As a telecom company, we believe in the power of data and in the importance of communication. This means we have a major responsibility to protect customer data and to safeguard the confidentiality of communication. This goes beyond compliance with laws and regulations. Why? Because the success of our company depends on the degree to which customers and employees trust us to respect their privacy.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is now in force. Whereas some years ago we were still hard at work increasing our and other people’s awareness of and knowledge of the importance of data protection, these days we can build on our previously undertaken privacy-related and information security activities.

In our Privacy Statement, we provide our customers with full details of our procedures for handling personal data, doing the same for our own employees in our Privacy Rules. Customers and employees can obtain details of their own personal data from self-service portals specially set up for this purpose. We primarily process data in order to be able to fulfil our commitment to provide the services that customers have purchased from us.

In some cases, we see ways to serve our customers even better by making greater and better use of the data. We obtain customers’ consent for this beforehand by giving them the option of opting out of this data service. We also assess the potential impact of privacy issues on new initiatives. We take into account what our customers and employees legitimately expect from us in this regard.

In some cases, we (via our specialist team) must provide data to the police or judicial authorities in order to solve criminal cases. We also ask the external service providers who process data for us to do this in accordance with our instructions. This is how we try to imbue our business partners with the same responsibility that we have. In the unlikely event of a data issue, as a telecom company we have been obliged since 2012 to report any data breaches to the responsible authority. However, we feel that it is even more important to tell our customers - as soon as adverse consequences seem likely - about the data protection measures they can take.

Together, our Data Privacy Officer (DPO), our business and our specially appointed Privacy Champions ensure that all stakeholders can find out what the privacy law means for their own work and what their associated responsibilities are. We organise a range of courses and communication sessions throughout the year. We also closely monitor new developments in the field of privacy and technology.