The European Union (EU) and the United States (U.S.) have strong commercial ties. Transfers of personal data are an important and necessary part of the transatlantic relationship, especially in today’s global digital economy. Many transactions involve the collection and use of personal data, for example your name, phone number, birth date, home and email address, credit card number, national

insurance or employee number, login name, gender and marital status, or any other kind of information that makes it possible to identify you. For instance, your data may be collected in the EU by a branch or a business partner of an American company which r eceives the data and then uses it in the U.S. This is the case, for instance, when you buy goods or services online, when using social media or cloud storage services, or if you are an employee of an EU-based company that uses a company in the U.S. (e.g. the parent company) to deal with personnel data. EU law requires that when your personal data are transferred to the U.S they continue to benefit from a high level of protection. This is where the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield comes in. The Privacy Shield allows your personal data to be transferred from the EU to a company in the United States, provided that the company there processes (e.g. uses, stores and further transfers) your personal data according to a strong set of data protection rules and safeguards. The protection given to your data applies regardless of whether you are an EU citize n or not.