Privacy Policy Statement
The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands will use the information on your feedback form exclusively to process and reply to your comments and queries. Read the privacy policy statement below if you are interested in how Dutch ministries handle the personal information they receive through the internet.

Dutch government policy on privacy
This is how Dutch ministries handle the personal information they receive via their websites. The ministries follow the rules set out in the Personal Data Protection Act.

The ministry requesting your personal information will tell you exactly what information it wants and why. The ministry will use it only for the purposes for which you have given it. So if you give a ministry your name and address because you want to receive a leaflet, the ministry will not use them to send you other leaflets unless you have requested it to do so. Nor will a ministry use your information for any other purposes, such as sending you press releases. But it may use your information to trace you if a criminal offence has been committed or criminal utterances made via its website (further exceptions are listed in Section 43 of the Personal Data Protection Act). A ministry will not keep personal information any longer than it requires the information for the original purpose.

A ministry will process only the personal information you have given it. If it keeps information profiles on individuals, it will use them only to improve the website's user friendliness, and it will inform you of its intention to do so in advance. If you object to your personal information being used in this way, you can inform the ministry concerned via the response form (click on the envelope icon)

The Personal Data Protection Act
In processing personal information, ministries comply with the Personal Data Protection Act, which helps protect personal privacy. The Act covers personal information processed via ministry websites. Under the Act, "processing" includes the "collection", "storage", "making available in any other form", "linking", and "blocking" of personal information via the Internet.

Under the Personal Data Protection Act, before a ministry/embassy processes personal information, it must inform the individual concerned and explain why it wants to do so (Section 33). A ministry/embassy will process personal information only once it has explicitly informed the individual concerned.

Personal information
"Personal information" is information that is traceable to an "identified or identifiable natural person". In other words, the person concerned is known or can be traced. Personal information includes, for instance, a person's name, home address, or email address.

Privacy policy and use of cookies
The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands handles the personal data it receives through the website with care. When you visit our website for the first time, we send a cookie to your computer on behalf of the Embassy for statistical purposes. A cookie is a piece of digital information that identifies you as a specific user of the website. If you do not wish to make use of this feature, you can set your Internet browser to block cookies. If you accept cookies, they will remain in your computer for up to five years unless you delete them.