Privacy & Cookies Policy

Shurgard Privacy Policy

This policy provides you with details about the personal information we collect from you, how we use this information and your rights relating to said personal information.

This policy was last updated on, and applies as from 11 December 2024.

1. Who we are

Shurgard Europe VOF (“Shurgard”, “we”, “us”) is a company having its registered office at Breedveld 29, 1702 Dilbeek, Belgium and registered in the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises under registration number 0884.371.665.

As data controller, we respect your right to privacy and will only process personal information you provide to us in accordance with applicable data protection laws and as described in this policy. (Applicable data protection laws may include (i) the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation 2016/679) (“GDPR”), the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 ("UK GDPR"); and (ii) all other existing or new applicable laws relating to or impacting on the processing of information of a living person and privacy).

If you have any questions about how we collect, store and use your personal information, or if you have any other privacy-related questions, please email us at the following address: dataprotection@shurgard.eu.

2. The personal data we collect about you

The term ‘personal data’ is understood to mean all information that can be traced back to a person who can be identified (directly or indirectly), such as a first and last name, telephone number, postal and electronic addresses, date of birth, payment information and bank details. Data that cannot be traced back to a person (anonymous data) is not included.

We directly collect personal data that you voluntarily decide to provide to us (such as your name, first name postal address, email address, phone numbers, date of birth, payment details), for instance when you sign up to participate in or receive a service from us, such as request for a “call me back”, getting a quote or reserve a unit online or face to face if you come to our storage facility to sign an agreement.

As part of our customers’ onboarding process and pursuant to Shurgard’s legitimate business interests, we will also collect and process personal data pertaining to your identity, including pictures of your identity card, in order to identify you, verify your identity and ensure that you are not subject to any national or international sanctions regime.

We also collect personal data resulting from our interactions when you contact us, send us feedback and complete customer surveys.

Our website also uses cookies (see “Use of cookies” section below) and collects IP addresses (which means a number that can uniquely identify a specific computer or other device on the internet).

We also gather personal data about you via our websites. If you visit our storage facility, some personal data may be collected from monitoring devices and systems such as closed circuit TV (CCTV) and door entry systems at our storage facilities.

We may monitor and record communications with you, such as telephone conversations and emails, along with related data (such as caller identification, telephone number, time and duration of the call and the service to which the call relates). This may include live listening to calls. We do this to check the quality of our customer service and for training purposes of our operational teams.

3. How we may collect and use your information

We or third party data processors acting on our behalf (for further information on data processors acting on our behalf, see below under Section 4) may collect, store and use your personal information listed above for the following purposes:

1. to identify you (including verifying your identity and ensuring you are not subject to any sanctions regime) and to manage any account you hold with us;
2. to contact you for reasons related to the service you have signed up for or to provide information you have requested;
3. to deal with payment for our services;
4. to resolve disputes or collect overdue payments;
5. to make our website and its content available to you;
6. to perform any reservations for storage units you may submit through our website;
7. to respond to your online queries and provide you with services that you may request;
8. where and insofar you have given us your explicit consent, to provide you with promotional content (via mail, e-mail, or SMS/MMS messages) or to include you in our promotional campaigns and offers relating to our products and services;
9. to conduct market studies;
10. to better understand patterns relating to our website usage, through cookies, so that we may further improve upon our products, services and website offering. For further information on the cookies we deploy on our website, see “Use of cookies” section below;
11. to detect and prevent potential fraud and /or other possible misdemeanours that could take place at our storage facilities;
12. to comply with our legal obligations, such as anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing requirements;
13. to provide training and allow internal monitoring activities for the purpose of improving the quality of our services;
14. to provide evidence of transactions or contracts that may have taken place in the course of those communications.

We process your personal data for the purposes mentioned above

• insofar you have given consent to the processing (under 3(h) and for those cookies that require consent under 3(j)); OR
• insofar the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract (under 3 (a) till and included 3 (g); OR
• insofar the processing is necessary for the realization of the legitimate interests of Shurgard to conduct its business properly (under 3(k), 3(l) and 3(n)) and to further improve (the quality of) our product and service offering (under 3(i), 3(m) and for those cookies that do not require consent under 3(j).

To this end, we strive to maintain a fair balance between the need to process data and the preservation of your rights and freedoms, including the protection of your privacy.

4. How we share your personal information and who we share it with

4.1 Principle

We will not sell, rent or otherwise disclose your personal data to any third party, except as described in this policy.

4.2 Subsidiaries/ affiliated companies and third party processors

We may provide your personal information to Shurgard subsidiaries/affiliated companies and to third party processors to process personal information on our behalf for the purposes set out above. These parties are required to process such information based on our instructions and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

The (categories of) third party providers to whom we may disclose your personal data are:

• service providers under contract with us to support our business operations, such as technology services, identification and authentication services, fraud prevention, debt collection;
• our insurers and insurance brokers if you take out insurance coverage through us;
• our legal or business advisors or similar third parties, in particular, to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims or to investigate, prevent or take actions against illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of our terms of use, or as otherwise required by law;
• any person who you have named as a person we can contact to discuss your account;
• any person who is your agent or representative, such as the holder of a power of attorney, a legal guardian or person administering a will;
• any person who we are negotiating with as a potential buyer of our business or property or if we are proposing to merge our business with another business.

In case you would like additional information about the third party providers to whom we may disclose your personal data, you can always contact us in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

4.3 Compliance with laws and legal proceedings

We may disclose your personal information where:

• we are required to do so by applicable law, by a governmental body or by a law enforcement agency in connection with any investigation to help prevent or detect unlawful activity;
• to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims;
• to investigate, prevent or take actions against illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of our terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.

4.4 Other

If a third party acquires all (or substantially all) of our business and/or assets (including in the event of any reorganisation, dissolution, spin-off or liquidation), we reserve the right to transfer your personal data to the relevant acquired, successor, purchaser or beneficiary, or any appropriate combination of them.

5. Retention periods

We will hold your personal data in our system for as long as it is necessary for us to manage the service(s) you have signed up for, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and/or enforce our agreements. Concretely this will entail that:

For your personal data stored or recorded in relation to the management of our buildings and facilities:

• The data stored in our visitors’ logbooks will be kept for six (6) months from the date of collection.
• CCTV/video recordings are kept for one (1) month from the moment they are made, except where they can contribute to proving an infraction, damage or misbehaviour. In that case, said recordings may be kept until the file/litigation for said infraction, damage or misbehaviour is closed.
• Security incident reports are kept for ten (10) years from the time they are closed, or for twenty (20) years from the time of the incident, whichever is longer.

For your personal data collected for training and quality monitoring purposes:

• Phone recordings pertaining to inbound and outbound communications between you and Shurgard will be kept for a maximum of one (1) month as from the date of the recording after which all phone recordings will be permanently deleted.
• Emails you send to Shurgard in connection with any of your questions or queries will be stored for a maximum period of twelve (12) months as from the sending date, before being deleted. In this regard, Shurgard will further keep anonymised data as well as analysis documents pertaining to email volume, content and service levels for an additional twelve (12) months maximum before deleting them.

For your personal data collected to manage customer relationships for commercial and customer identification purposes:

• All data and documents pertaining to Shurgard’s transactions that need to be accounted for in financial statements (for example identification documents obtained at the moment of the contract signing, rental contracts, insurance contracts, reminder letters and evidence of sending them, bank statements, purchase orders, delivery notes for goods and services provided by vendors, support for cash and product returns (receipts), minutes of exchanges and emails) will be kept for a maximum of 10 years from the end of the relationship.
• Claims and litigation related documents (such as pictures, damage reports, price offers, unit inventories (damaged items), and letters/emails (evidence of any communication) will be kept for the duration of the procedure in relation thereto.

For your personal data we collect when you use our website:

• any data we process during your visit to our website in order to make the website available and to enable its functions, will only be stored by us for the duration of your visit to our website. If this is necessary for individual functions, we also store your data for a longer period.
• The storage periods of the cookies set on our website can be found below in Section 7.

6. International transfers

In connection with the abovementioned purposes, we try to avoid as much as possible the transfer of personal information that we collect from you to third party data processors located outside the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom.

When we transfer personal information that we collect from you to third party data processors located in countries that are outside of the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom and which do not offer an adequate level of protection, we ensure the use of appropriate data transfer tools such as the entering into of the standard contractual clauses issued by the European Commission or approved for use in the United Kingdom.

7. Cookies

Technologies such as cookies, tags and scripts are used by us and our partners, affiliates, or analytics or service providers. These technologies are used in analysing trends, administering our website, tracking users’ movements around our website and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an aggregated basis.

We use cookies, for example, to remember users’ settings (e.g. language preference). Users can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level. If you reject cookies, you may still use our website, but your ability to use some features or areas of our website may be limited.

Please note that blocking cookies may lead to a less complete web-browsing experience, as in that case we cannot guarantee its full functionality.
For more information about how we use cookies and what information is collected using cookies, see “Use of cookies” section below.

8. Security

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to safeguard the personal information that you provide to us against unauthorized or unlawful processing and against accidental destruction, loss or damage, for example:

• storing your personal data on secure servers; and
• encrypting payment details on the secure server.

While we will use all reasonable efforts to keep your personal data safe, you acknowledge that the use of the internet is not entirely secure and for this reason we cannot guarantee the security or integrity of any personal data that is transferred from you or to you via the internet. If you have any particular concerns about your information, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us?’ below).

9. How long do we keep your personal data?

We keep your personal data for as long as it is necessary in connection with our processing purposes. The retention terms that we apply are further specified in Section 5 of this Privacy Policy.

If we are legally obliged to retain your personal data for a longer period than the periods mentioned in this policy, we will do so in in accordance with the applicable legislation.

10. Third party websites

Shurgard website contains links to other websites operated by third parties.  The Shurgard Privacy Policy applies only to the personal information that we collect through our website and it does not apply to other websites to which our website may be linked, with or without our permission. We cannot be responsible for personal information that third parties may collect, store and use through their website.  You should always carefully read the privacy policy of each website you visit.

11. What are your rights?

As a data subject, you have the following rights:

1. the right to access to personal information that we hold about you (including the right to information, which allows you to receive clear, transparent details about how your personal information is processed by us);
2. the right to ask us to update or correct any out-of-date or incorrect personal information that we hold about you;
3. where the processing is based on your consent, the right to withdraw consent at any given time in the same way it was given, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal;
4. the right to erasure where the conditions of article 17 of the GDPR or the UK GDPR have been met;
5. the right to restriction of processing where the conditions of article 18 of the GDPR or the UK GDPR have been met;
6. the right to data portability insofar the conditions of article 20 GDPR or the UK GDPR apply to you;
7. the right to object to processing of personal data concerning you, insofar the conditions under article 21 GDPR or the UK GDPR have been met;
8. the right to opt out of any direct marketing communications that we (with your consent) may send you;
9. the right to lodge a complaint with:

• if you live in the European Union: the competent Data Protection Authority (https://www.edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/about-edpb/members_en); or
• If you live in the United Kingdom (UK): with a supervisory authority, including the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk);  and

10. the right to send us specific instructions concerning the fate of your personal data after your death (for FRENCH users). If you wish to exercise this right or obtain further information on how to exercise this right, please contact us using the contact details set out below.

(With the exception of section 11(h) of this policy), you can exercise these rights at any given time by emailing us at dataprotection@shurgard.eu.

12. Automated individual decision-making, including profiling

Automated individual decision-making including profiling is not used.

13. Updates to the Shurgard Privacy Policy

This policy may be updated periodically to reflect changes in our personal data practices and the applicable law. You should check this policy occasionally to ensure that you are aware of the most recent version.

If we implement material change in our Privacy Policy, we will inform You by email at the email address you provided to Us before the implementation of such changes, and where relevant collect Your consent to a new/modified processing operations or ask you to accept the modified version of this policy.

14. How to contact us

If you have any question about this privacy policy and/or how we collect, store and use your personal information, you can email us at dataprotection@shurgard.eu.

Use of Cookies

Shurgard uses cookies relating to your access to the Website, personalized settings and browsing behaviour, for example, to remember users’ settings (e.g. language preference). Users can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level. If you reject cookies, you may still use our website, but your ability to use some features or areas of our website may be limited.

1. What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files which are stored on your computer by the server of our website you are visiting. They contain certain information including the website name, the "lifetime" of the cookie and some digits and numbers. 

2. How Shurgard uses cookies

We use cookies on our website:

• to improve the functionality of our website;
• to help us recognize you as a unique visitor when you return to our website and to allow us to tailor content to match your preferences; and
• to allow us to tailor advertisements to match your preferred interests or to avoid showing you the same adverts repeatedly; and
• to compile anonymous, aggregated statistics that allow us to understand how users use our website and to help us improve the structure of our website.

Cookies are not harmful to your computer. However if you prefer, you can set your internet browser to accept or to refuse cookies. Note that if cookies are disabled, you may not be able to use all the interactive features of our website. More information regarding the disabling of cookies can be found at www.allaboutcookies.org.

If you don’t want to receive certain categories of cookies on our website, you can change your permission settings at any time in your browser settings. This only affects future cookies. To remove cookies that were placed in the past, delete them from your browser's cache.

Below are all cookies we and third parties use on our website:

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