our Site.

2. Business partners. From time to time, we may offer products, services, promotions, contests and/or sweepstakes on our Site and share personal data with the businesses with which we partner to provide these offers.

3. Franchisees. We may share your personal data with BNI Master Franchisees or (Sub)franchisees of BNI, who are joint controllers of data (‘Data Controller’) with our affiliate BNI Worldwide Development Limited, in order to, for example, direct you to a BNI Chapter or potentially provide you with additional information about franchise opportunities based on your interest. As joint Data Controllers, Master Franchisees and (Sub)franchisees have separate obligations for implementing appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure and to demonstrate that their processing activities are compliant with the requirements of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’ or the ‘Regulation’).

4. Other Situations. We may also disclose your information:

• under a legal obligation, including but not limited to, subpoena or court order;
• under legal authority to respond to requests for cooperation from a law enforcement or other government agency (including civil and criminal matters);
• to prevent illegal activity, to prevent imminent bodily harm, or to protect ourselves and you from people violating our Terms of Service, accessible at https://www.bni.com/terms-and-conditions. This may include sharing personal data with, for example, other companies, lawyers, courts or other government entities where applicable;
• In connection with a substantial corporate transaction, such as the sale of our business, a merger, divestiture, consolidation, or asset sale, though in any event, any acquiring entity or other third-party assignee will be bound by the provisions of this Policy; to protect and defend the rights or property of BNI or one of BNI’s referral networks; and, act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of members and users of BNI, its Site, or the public. This may include sharing personal data with, for example, other BNI members, visitors, government health agencies, or other government entities.

Any third parties to whom we may disclose personal data may have their own data protection and privacy notices/policies, which we encourage you to view on the websites of those third parties.

Third-Party Websites

There are a number of places on our Site or through our services where you may click on a link to access other websites that do not operate under this Policy. For example, if you click on an advertisement or a search result on our Site, you may be taken to a website that we do not control. These third-party websites may independently solicit and collect personal data from you and, in some instances, provide us with information about your activities on those websites. We recommend that you consult the data protection and privacy notices/policies of all third-party websites you visit.

Your Data Protection Rights

Under GDPR, you have the following rights:

• You have the right to be provided on request with a copy of your personal data.

• You have the right to rectification of inaccurate data we may have recorded about you.
• You have the right to the erasure of your data (‘Right to be Forgotten’) which we no longer have justification for recording.
• You have the right to object to processing of your data which is being done on the basis of our legitimate interests.
• You have the right to refuse to be contacted for direct marketing purposes.
• You have the right to restrict the processing of your personal data when:

• the basis for its processing is in dispute;
• its accuracy is in dispute;
• we cannot establish a lawful basis for its processing, but you do not wish it to be erased;
• we no longer need your data, but you need it for the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims;
• you object, where applicable, to our processing your data on the basis of our legitimate interests, pending verification of whether our interests override.

• You have the right to be provided in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format with a copy of your data which we process on the basis of your consent or contractual necessity, or to have it transferred directly to another data controller (‘Data Portability’).

If you are not satisfied with our responses or are otherwise concerned with how we process your personal data, you also have the right to make a complaint to our supervisory authority, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (www.dataprotection.ie).

Communities and Forums Offered on our Site

We may provide areas on our Site where you can post information about yourself, including your name and email address, communicate with others; upload content; and post comments. Such postings are governed by our Terms of Service. Also, whenever you voluntarily disclose personal data on our Site, that data will be available and can be collected and used by others who have authorized access to your content.

We encourage you to exercise discretion and caution with respect to your personal data. Once you have posted data, you may not be able to edit or delete such data.

Any personal data that you disclose through our Site, or other online forums hosted on our Site, may be collected and used by others. We recommend caution when giving out personal data to others in these online forums.

Children’s Privacy

Our Site is a general audience site not intended for use by children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children. You may access our Site only if you are of legal age to lawfully form a binding contract.

Data Transfers

BNI may transfer the personal information we collect about you to its franchisees, members, and business partners and service providers in countries other than the country in which the information was originally collected, including the United States. Those countries may not have the same data protection laws as the country in which you initially provided the information. When we transfer your information to other countries, we will protect that information as described in this Privacy Policy.

How we secure your Personal Data

BNI has implemented security measures to protect your personal data from unauthorized access and use. We follow appropriate security procedures while retaining and disclosing your personal data to prevent unauthorized access by third parties and accidental loss of your data. We limit access to your personal data to those who actually need to access it for business purposes. Persons who have access to your data will be subject to a duty of confidentiality towards BNI.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data breach. We will notify you and any relevant regulatory authority of a suspected data breach where it is required by law to do so. We also require those to whom we transfer your personal data to comply with the above.

Unfortunately, data transmission via the Internet is not fully secure. Therefore, BNI cannot guarantee the security of your personal data that you have transmitted to us via the Internet. Any such transmission is at your own risk and you acknowledge and agree, to the extent permitted by law, that BNI will not be liable for any unauthorized use, distribution, damage or destruction of your data. Once we receive your personal data, we will apply the abovementioned security measures.

Canadian Privacy Rights

In Canada, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and applicable provincial privacy legislation (collectively, “Canadian Privacy Laws”) govern the collection, use and disclosure of personal information by organizations in the course of commercial activities. If you live in Canada, this Canada Privacy Rights section applies to you. Additionally, if you live in certain Canadian provinces, provincial privacy legislation will apply to you, namely, for the Province of Alberta - the Personal Information Protection Act (Alberta), for the Province of British Columbia - the Personal Information Protection Act (British Columbia) and for the Province of Quebec - the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector also applies to you and the expression “Canadian Privacy Laws” therefore also includes reference to these provincial laws. If you live in Canada and any part of our general Privacy Policy conflicts with this Canadian Privacy Rights section, this Canadian Privacy Rights section governs to the extent of the conflict.

Personal Information

Under Canadian Privacy Laws, Personal Information means any information about an identifiable individual, which includes the information described above in this policy as “Personal Information” and which may, in certain circumstances, include information gathered from your use of the Site, such as IP addresses.

Transfer of Personal Information from the EU to Canada

The global extent of BNI’s business necessitates the transfers of personal data to its franchisees, members, and business partners and service providers on a worldwide basis. The European Commission has recognized Canada as providing an adequate level of protection for Personal Information transferred from the EU to recipients of this information in Canada who are subject to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”). Therefore, we generally rely on this adequacy decision in respect of Personal Information transferred to Canada from the EU.  However, to the extent that PIPEDA does not apply to Personal Information to be transferred in Canada, we rely on the use of the “Standard Contractual Clauses” approved by the European Commission to transfer such Personal Information to Canada.

Consent

In Canada, express or implied consent is the legal basis upon which organizations may collect, use and disclose personal Information, unless an exception applies.  Accordingly, Personal Information will only be collected, used, and disclosed by us for the purposes described above in this Privacy Policy under the headings “How your personal data is used and the legal basis for its processing” and “How your personal data is disclosed”, with your express or implied consent.  We will collect your express consent for any sensitive personal information that we may collect, use, or disclose.  Otherwise, your continued use of this Site signifies your consent to our collection, use, and disclosure of your Personal Information as described in this Privacy Policy, as it may be amended from time to time after you have been informed of any such amendment. Your continued use of the Site after having been informed of any amendment to this Privacy Policy will be deemed a consent by you to any such amendment; if you do not agree with this Privacy Policy or any amendment, do not access the Site.

If you provide Personal Information of a third party to us, you represent that you have obtained the applicable third party data subject’s consent to provide it to us and for us to use and disclose this Personal Information as set out in this Privacy Policy.

Withdrawal of Consent

Under Canadian Privacy Laws, you have the opportunity to withdraw your consent at any time to our collection, use or disclosure of your Personal Information, subject to reasonable prior notice and applicable legal and contractual restrictions.  Depending on the nature of the Personal Information for which you choose to withdraw your consent, if you do withdraw your consent we may not be able to provide our products and services to you; we will explain the implications of withdrawing consent to you when we receive your notice of withdrawal. If you withdraw your consent in respect of any Personal Information that has been provided to third parties, we will advise such third parties of your withdrawal to the extent required by Canadian Privacy Laws.

Online Behavioural Advertising

With respect to the information that we collect using cookies or similar technologies that we have described above, you can opt-out of several third party ad servers' and networks' cookies simultaneously by using an opt-out tool created by the Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada and an opt-out tool created by the Network Advertising Initiative. You can also access these websites to learn more about online behavioural advertising and how to stop websites from placing cookies on your device. Opting out of a network does not mean you will no longer receive online advertising. It does mean that the network from which you opted out will no longer deliver ads tailored to your web preferences and usage patterns.

Your Rights

Canadian Privacy Laws notably provide individuals in Canada with the following rights:

• To be informed about the Personal Information that we hold about you;
• To receive an accounting of the third parties to whom we have disclosed your Personal Information;
• To access the Personal Information we maintain about you;
• To be provided with information about how we process your Personal Information;
• To correct or supplement your Personal Information where you can demonstrate that it is inaccurate or incomplete;
• Where appropriate, to have Personal Information that you have corrected or supplemented transmitted to third parties who have had access to your Personal Information;
• To lodge a complaint about our collection, use or disclosure of your Personal Information with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and any applicable provincial privacy commissioner’s office having jurisdiction. See www.priv.gc.ca for contact details. (Quebec residents may also contact the Commission d’accès à l’information; see www.cai.gouv.qc.ca for contact details.)

To exercise the above rights, please get in touch with please contact our Data  Protection Officer at the address set out at the beginning of this Privacy Policy.  We will consider and process your request within a reasonable period of time and in any event within thirty days of receipt of your request or such longer time as we may be permitted under Canadian Privacy Laws.  Please be aware that under certain circumstances, Canadian Privacy Laws may limit your exercise of these rights. If we cannot provide you with access to your Personal Information, we will inform you of the reasons why, subject to any legal or regulatory restrictions.

International Transfers

As noted above in this Privacy Policy, your Personal Information may be transferred to and stored at a location outside of your jurisdiction of residence. Please note that local data protection laws where your Personal Information is stored or processed may not provide as much protection as the data protection laws in force in your jurisdiction of residence, but we nevertheless ensure that we take reasonable steps to ensure that your Personal Information will not be used by such persons storing or processing the information for any purpose other than assisting us for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.  If you would like to receive more information about our policies and practices with respect to our use of service providers outside of Canada who handle your Personal Information or if you have any questions about our collection, use, disclosure or storage by any service providers outside of Canada on our behalf, please contact our Data  Protection Officer at the address set out at the beginning of this Privacy Policy.

Business Transfers

Where we disclose your Personal Information in the event of a business transfer described in our Privacy Policy above, we will ensure that the information is treated confidentially by the parties to the transaction and that the information will be protected by security safeguards appropriate to its sensitivity. If the transfer is completed, we will require that the parties to the transaction continue to treat your Personal Information in accordance with Canadian Privacy Laws.

Electronic Marketing Messages

We send electronic marketing messages for the purposes described above in this Policy, however, notwithstanding Our Opt-in/Opt-out Policy described above, Canada’s anti-spam legislation contains special rules that regulate the way in which we may send these electronic messages to you. If you are located in Canada, we will only send electronic marketing messages to you if we have your prior opt-in consent, unless an exception or a specific form of implied consent applies.

Changes to This Policy

We will occasionally update this Policy to reflect changes in our practices and services. When we post changes, we will revise the ‘Last Updated’ date at the top of the Policy. If we make any material changes in the way we collect, use, and/or share your personal data, we will notify you by email to the email address you most recently provided us in your account, profile or registration, if we have such an email address, and/or by prominently posting notice of the changes on our Site. We recommend that you check our Site from time to time to inform yourself of any changes in this Policy.

©2023 BNI Canada, Inc. All rights reserved.