Personal information is information that can be used to directly or indirectly identify you. Personal information also includes information that is linked to information that can be used to directly or indirectly identify you. Personal information does not include information that has been irreversibly anonymized or aggregated so that it can no longer enable us, whether in combination with other information or otherwise, to identify you.

Here is a description of the types of personal information we may collect and how we may use it:

What Personal Information We Collect

Depending on the products and services you use, we may collect and have collected within the preceding 12 months different kinds of personal information from or about you.

• Information you provide: We may collect the personal information you provide—such as your name, username, email address, phone number, or mailing address—when you use our products and services, create an account, contact us, participate in an online survey, participate in community discussions or chat rooms, apply for employment, sign-up to receive our marketing communications, interact with us at in-person events, or otherwise interact with us.
• Information about payments: If you make a purchase, we may collect personal information in connection with the purchase. This information includes payment information, such as your credit or debit card number and other card information; other account and authentication information; and billing, shipping, and contact details.
• Information about use of our products and services: When you use our products and services, including our websites and web, mobile, and desktop applications, or view our emails or advertisements, we may collect information about the type of device you use, your device configuration, your device’s unique identifier, the IP address of your device, your operating system, the type of Internet browser that you use, usage information, diagnostic information, browsing information, session summary information, CPU and other usage statistics, API calls, service crash information, network status, storage utilization, search terms, file attributes (including attributes for photos, videos, music, and documents), and location information from or about the computers, phones, or other devices on which you install or access our products or services. We may gather some of this information automatically. Where available, our services may use GPS, your IP address, and other technologies to determine a device’s approximate location to allow us to improve our products and services. Please read our Cookie Statement for more information on how we use web tracking technologies and the choices you have.
• Information from third parties: We may collect information from third parties, including business partners and marketing agencies. This includes your contact information from marketing partners when we engage in joint marketing or co-branding activities, your IP address or location information from service providers to offer certain products and services relevant to your location, and data from your social networks to authenticate your product use with us, or that you grant permission to our products or services to access.

How We Use Your Personal Information

We may use personal information for the purposes described in this Privacy Statement. Generally speaking, we use personal information to provide, improve, develop, and personalize your experience with our products and services, to communicate with you, to offer you targeted advertisements and services, and to protect us and our users. We may do so with your consent, for compliance with a legal obligation, for the performance of a contract with you, or for our legitimate interests, to the extent permitted by applicable laws. Western Digital Technologies, Inc. collects, processes, and determines how to process your personal information as data controller for the following purposes:

• Providing, improving, developing, and personalizing your experience with our products and services: We may use personal information to help us provide, improve, develop, and personalize your experience with our products and services. This includes using personal information for purposes such as data analysis, research, and audits. We may perform such processing based on your consent or our legitimate interest in offering you products and services and for business continuity. If you enter a sweepstakes, contest, or other promotion, we may use the personal information you provide to administer those programs. Some of these activities have additional rules, which may contain further information about how we use personal information, so we encourage you to read those rules carefully before participating.
• Communicating with you: We may use personal information to communicate with you about important notices, including notices related to your account, products, services, transactions, or changes to our policies and terms. Such processing is undertaken because it is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or is based on our legitimate interest in interacting with you to provide you with our products and services. We may also use personal information to communicate with you about your employment requests. Our privacy notices to applicants and employees provide additional information concerning the personal information we collect and how we use personal information in connection with your employment requests. Subject to your prior express consent, we may use personal information to send you marketing communications in relation to Western Digital’s own products and services, and we may share your personal information with third-party partners who may send you marketing communications in relation to their products and services. If you no longer wish to receive email communications for marketing purposes, please Contact Us to opt-out. We may use your information to process and respond to your requests when you contact us.
• Offering and measuring targeted advertisements and services: We may use personal information to provide you with personalized advertisements, including on third-party websites and applications, and to determine the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns. Please read our Cookie Statement for more information on how we use web tracking technologies for personalized advertisements and the choices you have. We may also use audience matching to reach people (or people similar to people) who used our products and services or are identified in one or more of our databases. This is done by us providing a list of hashed email addresses to an ad partner or incorporating a pixel from an ad partner into our own products and services, and the ad partner matching common factors between our data and their data.
• Promoting safety and security: We may use personal information to help verify accounts and user activity, as well as to promote safety and security, such as by monitoring fraud and investigating suspicious or potentially illegal activity or violations of our terms or policies. Such processing is undertaken because it is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or is based on our legitimate interest in helping to ensure the safety of our products and services.

For any of the uses of your data described above that require your prior express consent under applicable law, note that you may withdraw your consent by contacting us via our webform.

As a global company, Western Digital Corporation has a number of corporate affiliates in different jurisdictions. Each of these affiliates collects, processes, and determines how to process your personal information as a data controller to help provide you with the products and services you request.

We use and have used within the preceding 12 months cookies and similar technologies to provide, protect, and improve our products and services, such as by personalizing content, understanding user behavior, and providing a safer experience. We also use these technologies to provide you with personalized advertisements, including on third-party websites and applications, and to determine the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns.

Please read our Cookie Statement to learn more about how we use cookies and web tracking technologies and the choices you have.

We make certain personal information available to strategic partners that work with us to provide our products and services or help us market to customers. Personal information will only be shared and has been shared within the preceding 12 months by us with these companies in order to provide or improve our products, services, and advertising; it will not be shared and has not been shared within the preceding 12 months with third parties for their own marketing purposes.

Service Providers

We may share personal information with companies that provide services on our behalf, such as website hosting; email services; marketing; advertising; sponsoring of sweepstakes, contests, and other promotions; auditing; payment processing; fulfilling customer orders; data analytics; providing customer support; conducting customer research and satisfaction surveys; cloud storage services; and other services that assist in providing or selling our products and services. These companies are obligated to protect your information and may be located wherever we operate.

Corporate Affiliates and Corporate Business Transactions

We may share personal information with all Western Digital Corporation-affiliated companies. In the event of a merger, reorganization, acquisition, joint venture, assignment, spin-off, transfer, or sale or disposition of all or any portion of our business, including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings, we may transfer any and all personal information to the relevant third party.

Legal Compliance and Security

It may be necessary—by law or as a result of legal process, litigation, or requests from public or governmental authorities within or outside your country of residence—for us to disclose personal information. We may also disclose personal information if we determine that for purposes of national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance, disclosure is necessary or appropriate.

We may also disclose personal information if we determine in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect our rights and pursue available remedies, enforce our terms and conditions, investigate fraud, or protect our operations or users.

We take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is accurate, complete, and up-to-date. Depending on where you live, you may have the rights described below.

You have the right to access, correct, or delete the personal information that we collect. You have the right to object to or restrict, at any time, the further processing of your personal information. You may also have the right to receive your personal information in a structured and standard format. You may lodge a complaint with the competent data protection authority regarding the processing of your personal information.

To protect the privacy and the security of your personal information, we may request information from you to enable us to confirm your identity and right to access such information, as well as to search for and provide you with the personal information we maintain. There are instances where applicable laws or regulatory requirements allow or require us to refuse to provide or delete some or all of the personal information that we maintain.

You may fill out our webform to exercise your rights. We will respond to your request in a reasonable timeframe, and in any event in less than 30 days.

Please refer to our California Consumer Privacy Act Notice for additional disclosures and information relating to your rights under California law, including how to submit requests to access and/or delete your information pursuant to the CCPA.

If you are a California resident, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information by us to third parties at any time.  

To opt-out:

(1) submit a request through the Do Not Sell My Personal Information form available here, specifying you wish to opt-out of sales (such as sharing your information with our partners for audience matching purposes via means other than cookies or web tracking technologies referenced in (2) below); and

(2) click Cookies Preferences in the footer below and toggle the options to “No” for both “Performance and Functionality” and “Advertising” Cookie options, and click “Submit Preferences”.  This will deactivate performance, functionality, and advertising cookies and web tracking technologies on our site, including those used for audience matching purposes and personalized advertisements. Deactivating these cookies and web tracking technologies may only apply to the specific browser from which you click the link, and your preferences may reset if you change your settings.

To access to your personal information or to request that we delete your personal information, please submit a request via our webform here.

Please fill out our webform to close your account in relation to the following uses of your personal information:

• providing, improving, developing, and personalizing your experience with our products and services (for such requests, Western Digital Technologies, Inc. will act on behalf of its local affiliates);
• communicating with you;
• sharing your personal information with third-party partners for marketing communications;
• offering and measuring targeted advertisements and services; or
• promoting safety and security.

If you close your account, we have no obligation to retain your information, and we may delete any or all of your information without liability.  We may retain, however, information related to you if we believe it may be necessary to prevent fraud or future abuse, if required by law, or for legitimate purposes, where applicable, such as analysis of non-personal information, account recovery, maintaining the functionality or security of our systems, auditing our records, or enforcing our rights and obligations under our agreements.

Our products and services, including our websites and digital media properties, may contain links to or the ability for you to access third-party websites, products, and services.  We are not responsible for the privacy practices employed by those third parties, nor are we responsible for the information or content their products and services contain.  This Privacy Statement applies solely to information collected by us.  We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any third parties before proceeding to use their websites, products, or services.

It is important that you take precautions to protect against unauthorized access to your Western Digital products, account credentials, and computers or other devices.  If you feel that the security of your account or personal information has been compromised, please immediately Contact Us.  Please be aware that, despite our efforts, no security system is impenetrable. In the event of a security breach, we will promptly notify you and the proper authorities if required by law.

We will retain your personal information for as long as it is necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Statement, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.

We do not knowingly collect, use, or disclose information from children under the age of 16.  If we learn that we have collected the personal information of a child under the age of 16—or the equivalent minimum age depending on the jurisdiction, such as 13 in the United States or 14 in the People’s Republic of China (which, for the purposes of this Privacy Statement, excludes the Hong Kong SAR, Macao SAR and the Taiwan region)—we will take steps to delete the information as soon as possible.  Please immediately Contact Us if you become aware that a child under the age of 16 has provided us with personal information.

If you are a California resident under the age of 18, and you are a registered user of our products or services, California law permits you to request and obtain removal of content or information you have publicly posted.  To make such a request, please Contact Us with specific information about where the content or information is posted and attesting that you posted it.  We will then make reasonable, good faith efforts to remove the post from prospective public view, or anonymize it so you cannot be individually identified, to the extent required by applicable law.  Please be aware that such a request does not ensure complete or comprehensive removal of the content or information you have posted and that there may be circumstances in which the law does not require or allow removal even if requested.

When we share your personal information with our partners, Western Digital-affiliated companies, and service providers, your personal information may be transferred to and/or made accessible from countries out of the European Economic Area or the People’s Republic of China.  In such circumstances, we will enter into model contractual clauses as adopted by the European Commission or the Cyberspace Administration of China, as applicable, or rely on alternative legal bases, and implement mandatory measures to act in accordance with applicable laws (for example, creating a process to disclose additional required information to you when transferring your personal information out of the People’s Republic of China). For some of our services, your personal information may be transferred to and/or stored and processed on servers located in the United States, or in other locations outside of the country where you reside for the purpose of providing the services to you.

We may periodically change this Privacy Statement to keep pace with new technologies, industry practices, and regulatory requirements, among other reasons.  We expect most such changes to be minor.  Any non-material changes will take effect immediately upon posting of an updated Privacy Statement, and we will indicate the Last Modified date at the top of this document.  There may, however, be cases where changes to this Privacy Statement may be more significant.  In such cases, we will provide you with a prominent notice of such changes on our website or will directly send you a notification.

Your continued use of our products and services after the effective date of the Privacy Statement means that you accept the revised Privacy Statement.  If you do not agree to the revised Privacy Statement, please refrain from using our products and services and Contact Us to close any account you may have created.

Personal information is information that can be used to directly or indirectly identify you. Personal information also includes information that is linked to information that can be used to directly or indirectly identify you. Personal information does not include information that has been irreversibly anonymized or aggregated so that it can no longer enable us, whether in combination with other information or otherwise, to identify you.

Here is a description of the types of personal information we may collect and how we may use it:

What Personal Information We Collect

Depending on the products and services you use, we may collect and have collected within the preceding 12 months different kinds of personal information from or about you.

• Information you provide: We may collect the personal information you provide—such as your name, username, email address, phone number, or mailing address—when you use our products and services, create an account, contact us, participate in an online survey, participate in community discussions or chat rooms, apply for employment, sign-up to receive our marketing communications, interact with us at in-person events, or otherwise interact with us.
• Information about payments: If you make a purchase, we may collect personal information in connection with the purchase. This information includes payment information, such as your credit or debit card number and other card information; other account and authentication information; and billing, shipping, and contact details.
• Information about use of our products and services: When you use our products and services, including our websites and web, mobile, and desktop applications, or view our emails or advertisements, we may collect information about the type of device you use, your device configuration, your device’s unique identifier, the IP address of your device, your operating system, the type of Internet browser that you use, usage information, diagnostic information, browsing information, session summary information, CPU and other usage statistics, API calls, service crash information, network status, storage utilization, search terms, file attributes (including attributes for photos, videos, music, and documents), and location information from or about the computers, phones, or other devices on which you install or access our products or services. We may gather some of this information automatically. Where available, our services may use GPS, your IP address, and other technologies to determine a device’s approximate location to allow us to improve our products and services. Please read our Cookie Statement for more information on how we use web tracking technologies and the choices you have.
• Information from third parties: We may collect information from third parties, including business partners and marketing agencies. This includes your contact information from marketing partners when we engage in joint marketing or co-branding activities, your IP address or location information from service providers to offer certain products and services relevant to your location, and data from your social networks to authenticate your product use with us, or that you grant permission to our products or services to access.

How We Use Your Personal Information

We may use personal information for the purposes described in this Privacy Statement. Generally speaking, we use personal information to provide, improve, develop, and personalize your experience with our products and services, to communicate with you, to offer you targeted advertisements and services, and to protect us and our users. We may do so with your consent, for compliance with a legal obligation, for the performance of a contract with you, or for our legitimate interests, to the extent permitted by applicable laws. Western Digital Technologies, Inc. collects, processes, and determines how to process your personal information as data controller for the following purposes:

• Providing, improving, developing, and personalizing your experience with our products and services: We may use personal information to help us provide, improve, develop, and personalize your experience with our products and services. This includes using personal information for purposes such as data analysis, research, and audits. We may perform such processing based on your consent or our legitimate interest in offering you products and services and for business continuity. If you enter a sweepstakes, contest, or other promotion, we may use the personal information you provide to administer those programs. Some of these activities have additional rules, which may contain further information about how we use personal information, so we encourage you to read those rules carefully before participating.
• Communicating with you: We may use personal information to communicate with you about important notices, including notices related to your account, products, services, transactions, or changes to our policies and terms. Such processing is undertaken because it is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or is based on our legitimate interest in interacting with you to provide you with our products and services. We may also use personal information to communicate with you about your employment requests. Our privacy notices to applicants and employees provide additional information concerning the personal information we collect and how we use personal information in connection with your employment requests. Subject to your prior express consent, we may use personal information to send you marketing communications in relation to Western Digital’s own products and services, and we may share your personal information with third-party partners who may send you marketing communications in relation to their products and services. If you no longer wish to receive email communications for marketing purposes, please Contact Us to opt-out. We may use your information to process and respond to your requests when you contact us.
• Offering and measuring targeted advertisements and services: We may use personal information to provide you with personalized advertisements, including on third-party websites and applications, and to determine the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns. Please read our Cookie Statement for more information on how we use web tracking technologies for personalized advertisements and the choices you have. We may also use audience matching to reach people (or people similar to people) who used our products and services or are identified in one or more of our databases. This is done by us providing a list of hashed email addresses to an ad partner or incorporating a pixel from an ad partner into our own products and services, and the ad partner matching common factors between our data and their data.
• Promoting safety and security: We may use personal information to help verify accounts and user activity, as well as to promote safety and security, such as by monitoring fraud and investigating suspicious or potentially illegal activity or violations of our terms or policies. Such processing is undertaken because it is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or is based on our legitimate interest in helping to ensure the safety of our products and services.

For any of the uses of your data described above that require your prior express consent under applicable law, note that you may withdraw your consent by contacting us via our webform.

As a global company, Western Digital Corporation has a number of corporate affiliates in different jurisdictions. Each of these affiliates collects, processes, and determines how to process your personal information as a data controller to help provide you with the products and services you request.

We use and have used within the preceding 12 months cookies and similar technologies to provide, protect, and improve our products and services, such as by personalizing content, understanding user behavior, and providing a safer experience. We also use these technologies to provide you with personalized advertisements, including on third-party websites and applications, and to determine the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns.

Please read our Cookie Statement to learn more about how we use cookies and web tracking technologies and the choices you have.