AbbVie Privacy Notice
Effective Date: 1st July 2021

This Privacy Notice explains how AbbVie Ltd, AbbVie House, Vanwall Road, Maidenhead, SL6 4UB (referred to as “AbbVie,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) may process Personal Data about you through your online and off-line interactions with us through AbbVie services, products, communications, and digital properties (including websites and mobile applications) that refer to this Privacy Notice and where AbbVie may obtain and control your Personal Data from a third party (collectively, “AbbVie Relationships”).

Your Personal Data We May Collect
How we may use Personal Data
How we may disclose Personal Data
Additional information for online interactions and cookies privacy statement
Additional information for job applicants
Additional information for health care professionals
Additional information for participants in patient and customer programs
Privacy of children
Our contact information
Your privacy rights and choices
Data security and retention
Accessing our sites globally
Changes to our Privacy Notice

Your Personal Data We May Collect
This section describes the general categories of Personal Data that we may collect for the purposes described in this Privacy Notice. You can find additional information on the types of Personal Data we collect for online interactions, job applicants, healthcare professionals, and patient and customer programs by clicking on the relevant links.

Personal Data we collect from you or from other sources
AbbVie may collect Personal Data from you directly, for example as part of a registration or in response to a questionnaire. AbbVie may also obtain Personal Data indirectly, such as from publicly available sources (e.g., websites or publicly accessible databases), third-party data vendors, health care providers and health insurance companies, and third-party partners and collaborators. We may combine Personal Data from multiple online and off-line sources. The categories of Personal Data that AbbVie may collect about you include:

Direct identifiers and contact information, including your name, address, phone number, or email address
Registration information, such as your username and password
Relationship data, including information about products, treatments and health conditions that are of interest to you
Transaction data, including purchases and inquiries
Financial account data, such as your credit card number
Income and demographic information, such as when you request financial assistance for one of our products
Health-related information, such as information about a health condition, safety and health information in relation to any of our products, or insurance and demographic information
Payment-related information if you provide a service to AbbVie
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How we may use Personal Data
We may use your Personal Data for the business and commercial purposes relating to your AbbVie Relationships, communicating with you, improving AbbVie Relationships and our products and services, and for other internal business purposes. You can find additional information on how we use Personal Data for online interactions, job applicants, healthcare professionals, and patient and customer programs by clicking on the relevant links.

Administering programs, services, and other interactions with you
We may use your Personal Data for everyday business purposes, such as payment processing and financial account management, contract management, website administration, fulfilment, corporate governance, and reporting obligations. We may also use your Personal Data to provide you with the programs or services that you requested, or to administer AbbVie services, such as direct purchasing, participating in a savings program or signing up to receive a rebate. This means that we may use your Personal Data to respond to your questions, provide you with your requested services, offer you an optimal customer experience, perform our contractual obligations to you, or perform actions based on your consent.

Marketing communications and disease awareness
We provide marketing communications that promote the use of or offer participation in AbbVie products, services, programs, research events or provide other information that may be of interest to you, such as information on certain health conditions. We will use your Personal Data to send you marketing communications and to determine the types of marketing communications to send.

You can opt-out of marketing communications at any time. Marketing communication opt-out instructions are included in each marketing communication you receive, or you can email us at privacyoffice@abbvie.com.

Customized experiences and improving relationships
Personal Data may be used to create customized offers, information, or services tailored to your interests and preferences. It may also be used to develop and improve your AbbVie Relationships. In some cases, we collect your Personal Data with your consent. In other cases, we collect this information for our legitimate business interest to optimize and customize AbbVie Relationships.

Business and product administration and improvement
In order to discover new facts that could help AbbVie better understand customer needs and help improve, develop, and evaluate product services, materials, programs, and treatments, AbbVie analyses Personal Data for its legitimate interests in business and product improvement.

Compliance with laws and regulations
We may process your Personal Data to comply with laws and regulations, including those related to pharmacovigilance. We may also use Personal Data to monitor compliance with our policies and procedures, for fraud prevention, and to investigate and prosecute users who violate our rules or who engage in behaviour that is illegal or harmful to others or to others’ property.

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How we may disclose Personal Data
We generally share Personal Data with third parties for the business and commercial purposes described below. We do not sell Personal Data to third parties. You can find additional information on how we share Personal Data for online interactions, job applicants, healthcare professionals, and patient and customer programs by clicking on the relevant links.

Affiliates and vendors
We have relationships with various vendors, including our affiliated companies, that help us operate our business and for whom it may be required to have access to your Personal Data in the course of providing services to AbbVie. We require them to handle your Personal Data collected through the AbbVie Relationships in accordance with appropriate contractual privacy and security provisions.

Business and research partners
We may partner with other companies and public and private organizations to provide you with products, content, or services on a joint or “co-branded” basis. You should be aware that, in such cases, in addition to this Privacy Notice, the relevant partner’s privacy notice may also apply, and, in limited cases, there may be a shared privacy notice.

For co-branded forms and sites, you will see displayed both the AbbVie logo and the logo of the co-branding partner. To access co-branded services, you may have to complete a registration form, and this registration information may be shared with AbbVie’s co-branding partners, and you should read the individual privacy policies of our co-branding partners, as they may differ in some respects from ours.

In addition, we may disclose Personal Data to our external auditors, attorneys, accountants, and similar professionals based on our legitimate interest in the operation of our business and our obligations to comply with applicable laws and regulations.

Disclosures for legal obligations, to authorities and for product safety
If you contact AbbVie regarding your experience using our products, we may use the information you provide to us to submit our reports to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, other similar health and medicine government agencies across the world, and as otherwise required of us by law. We also may use the information to contact your prescribing physician to follow up regarding an unexpected event involving the use of our product.

In certain limited circumstances, we may need to disclose your Personal Data to comply with a legal obligation, process, or demand and for reasons of public interest, such as to comply with reporting obligations to our governing regulatory authorities regarding the safety of our products, in response to a subpoena, or to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.

Disclosure to subsequent owner or operator
We may transfer your Personal Data to a successor entity upon a merger, consolidation or other corporate reorganization, to a purchaser of all or a portion of our assets, or pursuant to a financing arrangement or co-promotional agreement. The Personal Data we have about you may be transferred to parties to the transaction based on our legitimate interest in preparing for and completing the transaction. Any successor entity shall be bound by terms and conditions reasonably similar to this Privacy Notice.

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Additional information for online interactions and cookies privacy statement
We may collect additional categories of Personal Data relating to your online interactions with us, as described in this section. We also use, share, and disclose your Personal Data for online interactions for the additional purposes described in the section. The categories of Personal Data collected and the purposes of use and disclosure described in this section are in addition to any other collection, use and disclosure of Personal Data practices described separately in this Privacy Notice.

This section also describes how we use cookies and other data-collection technologies and how you can manage cookies that are not required to operate our websites and mobile applications.

Personal Data that may be collected automatically through our websites and mobile applications
We may collect the following additional categories of Personal Data through your usage of our websites and mobile applications.

IP address
We may record the Internet Protocol (“IP”) address of your computer or other electronic device when you visit our website. An IP address identifies the electronic device you use to access websites, which allows us to maintain communication with your device and to customize content.

Cookies and other data-collection technologies
We collect information automatically through your online interactions with us through tracking and data-collection technologies such as cookies, web beacons and pixels, APIs, web services, scripts, browser analysis tools, and server logs. A “cookie” is a unique numeric code that is transferred to your computer to track your interests and preferences and to recognize you as a return visitor. A “Web beacon” (also known as a pixel tag) is a transparent graphic image placed on a website, email, or advertisement that enables the monitoring of things such as user activity and site traffic, including the collection of data about the website and mobile application you were visiting before and after you came to our website or mobile application. To learn more about cookies and other data-collection technologies, please visit https://www.allaboutcookies.org/.

We classify our cookies into the following categories:

Required Cookies: These cookies are necessary for core features of a site to operate properly.
Functional Cookies: These cookies allow us to analyze site usage to evaluate and improve its performance. They are also used to provide a better user experience on the site, such as measuring interactions with particular content or remembering settings.
Advertising Cookies: These cookies are used to show you ads that are more relevant to you. We may share this information with advertisers or use it to better understand your interests. For example, advertising cookies may be used to share data with advertisers so that the ads you see are more relevant to you, allow you to share certain pages with social networks, or allow you to post comments on our site.
If you would like to see a detailed list of the cookies we use on our websites, including the third parties that place cookies on our websites, the specific cookie, and cookie lifespan, please click on cookie settings at the footer of this page. If the cookie lifespan is not disclosed in the cookie settings, we use a default life span of thirteen (13) months, unless a shorter period is required by law. You can also use the “cookie settings” to opt out of a nonrequired cookie category.

In addition to the cookie settings feature, you can disable cookies through your browser. Please note that some cookies are essential to the functioning of our websites and deleting or disabling them on your browser will reduce the site’s functionality.

If you want to use your browser instead of our cookie settings feature to opt-out of the Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics tracking cookies, you can install the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, and you can opt-out of Adobe Analytics.

Mobile tracking
Some AbbVie Relationships are available as either mobile applications or mobile sites that you can use on your mobile device. If you use a mobile device to access and use the AbbVie Relationships, we may collect the following mobile-specific information in addition to the other information described above: device or advertising ID, device type, hardware type, media access control (“MAC”) address, international mobile equipment identity (“IMEI”), the version of your mobile operating system, the platform used to access or download the AbbVie sites and applications (e.g., Apple, Google, Amazon, Windows), location information and usage information about your device and your use of the AbbVie Relationships.

How we may use Personal Data through online interactions
In addition to the uses described separately in this Privacy Notice, we may use your Personal Data collected online for the additional purposes as described in this section.

Customized user experiences
We may use your IP address and the Personal Data that we obtain automatically through the use of cookies or similar tracking technologies to make our websites and mobile applications easier for you to use and navigate, to assist in your registrations and login, to personalize the content by anticipating the information and services that may be of interest to you, and to personalize and improve our interactions with you by making the information we provide more relevant to you. We may also add your website usage data to the general profile we maintain about you so that our AbbVie Relationships with you are a more personalized experience. When we send email communications, we may place a web beacon or similar tracking technology in the email to know whether your device is capable of receiving HTML emails, or to collect data on whether the email or an attachment or link in the email has been opened. We use this data to help us determine and document if a particular part of our communication was more relevant to you.

In some cases, we collect this Personal Data with your consent. In other cases, we collect this information for our legitimate business interest to optimize and customize your user experience.

Digital analytics and improvement
We may use the Personal Data that you provide to us and the online information we collect automatically through cookies and similar tracking technologies to monitor user traffic patterns and preferences. We may also track email communications through web beacons or similar tracking technology in emails to create aggregated statistics and reports to analyse the effectiveness of and improve our marketing campaigns.

We collect this information for our legitimate business interests of security, improvement, analytics and optimization of AbbVie Relationships

Social Media Community Guidelines
Welcome to AbbVie UK’s online community, managed by AbbVie’s communications team. We use this community to share content specific to AbbVie UK projects.

We welcome the opportunity to hear from you on any of our social media channels (Twitter and YouTube). When we see mentions of and replies to @abbvieUK we ask that you follow these Community Guidelines to ensure that we provide you with the best experience.

Please remember that we work in a highly regulated industry with unique legal considerations. We are not allowed to engage in sensitive topics or discussions about our products, other companies’ products or treatment options. These discussions are best held in private with a health care professional.

Because of these regulations, discussions need to be on-topic and constructive. For this reason, we may not be able to respond to mentions or replies that:

Name our or other companies’ products
Offer health or medical advice
Include profanity, defamatory, libelous, offensive, abusive, discriminatory or demeaning content, including images, videos and links
Are disparaging, threatening, condone violence or illegal behaviour
Contain personal information, like the names of individuals, email addresses, phone numbers, personal photos or videos
Contain proprietary, confidential, sensitive or non-public information
Violate copyright or intellectual property
Are commercial in nature with an intent to sell products and services, or recruit fans and followers to other social communities
Contain information that is false, inaccurate or misleading
Are excessively repetitive and/or disruptive to the community (SPAM)
Violate any AbbVie UK Sponsored Social Media Platform Terms. Please click below to read each platform’s Terms and Conditions.
Twitter Terms | YouTube Terms

Please be aware that followers who violate the above rules may be blocked from AbbVie UK’s social media channels, meaning the user would no longer be able to follow our news, comment on or share our posts.

Social media channels that AbbVie UK follows and content that AbbVie UK likes, shares, retweets or favourites are not an indication of AbbVie’s endorsement of these channels or the content they produce. Nor is it an indication that we are engaged in a business relationship with the content authors. AbbVie UK is not responsible for and does not assume any liability for any such third party content. AbbVie is not responsible for the terms and conditions, privacy policy or content of any website accessed through links or references in our posts.

Medical Side Effects
If you believe you have experienced any medical side effects from an AbbVie UK product, please consult your physician, pharmacist or other healthcare professional immediately. Adverse events should always be reported. Reporting forms and information can be found at https://yellowcard.mhra.gov.uk/. Adverse events should also be reported to AbbVie UK on GBPV@abbvie.com.

We suggest you avoid sharing specific information concerning your personal health on social media sites, and the Internet in general. Should you, however, decide to send us a private message in order to detail any side effects, we may need to contact you for more information, in which case we may request your name, email address and/or a phone number.

Using and storing personal identifying information
AbbVie UK will not disclose or share personal identifying information on its social media channels unless we have obtained proper consents. We do not store or use your unique ID, email or other personal identifying information. However, in the case of reporting an adverse event or product complaint, we will need to store and use personal identifying information, such as your name, location, health-related information or similar, in accordance with applicable laws. This information is required to be submitted to the AbbVie UK Pharmacovigilance and Patient Safety department and/or regulatory authorities. We are also required to store your personal identifying information for auditing purposes.

In some instances AbbVie UK may choose to use third-party service providers to help us manage comments and messages, which means that they too would have access to any personal identifying information you share with us. Such third-party service providers are contractually bound and trained to ensure an adequate protection and security of your personal identifying information.

Please note that social media platforms that you contact us through will also have access to information you share with us. For more details please refer to:

Twitter Privacy Policy | YouTube Privacy Policy

Thanks again for joining the AbbVie UK Online Community.

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Social Media Analysis
We may also analyze public sources, such as websites and social media channels, to monitor, analyze and improve our understanding of interactions with and views of our products, services, and events. AbbVie and its service providers will respect the privacy notices and terms of use applicable to such sources in performing such activities.

Tell-A-Friend Functions
We may offer “tell-a-friend” functionality on our sites. If you choose to use this function, we will collect your friend’s contact information. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email with the information you specified or inviting your friend to visit the site. We use this Personal Data you provide us as part of the “tell-a-friend” functionality for the sole purposes of sending this one-time email.

How your Personal Data may be shared through online interactions
In addition to the types of disclosures of Personal Data described separately in this Privacy Notice, we may share Personal Data online for the additional purposes as described in this section.

Third-party advertising and online behavioural advertising
We may provide you with online advertisements for AbbVie products and services on third-party websites and mobile services that are tailored to you, which may be based on the Personal Data that you provide to us or to a third-party website that you are visiting, or on your browsing activity, purchases, or interests. We may share some of your device information with our advertising service providers that we have obtained from cookies and other data-collection and tracking technologies based on your AbbVie Relationships.

Some AbbVie Relationships participate in online behavioral advertising (this is also sometimes called targeted advertising or interest-based advertising). You can identify these sites by the “Advertising Choices” link in the advertisement. Our advertising network partners may place and use cookies on our websites and on other third-party sites to collect Personal Data about your activities in order to provide you with online advertisements that are based on your interests. When an AbbVie online behavioral advertisement is delivered to you, you will see an “Ad Choices” icon. Clicking on the icon or link will take you to a website where you can manage or opt-out of the use of data about your browsing history that is used for the delivery of online behavioral advertisements. If you opt-out, you may still see advertisements online, including advertisements from AbbVie that are based on other information (e.g., based on the content of the page being viewed rather than your prior clickstream activity). In some cases, data may still be collected about your browsing activity by these third-party advertisers, but they will not use this data to deliver advertisements that are based on your past online browsing behaviour. You can also opt-out now by clicking here.

You may also opt out of certain online behavioral advertising on the Digital Advertising Alliance's consumer choice tool, and the Network Advertising Initiative’s tool.

Some web browsers may transmit “do-not-track” signals to web services with which your browser communicates. As of the effective date of this Privacy Notice, an industry standard has not yet been established on how to respond to these signals; therefore, AbbVie does not currently respond to these signals. However, you can opt-out from advertisers that use your browsing history to deliver online behavioral advertisements via the mechanisms listed above.

Links to third-party sites and social media plug-ins
This Privacy Notice only applies to AbbVie Relationships linked to this Privacy Notice and does not apply to third-party websites to which AbbVie Relationships may link, including links to outside websites or advertisements from third parties. We encourage you to review the privacy statements provided by all third parties prior to providing them with Personal Data.

AbbVie Relationships may use social media plug-ins (e.g., the Facebook “Like” button and the “Share to Twitter” button) to enable you to easily share information with others. When you visit our sites as part of an AbbVie Relationship, the operator of the social plug-in and integrated social media platforms can place a cookie on your device that enables that operator to receive your Personal Data that allow the operator to recognize individuals who have previously visited our sites. If you are logged into the social media site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) while browsing on our site, the social media plug-in allows that social media site to receive information that you have visited our site. The social media plug-in also allows the social media site to share information about your activities on our site with other users of that social media site. These sharing settings are managed by the social media site, and you should refer to those sites’ privacy policies for information about their privacy and data-sharing practices.

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Additional information for job applicants
If you have applied for employment with AbbVie, the Personal Data submitted with your job application may include your resume; previous professional, education and other background information; driver’s license information; social security number or equivalent national identification (as required or permitted by local law); cover letter; licenses; permits and certifications held; reference information; and any other information that you choose to provide (e.g., employment preferences, willingness to relocate, awards or professional memberships). This information may come from you, a recruiter, your references, prior employers, or your educational institutions.

Consistent with applicable law, we may ask questions about race/ethnic origin, gender, veteran status, and disability status of our applicants, for the monitoring of equal employment opportunity compliance. Except as specifically requested or legally required, we ask that you avoid submitting information in your application that may qualify as sensitive information under applicable law. Sensitive information includes data about race, color, religion, ethnicity, nationality or national origin, age, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical or health information (including physical or mental disabilities or pregnancy status), genetic or biometric information, political or philosophical beliefs, political party or trade union membership, veteran status, photographs, background check information, judicial data such as criminal records or information on other judicial or administrative proceedings, or any other legally protected status.

Personal Data will be processed based on our legitimate interest in processing your job application and evaluating your candidacy and qualifications and to conduct reference checks. We may also inquire about criminal records and perform a background check following a conditional offer of employment, where permitted by applicable law. We may also process Personal Data from your job application for regulatory, compliance and legal purposes, consistent with this Privacy Notice. Personal Data may be also be used for additional administrative purposes, including aggregate management reporting, internal training, and as generally required to operate our business.

We may share the data on your applications with recruiters, consultants, attorneys, preemployment background check services, and our affiliates.

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Additional information for healthcare professionals
We may collect additional categories of Personal Data if you are a healthcare professional, as described in this section. We also use and disclose Personal Data about healthcare professionals for the additional purposes described in this section. The categories of Personal Data collected and the purposes of use and disclosure described in this section are in addition to any other collection, use and disclosure of Personal Data practices described separately in this Privacy Notice.

Additional Personal Data that AbbVie may collect about healthcare professionals
If you are healthcare professional, we may collect Personal Data about you directly from you, or from third-party sources such as the organization where you work, publicly available sources, interactions with AbbVie (including online available sources), and participation in AbbVie-sponsored or -supported initiatives such as AbbVie-sponsored clinical research and development activities, third-party databases, and reporters of pharmacovigilance events.

We may collect the following additional categories of Personal Data about healthcare professionals:

Professional details, such as resumes or other documents or forms provided directly to us, place of practice, job title, professional contact details, medical specialty, professional license number, professional qualifications and scientific activities (such as previous clinical trial experience, activity on social media platforms or other websites, and participation in past or pending research studies with us and other companies), organizational or institutional affiliations, publication of academic or scientific research and articles, and membership in associations and boards
Personal Data provided to participate in our sponsored or -supported initiatives, such as our sponsored clinical research and development activities, online or in-person seminars regarding product information, educational events, and clinical information updates

Details of interactions with us, such as what kind of meetings we have held, topics discussed, your knowledge of and questions you have had about our business and products, what kind of material we have displayed to you, and any feedback that you have provided, as well as your opinions of and routines for prescribing, routines regarding your patients, diagnoses, and automatic tracking information in online interactions with us
Payment and other transfers of value details received from your interactions with AbbVie, which may include your tax identification number or national identification number (where required or permitted by law), contributions to costs of educational events (such as registrations fees, travel and accommodation expenses) and fees for services, including consultancy services.