Abcam respects your right to privacy. This Privacy Notice explains who we are, how we collect, share, and use personal information about you, and how you can exercise your privacy rights.
If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided at the bottom of this Privacy Notice.
What does Abcam do?
Abcam’s mission is to help life science researchers achieve their mission, faster, by providing high-quality biological reagents and other research tools. Abcam is headquartered in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and its group has sites across the world.
For more information about Abcam, please see the About Us section of our website.
What personal information does Abcam collect and why?
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual that can directly or indirectly identify that individual. It does not include data from which all identifying information has been removed (anonymous data).
Abcam does not knowingly collect, and has not in the past 12 months knowingly collected, any of the following types of personal information from its customers or prospective customers:
In general, we will use your personal information only for the purposes described in this Privacy Notice or for purposes that we explain to you at the time we collect your personal information. We may also process your personal information for additional purposes that are compatible with that original purpose if, and where, this is permitted by applicable data protection laws.
Information that you give to us
You may provide us with your personal information in several ways: by creating an account with us, by contacting our customer service teams, by registering for or attending an event, by entering a competition, by providing feedback on the quality of Abcam’s products or services, when accessing information on our website or by visiting one of our facilities (including through CCTV footage and other information obtained through electronic means, such as swipe card records). You may provide this information in writing via email, social media or by post; manually on forms at events, meetings or conferences; using our website; orally, either face to face, or over the telephone; or by visiting one of our facilities.
We will use this information to
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
Information that we collect automatically
When you visit our website, we use cookies, which are small text files on your computer that allows our website to recognize you as a user. For example, the information provided by a cookie may include:
Collecting this information helps us ensure that the website is presented in the most effective manner for you. It also enables us to better understand the visitors who come to our website, where they come from, what information on our website is of interest to them and to send them appropriate marketing messages and advertising related to their interest. For further information about the types of cookies we use, why, and how you can control cookies, please see our Cookie Notice.
We also collect data concerning whether any email communication you have received from us has been opened and if you have clicked on any links within the email. This helps us ensure our communications are useful for you.
Information that we obtain from third party sources
From time to time, we may receive personal information about you from third parties (for example from conferences, tradeshows or life science networking organisations), but only where we have checked that those third parties either have your consent or are otherwise legally permitted or required to disclose your personal information to us.
We may also collect information about you from publicly available sources, including from scientific publications, university websites and publicly available information on social media.
The types of personal information we may collect in this way include your name, your job title, the institution or company you represent, your professional email address, telephone number and your research interests. We may also collect your language preference.
We will combine this information with the information you give to us and any information we automatically collect about you to maintain and improve the accuracy of the records we hold about you. We will also use the combined information about you to form a view on what products/services we think you, or others similar to you, may want or need to help target our marketing closer to your interests.
Marketing
You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information or purchased products from us, provided us with your details on our website or on WeChat, when you contacted our customer service teams (either by phone, by email or on live chat), entered a competition, registered for a promotion, registered for or attended one of our events, or accessed information from our website and, in each case, provided you have not opted out of receiving marketing communications.
We only want to provide you with marketing communications if you want to hear from us. If you don’t want to receive such communications, you can:
Once you do this, we will update your profile to ensure that you don’t receive any further unwanted marketing messages. Please note that stopping marketing messages will not stop any service communications (such as order updates) or requests for feedback on products you purchase.
Legal basis for processing personal information
Our legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described above will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it.
However, we will normally only process personal information from you:
Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
If you have questions about or need further information concerning the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided under the 'How to contact us' heading below.
Who does Abcam share my personal information with?
We have not, and will not, sell your personal data to any third party. This includes ‘selling’ as defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018.
We will share, and have in the past 12 months shared, your data with certain recipients as an essential part of being able to provide you with products and services, to run our events, and to enable us to run our business effectively. Such recipients include:
How does Abcam keep my personal information secure?
We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information that we collect and process about you. The measures we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your personal information. We also have internal data security policies to protect your personal data, and we regularly review how we can maintain our high standards of privacy.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorized disclosure of, or access to, personal data (ie a personal data breach) and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
Third party links on Abcam's website
Our website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins, and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.
International data transfers
Your personal information may be transferred to our group companies, suppliers or service providers that are based outside your home country (for example, personal data collected in the UK or EEA may be transferred out of the UK or EEA, or personal data collected in China, may be transferred outside of China) for the purposes described in this Privacy Notice.
If your personal data is transferred, it will continue to be subject to one or more appropriate safeguards, for example:
Data retention
Abcam will not hold your personal information for any longer than is necessary. We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).
When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.
Your data protection rights
In certain circumstances, subject to certain restrictions and applicable law, you may have the following data protection rights:
We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws. You will not have to pay a fee to exercise your data protection rights (including accessing your personal information). However, we may charge a reasonable fee or we may refuse to comply with your request if it is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive.
Please note we may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to exercise your data protection rights. This is a security measure to ensure that your personal data is not disclosed to any person who does not have a right to receive it.
Changes to this Privacy Notice
We keep this Privacy Notice under regular review and may update it from time to time. If we make any changes, we will take appropriate measures to inform you or to obtain your consent, if and where this is required by applicable data protection laws.
This Privacy Notice was last updated on 23 February 2021.
How to contact us
If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, or want to exercise any of your rights, please contact our Data Protection Officer (for both the UK and the EEA and the primary point of contact for privacy matters anywhere in the world), by e-mail on dataprivacy@abcam.com or by post to Data Protection Officer, Legal Department, Abcam Limited, Discovery Drive, Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Cambridge, CB2 0AX, United Kingdom,
The data controller of your personal information is Abcam Limited, which is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office with registration number Z8516765. California residents may also call our toll-free number (888) 77-ABCAM (22226).