Our privacy policy
Last updated: February 2026
Owner and Data Controller
AE nv/sa
Interleuvenlaan 76
3001 Leuven, Belgium
Owner contact email: privacy@ae.be
Privacy policy
Your personal data is collected and processed by AE NV with registered office at Interleuvenlaan 76, 3001 Leuven, Belgium, registered with company number 0466.550.303, e-mail info@ae.be
AE is a digital transformation consulting company that may process personal data during business interactions. AE commits to compliance with the GDPR and applicable Belgian data protection legislation.
This Privacy Statement is applicable to the following data subjects:
- Applicants;
- Prospects;
- Customers (this includes natural persons or legal persons whom, whether or not for compensation, call upon the services of AE);
- Partners;
- Website visitors.
3.1 Collection of Personal Data
AE collects personal data that is voluntarily provided through contact forms, requests for resources, event registration, social media communication, partnership agreements, and job applications.
AE automatically collects data about the use of, access to, or interaction with its website through cookies or similar technologies.
Information may also be received from third parties, including partners and social media platforms.
3.2 The Purpose and Legal Ground for processing Personal Data
AE may process your personal data in the context of the following activities, for the corresponding purposes and based on the stated legal grounds:
| Purpose | Categories of Personal data | Legal Ground |
|---|---|---|
| Prospecting | Name, e-mail address, public LinkedIn profile | Legitimate interest |
| Managing job applications via job portal on the website or open solicitation | Name, e-mail address, phone number, CV, motivation for the job application, LinkedIn profile, current company | Legitimate interest |
| Recruitment reserve and future job opportunities contact | Name, e-mail address, phone number, CV, motivational letter, LinkedIn profile, current company | Consent |
| Candidate communication management | Record of communications with the candidate, along with minimal contact details of the communication channel used. | Legitimate interest |
| Responding to your request via the website contact form, via e-mail, telephone or letter | Name, request, and as applicable: e-mail address, telephone number and/or other contact details or address | Necessary for the performance of a contract |
| Monitoring the functioning of the website | IP addresses, browser data | Legitimate interest |
| Detection of fraud and/or security breaches | IP addresses, browser data | Legitimate interest; Necessary for compliance with legal obligations |
| Usage, access, or interaction with the website via cookies | Usage patterns, access information via cookies | Functional and analytical cookies (insofar essential): Legitimate interest; Non-essential cookies (e.g. tracking cookies for personalised marketing / cookies through third-party website widgets): Consent; for more information, please read article 4 of this policy and the cookie policy |
| Sending out newsletters via e-mail, in order to provide you with relevant information and to keep you up to date with our latest news | Name and email address, interests | For customers: Legitimate interest (soft opt-in in line with the E-Privacy requirements); for others: Consent |
| Sales and marketing campaigns: informing you about promotions with regard to the services AE provides, and/or providing you with targeted offers via e-mail and/or informing you about inspiring and relevant events AE organises | Name and e-mail address, interests | For customers: Legitimate interest (soft opt-in in line with the E-Privacy requirements); for others: Consent (e.g. by registering on the mailing list for newsletters) |
| Whitepapers, one-pagers, e-books, cases and webinars (e.g. via LinkedIn Document Ads): providing you with the information you requested and informing you about promotions with regard to the services AE provides, and/or providing you with targeted offers via e-mail and/or informing you about inspiring and relevant events AE organises | Name and e-mail address, interests, company name, seniority and job title | Legitimate interest (soft opt-in in compliance with the ePrivacy directive) |
| Events: registering you and allowing you to participate | Name, e-mail address, function and organisation, if applicable food preference, food allergies and/or picture/image as far as you are the subject (recognisable and identifiable) | Necessary for the performance of a contract; your explicit consent for food allergies; your consent for pictures/images of you |
| Survey / feedback: assessing, evaluating and improving the services offered to you | Name and e-mail address, feedback | Legitimate interest to process your feedback about our services to assess, evaluate and improve them |
| Managing our (customer) relations and communication about the services provided to the customer | Name, e-mail address or other contact details | Necessary for the performance of a contract; with regard to the personal data that AE processes on instructions from the customer (i.e. the data controller) in the context of service delivery, AE acts as a processor. For these personal data, a Data Processing Agreement will be concluded |
By using the AE website, cookies may be placed on your device's hard drive.
Users receive consent requests through a website bar with a reference to the cookie policy. The site uses marketing plugins from Meta and LinkedIn. In accordance with Article 26 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of May 24, 2016, regarding the protection of privacy in the processing of personal data, AE is jointly responsible with these third parties for the processing.
For more information about the cookies used, AE refers you to its Cookie Policy.
In certain cases, in accordance with and, where applicable, subject to the restrictions under Applicable Data Protection Law, the data subject may exercise the following rights:
5.1 Right of access
You have the right to obtain from AE confirmation as to whether or not personal data concerning you are being processed, and, where that is the case, to obtain access to your personal data, specific information and to request a copy of this personal data.
5.2 Right to rectification
You have the right to have incorrect personal data corrected, or incomplete personal data completed.
5.3 Right to erasure ("right to be forgotten")
In certain cases, you have the right to obtain from AE the erasure of personal data concerning you.
5.4 Right to object
You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data if the processing takes place on the ground of the legitimate interest of AE or on the ground of the public interest. We will stop the processing unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override your interests, rights and freedoms or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.
You can also object to the processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes, including profiling to the extent that it is related to such direct marketing, in which case the personal data will no longer be processed for these purposes.
5.5 Right to withdraw consent
You can withdraw your consent at any time for the processing of your personal data by AE on the basis of your consent. However, the withdrawal of your consent shall not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.
5.6 Right to restriction of processing
In certain cases, you are entitled to obtain the restriction of the processing of your personal data. In such cases, with the exception of storage, your personal data will only be processed with your consent or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or for the protection of rights of another natural or legal person or for reasons of important public interest of the Union or of a Member State.
5.7 Right to data portability
In certain cases, the data subject has the right to receive the personal data concerning him or her, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or to transmit those data to another controller.
5.8 Exercise of these rights
These rights can be exercised free of charge by sending an e-mail to dpo-office@ae.be. We commit to answering your request within the deadlines prescribed by Applicable Data Protection Law.
You can lodge an official complaint with the Belgian Data Protection Authority: Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit, Drukpersstraat 35, 1000 Brussels, Tel +32 (0)2 274 48 00, e-mail: contact@apd-gba.be.
AE takes the processing of your personal data very seriously and strives to implement the necessary technical and organizational measures to protect your personal data and help prevent theft, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction of your information. AE regularly inspects its systems for potential security risks and attacks. However, it cannot guarantee the security of data you transmit. In the event of a data breach, AE will respond promptly and notify the relevant parties. Nevertheless, AE cannot be held liable for direct, indirect, or consequential damages caused by the improper or unlawful use of personal data by a third party.
The collected personal data is stored and processed in Belgium, either at AE's registered office, additional branches, or with external service providers, also located in Belgium or within Europe. Data transmitted from the website to the server occurs exclusively via a secure connection.
Some data may be stored and processed by external service providers outside the European Union. If data is handled by external providers with servers outside the European Economic Area (EEA), AE assumes that a level of protection equivalent to that in the European Union is ensured for the processing of these data. To this end, where necessary, appropriate safeguards such as standard contractual clauses with additional protections (e.g. encryption or pseudonymization of personal data, with encryption keys retained in the EU) and adequacy decisions may be applied when transferring your personal data to countries outside the EEA.
For more information, AE refers to the privacy statements of these external service providers.
AE will refrain from disclosing personal data of data subjects to third parties as well as publicly disclosing data subjects' personal data, unless in the following specific cases:
- AE grants access to its appointees and personnel. However, AE ensures a similar level of protection by imposing contractual obligations on these appointees and personnel that align with this Privacy Policy;
- Personal data can be shared between the different branches of AE for e.g. the performance of our contract or for legitimate business purposes;
- Personal data can be shared with third parties insofar necessary for the execution of the agreement;
- Personal data can be shared with third-party service providers (external suppliers) to which AE outsourced certain processing activities such as cloud, processing billing information, administration, prospecting, recruitment, mailing services, event organisation. To the extent that these third-party service providers act as our processor, they only process your personal data in accordance with our documented instructions and the data processing agreement concluded with them;
- If and to the extent it is required by applicable law or to comply with a judicial request or to protect the rights of AE, its affiliated third parties, or its customers, AE may disclose your personal data to law enforcement authorities, investigative organizations, affiliated entities, or in legal proceedings, including (judicial) reorganization, bankruptcy, or transfer. In such cases, AE will, wherever possible, attempt to inform you in advance of any potential transfer.
Regarding transfers of personal data, in principle, your personal data are only transferred outside the EEA in case an adequacy decision applies for this country or recipient. In other cases when we transfer personal data outside the EEA, we ensure to have appropriate safeguards and, to the extent required, supplementary measures in place which ensure the adequate protection of your personal data.
Generally, AE does not retain your personal data longer than strictly necessary for the realisation of the purposes for which we received the data. The retention periods differ with regards to the type of processing activity and the purpose for which the personal data were collected. In particular:
- We process personal data for your job application only as long as required to process your application. In case of a negative hiring decision, your personal data will be removed unless you consent to us retaining your personal data for two years.
- We keep personal data about our contract/collaboration for as long as necessary to execute our contract, to comply with our legal obligations (such as accounting and tax obligations) and to resolve disputes or enforce contracts. Therefore, this personal data is retained for the duration of our contractual relationship and for 10 years thereafter.
- The personal data that we collect on the basis of your consent will be kept as long as your consent remains valid and is not withdrawn.
For more information on the retention periods that we apply, please contact us via the details provided in section 9 below.
If you have comments, questions, concerns or complaints about this Privacy Statement, or any other issues relating to the processing of your personal data by AE, please contact us via dpo-office@ae.be.
In the event you prefer to contact us by post, you can do so on the following address: Interleuvenlaan 76, 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
We may amend or update this Privacy Statement from time to time to reflect changes in our practices with respect to the processing of your personal data, or changes in applicable law including but not limited to Applicable Data Protection Law.
We will be doing this by posting the updated version on the AE website and by actively informing you to the extent required by applicable law. When we publish changes to our Privacy Statement, we will always change the date and version number of the "last update" of our Privacy Statement. Significant changes will also be reported on our homepage. Nevertheless, we encourage you to read our Privacy Statement periodically.
Last updated: February, 2026 - Leuven