Privacy Policy

Introduction

The Ministry for Environment, Energy and Enterprise (“we”, “us” and “our”) is committed to protecting our visitors’ and/or users’ (“you” or “your”) privacy and we will not collect any personal information about you as a visitor or user unless you provide it voluntarily.

Pursuant to the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act (Chapter 586 of the Laws of Malta), we have a legal duty to respect and protect any personal information we collect from you, and we will abide by such duty. We take all safeguards necessary to prevent unauthorised access and we do not pass on your details collected from you as a visitor and/or user, to any third party unless you give us your consent to do so.

This Privacy Policy (as amended from time to time) explains the manner in which we collect, use and share your personal data when you are utilising any of our services relating to the charging of electric vehicles, when you visit and/or use in anyway the Charge My Ride designated Website www.chargemyride.mt, related Mobile App and any other related medium in connection with the supply of electricity for electric vehicles, and in general whenever you use and interact with any of the available Charge My Ride charging pillars located in several parts of Malta and Gozo, collectively the “Services”.

Your use of our Services is at all times subject to our Terms of Use which incorporates this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy can be easily accessible via a link at the bottom of each web page.

If you follow a link to a service provided by another government department, ministry, agency or local authority, that organisation will:

Be the data controller
Be responsible for processing any data you share with them
Publish and manage their own privacy policy with details of how to contact them

The Controller of personal data

The data controller responsible for your personal data is the Ministry for Environment, Energy and Enterprise located at Barriera Wharf, Valletta Malta. We may be contacted by email [email protected] or by telephone on 22917311.

Our Data Protection Officer may be contacted on [email protected].

What personal data we collect

When you use or create a user account on our Website or related Mobile App or make use of our services, we collect various categories of personal data from you, mainly:

Personal information such as name, surname and residential address, mobile or telephone number and email address
Payment card information such as details of payment card e.g. card number, expiry, cardholder and details of payments to and from you and other details of Services purchased
Vehicle information such as vehicle license plate, vehicle make and model
Charging session details and charges incurred
Transaction history, purchase prices and details
Geolocation data including physical location
Log Data: information about website visits, interactions, IP address, browser type version, type of device used, operating software used, pages on Website visited, time and date of visit, time spent on those pages and other data generated by cookies
Customer service information including recording/reporting of faults, issues with the charging network, your feedback on our Services
Any other information that you may voluntarily provide to us from time to time

Legal basis for processing personal data

We will only process your data when permitted to by law. We use your personal information as is needed to perform a task carried out in the public interest. The provision of Services contributes towards our main goal to promote and encourage the uptake of electric vehicle use in Malta and Gozo in order to reduce carbon emissions.

Furthermore, we reply on our legitimate interest to ensure security and safety purposes when using our Website www.chargemyride.mt and the Mobile App. We may also on our legitimate interest to process your personal data for the purpose of establishing, exercising or defending legal claims or proceedings;

We may rely on consent when you have provided your explicit consent to specific processing of your personal data. When we are processing personal data based on consent, you can withdraw this consent at any time by contacting our DPO by email at [email protected].

We will ensure that we have additional grounds for processing your personal data if processing of special categories becomes envisaged. Note that special categories of personal data include data revealing your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic, biometric or health data, sexual orientation and data related to your conviction and offences.

How we collect your personal data

We may collect your personal data in the following ways:

Information you provide to us

The information we collect on or through our Website or Mobile App may include information that you provide by filling in online forms on our Website or Mobile App which includes information provided at the time of registering to use the Website or Mobile App.

When using this website’s online facilities, data subjects may be required to provide their contact details for contact purposes. All information provided in the Contact Us/Feedback form will be processed following your provision of consent.

IP Address and location

As you navigate through and interact with our Website and Mobile App, we may use automatic data collection technologies in order to collect anonymised information including:

Information on your visits to our Website including but not limited to geolocation data, traffic data and other communication data and resources to access and use the Website
Information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system and browser type, the amount of time you spent on our Website and the pages viewed on our Website
Your location while using the Mobile App

This information will help us to improve our Website or Mobile App, including but not limited to, storing information about your preferences and/or recognise you when you return to the Website. On your first visit to the Website, you will be alerted to our use of Cookies to manage and control your interaction with the Website. We are entitled to use cookie strictly necessary cookies for the operation of the Website, however for all other categories of cookies, we will seek your permission. Acceptance of cookies is completely voluntary. Our legal basis for processing is consent.

How we use your personal data

We use personal data that we collect about you or that you provide to us for one or more of the following purposes:

To present our Website and Mobile App and its contents to you
To provide you with our Services
To provide you with information on the Website, Mobile App or any of the Services that you may request from time to time
To provide you with notices about your account on the Website portal and/or Mobile App
To respond to your questions or other requests
To contact you with regard to the Website, Mobile App or our Services and to send important notices, such as communications in relation to your account
To process registrations or changes to your account information
To process other personal information submitted through our Website or Mobile App
To notify you about changes to the Website or Mobile App, policies or terms of use
To operate, maintain, and provide to you the features and functionality of our Services
To notify you about privacy incidents or provide legally required information
To provide statistics about the use of our Website and Mobile App (such information will not include any data that allows you to be identified)
In any other way we describe when you provide the information

How we share your personal data

There may be instances where we have to share your personal data with various categories of persons. We may disclose your personal data with our employees, officers and legal and professional advisors. We also share your information with relevant contractors, suppliers, and service providers to allow us to manage and deliver the Services to you.

Your personal data may be shared with other government departments, agencies and public bodies. It may also be shared with hosting providers for the secure storage and transmission of data, payment solution providers for the secure processing of payments and our technology suppliers and contractors who assist in the installation, development and management of our Website and Mobile App as well as with the provision of the Services.

However, we will not:

Sell or rent your data to third parties
Share your data with third parties for marketing purposes

When we share your personal information with service providers and third parties, we make sure that such parties act in accordance with our written instructions and make use of this data in a manner which ensures safety and security to your personal data. Such service providers and third parties will be bound by obligations of confidentiality and their use will be restricted to providing their services to us.

Except as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy, we will not disclose your personal data unless otherwise required to do so by law or court order or if we believe that such action is necessary to (a) comply with the law; (b) enforce our Terms of Use; (c) investigate and defend ourselves against any third-party claims or allegations; (f) to protect the security of our Website or Mobile App and our Services; or (g) exercise or protect our rights, property or personal safety of us, the users or others.

Your rights

The rights afforded to yourself in connection to your personal data are the following:

Right to be Informed – you have the right to receive clear, transparent and understandable information about how we process your personal data.
Right of Access – the right to obtain for us confirmation as whether or not personal data concerning you is being processed, and where that is the case, access to the personal data and the additional information as outlined in the regulations. Limitations to this right will only be applicable if provided in terms of law.
Right to Rectification – the right to request for your personal data to be amended or updated where it is inaccurate or incomplete;
Right to Erasure (“Right to be Forgotten”) – the right to request that we delete your personal data, subject to legal, compliance and regulatory obligations which we may be subject to including anti-money laundering regulations.
Right to Restrict – the right to request that we stop processing all or some of your personal data;
Right to Object – the right to object at any time, to object to us processing your personal data on grounds relating to your particular situation and the right to object to your personal data being processed for direct marketing purposes;
Right to Data Portability – the right to request a copy of your personal data in electronic format and the right to transmit that personal data for use in another entity’s service; and
Right not to be subject to Automated Decision-making – the right to not be subject to a decision based solely on automated decision making, including profiling, where the decision would have a legal effect on you or produce a similarly significant effect.

Should you wish to exercise any of your rights, please contact us through the Contact Us page within the website.

How long we keep your data

The time periods for which we retain your personal information depend on the purposes for which we use it. We will keep your personal data for as long as your user account is active, or as long as you are a user of our Services or for as long as we have another business purpose to do so (such as, but not limited to, for legal purposes) and, thereafter, for no longer than is required or permitted by law, or our retentions policy, reasonably necessary for internal reporting, or to provide you with feedback or information you might request. This period of retention is subject to our review and alteration.

Following termination or deactivation of your user account on the Website or Mobile App, we will only maintain your personal data as confidential according to this Privacy Policy and as required by applicable law.

Security

We are committed to doing all that we can to keep your data secure. We have set up systems and processes to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure of your data – for example, we protect your data using varying levels of encryption. We also make sure that any third parties that we deal with keep all personal data they process on our behalf secure. This site uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to ensure secure transmission of your personal data. You should be able to see the padlock symbol in the address bar of your browser. The URL address will also start with https:// depicting a secure webpage. SSL applies encryption between two points such as your PC and the connecting server. Any data transmitted during the session will be encrypted or scrambled and then decrypted or unscrambled at the receiving end. This will ascertain that data cannot be read during transmission.

Our contractors who require access to your personal data in order to provide services to us or to you on our behalf are also required to keep the information confidential in a manner consistent with Privacy Policy and are not permitted to disclose the information to third parties or use the information for any purpose other than to carry out the services they are performing to us.

Security also depends on you. When you have password-protected access to an account or certain parts of the Website or Mobile App, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential and you should not share this password with anyone. Furthermore, you should prevent unauthorised access to your account and personal data.

Cookie Notice/Policy

What are cookies?

Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognises that cookie.

By continuing to use this Website you agree to use the following cookies:

Strictly Necessary cookies

These are cookies that are required for the operation of our Website and web-based systems. You block cookies by rejecting the cookie information screen. It is important to note that if the browser settings are set to block all cookies (including essential cookies) one may not be able to access all or parts of the Website. Through the use of cookies, we provide the users of our website and web-based system with access to our system.

Performance cookies

These are cookies that collect informaton about how visitors use our Website. These cookies collect information about how visitors use a website, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies do not collect information that identifies a visitor. The information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. It is only used to improve how a website works.

Third-Party Use of Cookies

Some content or applications on the Website or Mobile App are served by third parties, including advertisers, ad networks and servers, content providers and application providers. First party or third-party cookies may be used to collect information about you when you use our Website. A first party cookie is a cookie set by the domain name that appears in the browser address bar. A third-party cookie is a cookie set by (and on) a domain name that is not the domain name that appears in the browser address bar. The information that first party or third-party cookies collect may be associated with your personal information or they may collect information, including personal information, about your online activities over time and across different websites and other online services (i.e tracking such activities). They may use this information to provide you with interest-based (behavioural) advertising or other targeted content. We do not control these third parties’ tracking technologies or how they may be used.

Google

Google Analytics & Google Tag Manager

We use, and some of our third-party service providers may use, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to enable us to track visitor behaviour and measure site performance. The Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager Privacy Policy may be found here < https://policies.google.com/privacy>.

To opt out of Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, please visit the Google Analytics site < https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage#cookiesSet>.

To check which cookies are used on these platforms, you may use Chrome’s built-in cookie view by clicking on ‘Secure’ next to the URL Bar and then click cookies. By viewing your site in incognito mode, the browser does not detect cookies currently placed on your own browser.

Disallowing or removing cookies

You may use your browser’s settings to prevent the installation of cookies. This may be clicking on “help” on your browser menu. This may lead you to instructions on how to prevent cookies from being installed.

Kindly note that preventing cookies may lead to the Website or parts of the Website not functioning correctly or from functioning at all.

You can manage cookies by activating the setting on your internet browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies.

Please be aware that if you remove all cookies some of your settings may not be remembered by the Website and you will have to re-enter the information.

For more extensive information, please refer to www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

Changes to Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to make changes to this Privacy Policy. You are responsible for periodically checking this Website for any updates.

Links to other websites

Our Website contains links to other websites. This Privacy Policy only applies to www.chargemyride.mt, and does not cover other websites, government services and transactions that we link to. These have their own privacy policies to which we accept no responsibility or liability for.

Complaints and concerns

If you have any concerns with regards to our privacy methods and processes, please contact our Data Protection Officer by email on [email protected]

In case you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Information and Data Protection Commissioner of Level 2, Airways House, High Street, Sliema SLM 1549 or by visiting the website at https://idpc.org.mt.

Last Updated: 21^st October 2021