Effective Date: 12 September 2018
This Privacy Notice explains the way that F5 Networks, Inc. and its affiliates (collectively, "F5") handle information about you that is collected in the following contexts:
In legal terms, F5 is a “controller” of this data. This Privacy Notice does not cover the personal data we handle under contract in our role as a “processor” for our customers. Much of that personal data is described in our Privacy Shield Notice available here.
We collect, store, and use the following categories of personal data:
We obtain personal data directly from you or your employer; from third-party sources such as resellers, distributors, third-party marketplaces, data brokers, marketing companies, referrals from customers, and users; and from publicly available sources such as company websites.
F5 also collects personal data through the technology described in the "Cookies and similar technology" section below.
F5 uses and shares personal data for the following purposes:
For those purposes, we may share personal data with our affiliates and third parties that help us with the activities described in this Privacy Notice. These uses and disclosures are also subject to our contractual obligations.
The laws in some jurisdictions require companies to tell you about the legal grounds that allow them to use or disclose your personal data. Where those laws apply, our legal grounds are:
We may also use and disclose personal data for the same legitimate interests of our customers, business partners, and suppliers.
We offer the options below for exercising your rights and choices about how we use your personal data. Many of these are subject to important limits or exceptions under applicable laws.
We are a global company with headquarters in the United States, and the F5 affiliates and third parties with whom we share the personal data as described in this Privacy Notice are located in the United States and elsewhere in the world, including countries where privacy laws may not provide as much protection as your country. F5 complies with legal requirements for protecting the movement of data across borders, including through the use of European Commission-approved Standard Contractual Clauses or by relying on the third party’s participation in the EU-U.S. or Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks.
Please note that our customers may transfer personal data to F5 on the basis of other legal mechanisms approved by the European Commission and other relevant authorities for transferring data across borders, such as Standard Contractual Clauses. If you wish to exercise a right to see copies of the mechanisms that F5 uses to transfer data to third parties, please contact us.
Finally, certain F5 services allow our customers and users to transfer data to third parties. Those third parties are solely responsible for that data.
In our websites, apps, and emails, we and third parties may collect certain information by automated means such as cookies, web beacons, JavaScript, mobile-device functionality and other computer code. This information may include unique browser identifiers, IP address, browser and operating system information, device identifiers (such as the Apple IDFA or Android Advertising ID), geolocation, other device information, Internet connection information, as well as details about your interactions with our apps, websites, and emails (for example, the URL of the third-party website from which you came, the pages on our website that you visit, and the links you click on in our websites).
We and third parties may use these automated means to read or write information on your devices, such as in various types of cookies and other browser-based or plugin-based local storage (such as HTML5 storage or Flash-based storage), or to collect pieces of information that together may uniquely identify your device.
Cookies and local storage are files that contain data, such as unique identifiers, that we or a third party may transfer to or read from your devices for the purposes described in this Privacy Notice, such as to recognize the devices, to improve your use of our website and services, for cybersecurity, to prevent fraud, to provide services, and for record-keeping, analytics, and marketing, depending on the context of collection.
These technologies help us:
Also, in some cases, we assist with the collection of information by advertising services provided by third parties. The ad services may track your online activities over time by collecting information through automated means such as cookies, and they may use this information to show you ads that are tailored to your individual interests or characteristics and/or based on your prior visits to certain sites or apps, or other information we or they know, infer, or have collected from the users like you.
For example, we and these services may use different types of cookies, other automated technology, and data to:
By clicking on the cookie preferences hyperlink in the footer of participating F5 websites, you can adjust your preferences about how certain cookies and certain similar technologies are used in F5 websites that hyperlink to that preferences tool from their footer. You should repeat this process with each browser you use to visit those websites.
To learn more about interest-based advertising generally, or to use a different method to opt out of targeted, interest-based ads by some of our current ad service partners, visit aboutads.info/choices or youronlinechoices.eu from each browser you use.
You can opt out of Google Analytics and customize the Google Display Network ads by visiting the Google Ads Settings page from each browser. Google also allows you to install a Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on for each browser.
In addition, you may be able to set your web browser to refuse certain types of cookies, or to alert you when certain types of cookies are being sent. Some browsers offer similar settings for HTML5 local storage, and Flash storage can be managed here. However, if you block or otherwise reject our cookies, local storage, JavaScript or other technologies, certain websites (including some of our own websites) may not function properly.
If you replace, change, or upgrade your browser, or delete your cookies, you may need to use these opt-out tools again. We do not respond to browser-based do-not-track signals.
Please visit your mobile device manufacturer's website (or the website for its operating system) for instructions on any additional privacy controls in your mobile operating system, such as privacy settings for device identifiers and geolocation.
We will retain personal data as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Notice unless the law requires us to keep it for a longer period of time. To provide security and business continuity for the activities described in this Privacy Notice, we make backups of certain data, which we may retain for longer than the original data.
To protect personal data, we have put in place reasonable physical, technical, and administrative safeguards. However, we cannot assure you that data that we collect will never be used or disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Notice.
If the law and our contractual obligations allow, we may aggregate or de-identify your personal data so that the information cannot be linked to you and is no longer personal data. Our use and disclosure of non-personal data is not subject to this Privacy Notice, and we may use or disclose it for any reason permitted by law.
F5 may change this Privacy Notice at any time, including to reflect changes in the law or our data practices. Any updated Privacy Notice will be accessible from the footer of f5.com or another convenient location.
If you have questions, requests, or complaints regarding your personal data or this Privacy Notice, please contact us at privacy@F5.com or:
F5 Networks, Inc.
Attn: Privacy Office
401 Elliott Avenue West
Seattle, Washington 98119
United States
EU headquarters/representative:
F5 Networks Limited
Attn: Privacy Office
Chertsey Gate West
43-47 London Street
Chertsey
SURREY
KT16 8AP
UNITED KINGDOM
For your protection, we will only implement requests with respect to personal data after we have sufficiently verified your identity, taking into consideration the nature of your request. We will work to comply with requests as soon as reasonably practicable.