Privacy notice

Who is responsible for your data

IME Marine Group is the name under which four companies work: International Marine Experts, Bierman Pautt & Associates, Bright North Corp. and International Seafarers Training Institute. The Group runs this website from its head office in Panama City and is responsible for the personal data sent through it.

Head office: Building No. 0750 B-D, Williamson Place, La Boca, Balboa, Ancón, Panama, Republic of Panama. For any question about this notice or about your data, write to panama@ime-group.com.

What we collect

What you send us

• Service requests and enquiries. Your name, company, position, email and telephone, the port or place, the service, the dates, the vessel if you name it, and your message.
• Customer complaints. Your name, job title, email and telephone, the job request or invoice number, the reason for the complaint, your account of it and any files you attach.
• Speak-up reports. The topic, your account of what happened, when and where it happened, and any files you attach. You say whether you work for the Group, and you choose whether to give your name, country and telephone. If you report without your name, the form sends us none of those three: only an email address, so that we can reply. A copy of the report is emailed to that address, so use one that does not identify you if you want to stay unnamed. A report may name other people; we use their data only to look into what is reported.
• Emails, calls and messages. What you tell us when you write to or call an office directly, including by WhatsApp or WeChat.

What is recorded when you visit

• Server records. The company that hosts the website records the IP address, the browser, the page requested and the time of each visit. These records are used to keep the website running and secure.
• Protection of the forms. On a page with a form, Cloudflare Turnstile checks that the form is used by a person and not by an automated programme. To do that it reads technical information about your browser and your device.

This website has no visitor analytics, no advertising and no tracking cookies. We do not build profiles of the people who visit it.

What we use it for

• To answer your request, prepare a quotation and arrange the service you asked for.
• To reply about course dates and enrolment.
• To handle a complaint or a speak-up report and tell you the outcome.
• To keep the website secure and stop misuse of its forms.
• To meet the legal, tax and regulatory duties of the company that provides the service.

We handle your data because you asked us for something (a reply, a quotation, a service), because the law requires it, or because we have a legitimate interest in keeping the website secure and in looking into complaints and reports. We use it for these purposes only. We do not sell or rent personal data.

Who receives it

• The office and the company of the Group that handle your request. The Group works from its head office in Panama and from regional offices, branches and representatives in other countries, listed in Global Network. Your request goes to the one that serves your port or handles your matter, so your data may be handled outside your own country.
• Surveyors and other professionals appointed to your job, when the service you ask for requires it.
• Providers that work on our behalf. Vercel hosts the website, Resend delivers the emails its forms send and keeps a record of them for a limited time, Cloudflare protects the forms, and our email provider holds the mailboxes that receive them. They may use the data only to provide that service.
• Authorities and registries, when a service requires it, such as a ship registration or a seafarer's endorsement, or when the law obliges us.

When your data is handled outside Panama, by an office of the Group or by one of these providers, it is handled for the same purposes and under this notice.

Speak-up reports are sent only to the people responsible for handling them, who share them with those who have to take part in looking into them.

How long we keep it

The website keeps no database of what you send: each form is delivered by email to the office that answers it. From there we keep your data for as long as it takes to deal with your request and, after that, for the time the law requires us to keep commercial, tax and professional records. Complaints and speak-up reports are kept for as long as the investigation, and any action that follows from it, require.

How we protect it

The website is served over an encrypted connection, every form is checked on the server before it is sent on, and what you send is available only to the people who need it to answer you. No transmission over the internet is free of risk. If you need to send sensitive documents, ask the office how it prefers to receive them.

Your rights

Law 81 of 26 March 2019 on the protection of personal data, of the Republic of Panama, gives you the right to:

• Access: know what data we hold about you and what we use it for.
• Rectification: have data corrected when it is wrong or incomplete.
• Cancellation: have data deleted when there is no longer a reason to keep it.
• Opposition: object to a use of your data, or withdraw a consent you gave.
• Portability: receive a copy of your data in a format you can reuse.

To use any of them, write to panama@ime-group.com and say what you are asking for and how we can reach you. We may ask you to confirm who you are before we act, and we answer within the time the law sets.

If the law of your country gives you further rights, you can use them in the same way, and you can complain to your local data protection authority. In Panama, complaints go to the National Authority for Transparency and Access to Information (ANTAI).

Links to other websites

Some pages link to the websites of accreditation bodies, maritime administrations and other organisations. Each of them handles your data under its own notice, not this one.

Who this website is for

This website is addressed to companies and to people who work in the maritime sector. It is not intended for children.

Changes to this notice

We update this notice when what we collect, or what we do with it, changes. The date at the top of the page says when it last changed.