Short privacy notice
We believe everyone has the right to their own privacy and security.
Privacy notices contain really important information regarding how your information is used but all too often it’s easier to ignore them. This is why we’ve pulled out some key information we believe is essential.
As an HSBC customer, we’ll naturally collect information about you, and this allows us to provide you with personalised products and services.
We use your information for a number of reasons. This isn’t everything and we encourage you to take a look at our privacy notice so you have all the information you need. Any questions, we’re always happy to talk to you more about this.
The 4 essential points about your privacy
1. To provide personalised products and services for you to use
We ask for details such as your name, date of birth, email and home address so that we can confirm who you are as well as personalise your experience with HSBC. It also helps us comply with laws and regulations, including keeping you safe from fraud and financial crime.
2. To improve our offering by helping us to understand what you do and don’t like
We use data to manage our relationship with you including selling you our products, or carrying out analysis or market research on your data, to help us to improve our offering for you to use.
3. We keep track of our interactions with you
By keeping track of our conversations with you by phone, in person, by email or other kinds of communication such as online, we are able to carry out your instructions and improve our services.
4. You have rights when it comes to your information
We take your rights seriously. You have rights such as to be shown information we hold about you, update or correct your information, delete information and to be told why we use your information to start with. Please feel free to contact our data protection team if you have any questions.
More information about your rights are available on the full privacy notice pdf below.
Website privacy
Your privacy matters to us
This section outlines our policy relating to any personal information you might wish to provide us when you visit our site. Your use of our website indicates your acceptance of our website Terms of Bahrain and this Privacy and Security Statement.
Our business has been built on trust between our customers and ourselves. Unless legally compelled to disclose, we have a commitment to safeguard and keep confidential any information relating to our customers or their financial affairs. Whether it is provided to us in person at one of our branches, over the phone, or while visiting this site, we will strive at all times to ensure that the information is kept confidential and secure.
We may pass information about you and your dealings with us to other HSBC Group Companies or our agents to the extent allowed by law.
All HSBC Group Companies, all our staff and all third parties with permitted access to your information are specifically required to observe our confidentiality obligations.
We will not collect any personal information that identifies a visitor to this site individually unless specified otherwise. Your visit to this site will record only the Domain Name Server part of your e-mail address and of the pages visited. Such information will be used to prepare aggregate information about the number of visitors to the site and general statistics on usage patterns.
Some of this information will be gathered through the use of "cookies". Cookies are small pieces of information that are automatically stored on a person's web browser in their computer that can be retrieved by this site.
You can set your browser to disable persistent cookies and / or session cookies but if you disable session cookies, although you will be able to view our public unsecured website, you will not be able to log onto Internet Banking.
Use of information and materials
Products and services referred to in this website are offered only in jurisdictions where and when they may be lawfully offered by members of the HSBC Group. The materials on these pages are not intended for use by persons located in or resident in jurisdictions that restrict the distribution of such materials by us. Persons accessing these pages are required to inform themselves about and observe any relevant restrictions. Please refer to our cross-border disclosure for more information.
Copyright, trademarks
We and other parties own the trade marks, logos and service marks displayed on this site and users are prohibited from using the same without our written permission or of such other parties.
The materials on this site are protected by copyright and no part of such materials may be modified, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted (in any form or by any means), copied, distributed, used for creating derivative works or used in any other way for commercial or public purposes without our prior written consent.
No warranties
While every care has been taken in preparing the information and materials contained in this site, such information and materials are provided to you "as is" without warranty of any kind either express or implied. In particular, no warranty regarding non-infringement, security, accuracy, fitness for a particular purpose or freedom from computer virus is given in conjunction with such information and materials.
E-mail messages sent to us over the Internet cannot be guaranteed to be completely secure. We will not be responsible for any damages incurred by users if they send a message to us, or if we send a message to them at their request, over the Internet. We are not responsible in any manner for direct, indirect, special or consequential damages arising out of the use of this web site.
Transmission over the Internet
Due to the nature of the Internet, transactions may be subject to interruption, transmission blackout, delayed transmission and incorrect data transmission. HSBC will not be liable for malfunctions in communications facilities not under our control that may affect the accuracy or timeliness of messages and transactions you send.
Cookies
Our public website and online banking services, along with most other major websites, use cookies. Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to the cookie file on your computer's hard disk. Cookies enable users to navigate around the website and (where appropriate) enable us to tailor the content to fit the needs of visitors who have accessed the site.
We use two types of cookie on our website:
- Session cookies, which are temporary cookies that remain in the cookie file of your computer until you close your browser, at which point they’re deleted.
- Persistent or stored cookies which remain permanently on the cookie file of your computer.
Cookies cannot look into your computer and obtain information about you or your family or read any material kept on your hard drive and, unless you’ve logged on to online banking, cookies cannot be used to identify who you are.
Cookies cannot be used by anyone else who has access to the computer to find out anything about you, other than the fact that someone using the computer has visited a certain website. Cookies do not in any way compromise the security of online banking.
Cookies will not be used to contact you for marketing purposes other than by means of advertisements offered within our online banking services.
Cookies may be used to record details of pages relating to particular products and services that you have visited on our websites. This is to provide us with generic usage statistics to allow us to improve our websites and to provide you with information about products and services that may interest you. Information on products and services may be provided via the website or by other means.
This does not affect your right to opt out from receiving marketing material from us.
The web browsers of most computers are initially set up to accept cookies. If you prefer, you can set your web browser to disable cookies or to inform you when a website is attempting to add a cookie. You can also delete cookies that have previously been added to your computer's cookie file.
You can set your browser to disable persistent cookies and/or session cookies but if you disable session cookies, although you will be able to view our public unsecured website, you will not be able to log on to online banking.
If the computer you’re using is set to disable persistent cookies, you’ll be able to access online banking; however, your navigation of the website may be less enjoyable.
If you’ve logged on to your mobile banking or online banking, then we may, using the data gathered through cookies, contact you via post, email or phone in accordance with our personal online banking agreement. We may use cookies to show you subtly tailored content on our website, or other websites, of things we think you might be interested in, but only in relation to HSBC products and services. You will never see advertising on our website from anyone other than HSBC Group companies and our agents. The cookies we use are completely safe. In fact, many of them are used purely to provide important security features such as protecting your data and your accounts.
We use email analytics and reporting tools to see how many of our emails are opened and which links receive the most clicks. Knowing which articles and topics our customers like and which they don't like helps us improve our content and make our emails more relevant.
We maintain strict security standards and procedures to prevent unauthorised access to information about you. HSBC will never contact you by email or otherwise to ask you to validate personal information such as your user ID, password, or account numbers.
| Who else sets these cookies? | For what purpose? |
|---|---|
| Google (Recaptcha) | To validate that the interaction with our site is being performed by a human rather than an automated system or 'bot' for security purposes. |
| Optimizely | To enable delivery of personalised content in various forms across our websites. This may be based on your browsing behaviour or what we know about you as a customer or contact. If you agree to this cookie we might also use the data we collect to personalise other experiences you have with our services. |
| Tealium (EventStream) | To enable us to understand how you use and engage with our website.
|
| Tealium (Tag Management) | To allow us to control the deployment of tags (software that enhances our website) and also to enable the capture and respect of consent preferences obtained from our users. |
| Who else sets these cookies? | Google (Recaptcha) |
|---|---|
| For what purpose? | To validate that the interaction with our site is being performed by a human rather than an automated system or 'bot' for security purposes. |
| Who else sets these cookies? | Optimizely |
| For what purpose? | To enable delivery of personalised content in various forms across our websites. This may be based on your browsing behaviour or what we know about you as a customer or contact. If you agree to this cookie we might also use the data we collect to personalise other experiences you have with our services. |
| Who else sets these cookies? | Tealium (EventStream) |
| For what purpose? |
To enable us to understand how you use and engage with our website.
|
| Who else sets these cookies? | Tealium (Tag Management) |
| For what purpose? |
To allow us to control the deployment of tags (software that enhances our website) and also to enable the capture and respect of consent preferences obtained from our users. |
Tealium
In order to develop our website in line with customer needs, HSBC uses Tealium to track usage on our website. Tealium provides HSBC with statistics that allow us to understand things like which pages on our website are visited most frequently and how long visitors spend on our website. We use this information to help us plan how we should improve the website.
Tealium uses a cookie to track the number of unique users of the site. It basically tells us whether we have a small number of regular visitors to the website or a large number of infrequent visitors. None of the information can be traced to an individual – we do not know who you are as a unique user, merely that there are a certain number of people using the website. The cookie only relates to what goes on in the HSBC website and the information cannot be used for marketing on an individual basis.
App Privacy Notice
HSBC Bank Middle East Limited Bahrain Branch (‘HSBC’) collects, uses and shares information about you so that it can provide you with a bank account and related services. This App Privacy Notice explains how HSBC collects, uses and shares your information when you use HSBC’s Mobile Banking App (“HSBC Bahrain App”), including information about the device that the app is installed on e.g. your mobile phone or tablet. You can find full information in our main privacy notice here https://www.hsbc.com.bh/content/dam/hsbc/bh_hbme/docs/legal/full-data-privacy-notice.pdf
The HSBC Bahrain App is provided by HSBC Global Services (UK) Limited for and on behalf of HSBC, and all products and services accessed via this app are provided by HSBC.
If you have any questions about our Privacy policy, please email HSBC at customerexperiencebh@hsbc.com
We use a range of measures to keep your information safe and secure which may include encryption and other forms of security. We require our staff and any third parties who carry out any work on our behalf to comply with appropriate compliance standards including obligations to protect any information and applying appropriate measures for the use and transfer of information.
We’ll keep your information in line with our data retention policy.. This allows us to comply with legal and regulatory requirements or use it where we need to for our legitimate purposes such as managing your account and dealing with any disputes or concerns that may arise. We may need to keep your information for longer where we need the information to comply with regulatory or legal requirements, help detect or prevent fraud and financial crime, answer requests from regulators etc. If we don’t need to keep information for this length of time, we may destroy, delete or anonymize it sooner.
This section explains what information HSBC collects from your device, how it uses it, and whether it shares it. In some cases, e.g. when accessing the contacts stored on your device, or photos that you take with your device, HSBC will first ask your permission. HSBC may share your information with other HSBC group companies and any sub-contractors, agents or service providers who work for us or other HSBC group companies (including their employees, sub-contractors, service providers, directors and officers) to provide you with products or services that you ask for (such as bank accounts and payments) and as explained in our main privacy notice - this type of data sharing is not included here.
Permissions for devices:
- Location: Your approximate location can be used to prevent fraud when you’re using the HSBC Bahrain app.
- Device information and internet access: This allows us check if you have a working internet connection.
- Biometric information: This allows you to use biometrics authentication (like fingerprints or facial recognition) to logon to our app. If you do so, we rely on your device’s technology to authenticate you and we do not collect or store your underlying biometric data.
Permission specific to iOS devices: - App tracking transparency: This allows you to grant us the permission to track your activities across other companies’ apps and websites (versions iOS 14.0 and above only).
Permission specific to Android devices: - Application permission: This allows Google Play Store to record where you downloaded the HSBC Bahrain app from.
Tools:
Our app includes tools that collect information about your device and the way you use it online to: - allow you to log on to our app,
- provide our app's core services and features, and measure their performance,
- protect the security of our app, for example, to make sure the app is only accessed by genuine users,
- help us to identify suspicious behaviour on our app so we can protect both you and us from fraud,
- ensure our app's optional features and services work, which may include both allowing us to customize what you see on our app and where based on what we know about you, and also helping to prevent fraud and maintain security on other apps, websites or services that you haven't asked to use when you're on our app,
- enable us to understand how you use our app, so that we can improve how our app works, e.g. by using analytics providers to identify and count uses of our app and to see which pages people go to and what they do there, and
- understand what you're interested in on our app and on social media, and potentially identify what directed you to our app, so that so we or our partners can personalize our marketing to you.
Some of these tools are provided to us by external service providers and third parties.
IMPORTANT: By accessing this web site and any of its pages you are agreeing to the terms set out above.