Privacy Policy

1. An overview of data protection

General information

The fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion will pro­vide you with an easy to nav­i­gate overview of what will hap­pen with your per­son­al data when you vis­it this web­site. The term “per­son­al data” com­pris­es all data that can be used to per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fy you. For detailed infor­ma­tion about the sub­ject mat­ter of data pro­tec­tion, please con­sult our Data Pro­tec­tion Dec­la­ra­tion, which we have includ­ed beneath this copy.

Data recording on this website

Who is the responsible party for the recording of data on this website (i.e., the “controller”)?

The data on this web­site is processed by the oper­a­tor of the web­site, whose con­tact infor­ma­tion is avail­able under sec­tion “Infor­ma­tion about the respon­si­ble par­ty (referred to as the “con­troller” in the GDPR)” in this Pri­va­cy Policy.

How do we record your data?

We col­lect your data as a result of your shar­ing of your data with us. This may, for instance be infor­ma­tion you enter into our con­tact form.

Oth­er data shall be record­ed by our IT sys­tems auto­mat­i­cal­ly or after you con­sent to its record­ing dur­ing your web­site vis­it. This data com­pris­es pri­mar­i­ly tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion (e.g., web brows­er, oper­at­ing sys­tem, or time the site was accessed). This infor­ma­tion is record­ed auto­mat­i­cal­ly when you access this website.

What are the purposes we use your data for?

A por­tion of the infor­ma­tion is gen­er­at­ed to guar­an­tee the error free pro­vi­sion of the web­site. Oth­er data may be used to ana­lyze your user patterns.

What rights do you have as far as your information is concerned?

You have the right to receive infor­ma­tion about the source, recip­i­ents, and pur­pos­es of your archived per­son­al data at any time with­out hav­ing to pay a fee for such dis­clo­sures. You also have the right to demand that your data are rec­ti­fied or erad­i­cat­ed. If you have con­sent­ed to data pro­cess­ing, you have the option to revoke this con­sent at any time, which shall affect all future data pro­cess­ing. More­over, you have the right to demand that the pro­cess­ing of your data be restrict­ed under cer­tain cir­cum­stances. Fur­ther­more, you have the right to log a com­plaint with the com­pe­tent super­vis­ing agency.

Please do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us at any time if you have ques­tions about this or any oth­er data pro­tec­tion relat­ed issues.

Analysis tools and tools provided by third parties

There is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that your brows­ing pat­terns will be sta­tis­ti­cal­ly ana­lyzed when your vis­it this web­site. Such analy­ses are per­formed pri­mar­i­ly with what we refer to as analy­sis programs.

For detailed infor­ma­tion about these analy­sis pro­grams please con­sult our Data Pro­tec­tion Dec­la­ra­tion below.

2. Hosting and Content Delivery Networks (CDN)

External Hosting

This web­site is host­ed by an exter­nal ser­vice provider (host). Per­son­al data col­lect­ed on this web­site are stored on the servers of the host. These may include, but are not lim­it­ed to, IP address­es, con­tact requests, meta­da­ta and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, con­tract infor­ma­tion, con­tact infor­ma­tion, names, web page access, and oth­er data gen­er­at­ed through a web site.

The host is used for the pur­pose of ful­fill­ing the con­tract with our poten­tial and exist­ing cus­tomers (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. b GDPR) and in the inter­est of secure, fast, and effi­cient pro­vi­sion of our online ser­vices by a pro­fes­sion­al provider (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR).

Our host will only process your data to the extent nec­es­sary to ful­fil its per­for­mance oblig­a­tions and to fol­low our instruc­tions with respect to such data.

We are using the fol­low­ing host:

Mittwald CM Ser­vice GmbH & Co. KG
Königs­berg­er Straße 4–6
32339 Espelkamp

Execution of a contract data processing agreement

In order to guar­an­tee pro­cess­ing in com­pli­ance with data pro­tec­tion reg­u­la­tions, we have con­clud­ed an order pro­cess­ing con­tract with our host.

3. General information and mandatory information

Data protection

The oper­a­tors of this web­site and its pages take the pro­tec­tion of your per­son­al data very seri­ous­ly. Hence, we han­dle your per­son­al data as con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion and in com­pli­ance with the statu­to­ry data pro­tec­tion reg­u­la­tions and this Data Pro­tec­tion Declaration.

When­ev­er you use this web­site, a vari­ety of per­son­al infor­ma­tion will be col­lect­ed. Per­son­al data com­pris­es data that can be used to per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fy you. This Data Pro­tec­tion Dec­la­ra­tion explains which data we col­lect as well as the pur­pos­es we use this data for. It also explains how, and for which pur­pose the infor­ma­tion is collected.

We here­with advise you that the trans­mis­sion of data via the Inter­net (i.e., through e‑mail com­mu­ni­ca­tions) may be prone to secu­ri­ty gaps. It is not pos­si­ble to com­plete­ly pro­tect data against third-par­ty access.

Information about the responsible party (referred to as the “controller” in the GDPR)

The data pro­cess­ing con­troller on this web­site is:

Pia West­er­mann
Win­klers Platz 3
22767 Hamburg

Phone: 01605238530
E‑mail: info@piawestermann.de

The con­troller is the nat­ur­al per­son or legal enti­ty that sin­gle-hand­ed­ly or joint­ly with oth­ers makes deci­sions as to the pur­pos­es of and resources for the pro­cess­ing of per­son­al data (e.g., names, e‑mail address­es, etc.).

Storage duration

Unless a more spe­cif­ic stor­age peri­od has been spec­i­fied in this pri­va­cy pol­i­cy, your per­son­al data will remain with us until the pur­pose for which it was col­lect­ed no longer applies. If you assert a jus­ti­fied request for dele­tion or revoke your con­sent to data pro­cess­ing, your data will be delet­ed, unless we have oth­er legal­ly per­mis­si­ble rea­sons for stor­ing your per­son­al data (e.g., tax or com­mer­cial law reten­tion peri­ods); in the lat­ter case, the dele­tion will take place after these rea­sons cease to apply.

Information on data transfer to the USA

Our web­site uses, in par­tic­u­lar, tools from com­pa­nies based in the USA. When these tools are active, your per­son­al infor­ma­tion may be trans­ferred to the US servers of these com­pa­nies. We must point out that the USA is not a safe third coun­try with­in the mean­ing of EU data pro­tec­tion law. US com­pa­nies are required to release per­son­al data to secu­ri­ty author­i­ties with­out you as the data sub­ject being able to take legal action against this. The pos­si­bil­i­ty can­not there­fore be exclud­ed that US author­i­ties (e.g. secret ser­vices) may process, eval­u­ate, and per­ma­nent­ly store your data on US servers for mon­i­tor­ing pur­pos­es.  We have no influ­ence over these pro­cess­ing activities.

Revocation of your consent to the processing of data

A wide range of data pro­cess­ing trans­ac­tions are pos­si­ble only sub­ject to your express con­sent. You can also revoke at any time any con­sent you have already giv­en us. This shall be with­out prej­u­dice to the law­ful­ness of any data col­lec­tion that occurred pri­or to your revocation.

Right to object to the collection of data in special cases; right to object to direct advertising (Art. 21 GDPR)

IN THE EVENT THAT DATA ARE PROCESSED ON THE BASIS OF ART. 6 SECT. 1 LIT. E OR F GDPR, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO AT ANY TIME OBJECT TO THE PROCESSING OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA BASED ON GROUNDS ARISING FROM YOUR UNIQUE SITUATION. THIS ALSO APPLIES TO ANY PROFILING BASED ON THESE PROVISIONS. TO DETERMINE THE LEGAL BASIS, ON WHICH ANY PROCESSING OF DATA IS BASED, PLEASE CONSULT THIS DATA PROTECTION DECLARATION. IF YOU LOG AN OBJECTION, WE WILL NO LONGER PROCESS YOUR AFFECTED PERSONAL DATA, UNLESS WE ARE IN A POSITION TO PRESENT COMPELLING PROTECTION WORTHY GROUNDS FOR THE PROCESSING OF YOUR DATA, THAT OUTWEIGH YOUR INTERESTS, RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS OR IF THE PURPOSE OF THE PROCESSING IS THE CLAIMING, EXERCISING OR DEFENCE OF LEGAL ENTITLEMENTS (OBJECTION PURSUANT TO ART. 21 SECT. 1 GDPR).

IF YOUR PERSONAL DATA IS BEING PROCESSED IN ORDER TO ENGAGE IN DIRECT ADVERTISING, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO AT ANY TIME OBJECT TO THE PROCESSING OF YOUR AFFECTED PERSONAL DATA FOR THE PURPOSES OF SUCH ADVERTISING. THIS ALSO APPLIES TO PROFILING TO THE EXTENT THAT IT IS AFFILIATED WITH SUCH DIRECT ADVERTISING. IF YOU OBJECT, YOUR PERSONAL DATA WILL SUBSEQUENTLY NO LONGER BE USED FOR DIRECT ADVERTISING PURPOSES (OBJECTION PURSUANT TO ART. 21 SECT. 2 GDPR).

Right to log a complaint with the competent supervisory agency

In the event of vio­la­tions of the GDPR, data sub­jects are enti­tled to log a com­plaint with a super­vi­so­ry agency, in par­tic­u­lar in the mem­ber state where they usu­al­ly main­tain their domi­cile, place of work or at the place where the alleged vio­la­tion occurred. The right to log a com­plaint is in effect regard­less of any oth­er admin­is­tra­tive or court pro­ceed­ings avail­able as legal recourses.

Right to data portability

You have the right to demand that we hand over any data we auto­mat­i­cal­ly process on the basis of your con­sent or in order to ful­fil a con­tract be hand­ed over to you or a third par­ty in a com­mon­ly used, machine read­able for­mat. If you should demand the direct trans­fer of the data to anoth­er con­troller, this will be done only if it is tech­ni­cal­ly feasible.

SSL and/or TLS encryption

For secu­ri­ty rea­sons and to pro­tect the trans­mis­sion of con­fi­den­tial con­tent, such as pur­chase orders or inquiries you sub­mit to us as the web­site oper­a­tor, this web­site uses either an SSL or a TLS encryp­tion pro­gram. You can rec­og­nize an encrypt­ed con­nec­tion by check­ing whether the address line of the brows­er switch­es from “http://” to “https://” and also by the appear­ance of the lock icon in the brows­er line.

If the SSL or TLS encryp­tion is acti­vat­ed, data you trans­mit to us can­not be read by third parties.

Information about, rectification and eradication of data

With­in the scope of the applic­a­ble statu­to­ry pro­vi­sions, you have the right to at any time demand infor­ma­tion about your archived per­son­al data, their source and recip­i­ents as well as the pur­pose of the pro­cess­ing of your data. You may also have a right to have your data rec­ti­fied or erad­i­cat­ed. If you have ques­tions about this sub­ject mat­ter or any oth­er ques­tions about per­son­al data, please do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us at any time.

Right to demand processing restrictions

You have the right to demand the impo­si­tion of restric­tions as far as the pro­cess­ing of your per­son­al data is con­cerned. To do so, you may con­tact us at any time. The right to demand restric­tion of pro­cess­ing applies in the fol­low­ing cases:

• In the event that you should dis­pute the cor­rect­ness of your data archived by us, we will usu­al­ly need some time to ver­i­fy this claim. Dur­ing the time that this inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing, you have the right to demand that we restrict the pro­cess­ing of your per­son­al data.
• If the pro­cess­ing of your per­son­al data was/is con­duct­ed in an unlaw­ful man­ner, you have the option to demand the restric­tion of the pro­cess­ing of your data in lieu of demand­ing the erad­i­ca­tion of this data.
• If we do not need your per­son­al data any longer and you need it to exer­cise, defend or claim legal enti­tle­ments, you have the right to demand the restric­tion of the pro­cess­ing of your per­son­al data instead of its eradication.
• If you have raised an objec­tion pur­suant to Art. 21 Sect. 1 GDPR, your rights and our rights will have to be weighed against each oth­er. As long as it has not been deter­mined whose inter­ests pre­vail, you have the right to demand a restric­tion of the pro­cess­ing of your per­son­al data.

If you have restrict­ed the pro­cess­ing of your per­son­al data, these data – with the excep­tion of their archiv­ing – may be processed only sub­ject to your con­sent or to claim, exer­cise or defend legal enti­tle­ments or to pro­tect the rights of oth­er nat­ur­al per­sons or legal enti­ties or for impor­tant pub­lic inter­est rea­sons cit­ed by the Euro­pean Union or a mem­ber state of the EU.

4. Recording of data on this website

Cookies

Our web­sites and pages use what the indus­try refers to as “cook­ies.” Cook­ies are small text files that do not cause any dam­age to your device. They are either stored tem­porar­i­ly for the dura­tion of a ses­sion (ses­sion cook­ies) or they are per­ma­nent­ly archived on your device (per­ma­nent cook­ies). Ses­sion cook­ies are auto­mat­i­cal­ly delet­ed once you ter­mi­nate your vis­it. Per­ma­nent cook­ies remain archived on your device until you active­ly delete them, or they are auto­mat­i­cal­ly erad­i­cat­ed by your web browser.

In some cas­es, it is pos­si­ble that third-par­ty cook­ies are stored on your device once you enter our site (third-par­ty cook­ies). These cook­ies enable you or us to take advan­tage of cer­tain ser­vices offered by the third par­ty (e.g., cook­ies for the pro­cess­ing of pay­ment services).

Cook­ies have a vari­ety of func­tions. Many cook­ies are tech­ni­cal­ly essen­tial since cer­tain web­site func­tions would not work in the absence of the cook­ies (e.g., the shop­ping cart func­tion or the dis­play of videos). The pur­pose of oth­er cook­ies may be the analy­sis of user pat­terns or the dis­play of pro­mo­tion­al messages.

Cook­ies, which are required for the per­for­mance of elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion trans­ac­tions (required cook­ies) or for the pro­vi­sion of cer­tain func­tions you want to use (func­tion­al cook­ies, e.g., for the shop­ping cart func­tion) or those that are nec­es­sary for the opti­miza­tion of the web­site (e.g., cook­ies that pro­vide mea­sur­able insights into the web audi­ence), shall be stored on the basis of Art. 6 Sect. 1 lit. f GDPR, unless a dif­fer­ent legal basis is cit­ed. The oper­a­tor of the web­site has a legit­i­mate inter­est in the stor­age of cook­ies to ensure the tech­ni­cal­ly error free and opti­mized pro­vi­sion of the operator’s ser­vices. If your con­sent to the stor­age of the cook­ies has been request­ed, the respec­tive cook­ies are stored exclu­sive­ly on the basis of the con­sent obtained (Art. 6 Sect. 1 lit. a GDPR); this con­sent may be revoked at any time.

You have the option to set up your brows­er in such a man­ner that you will be noti­fied any time cook­ies are placed and to per­mit the accep­tance of cook­ies only in spe­cif­ic cas­es. You may also exclude the accep­tance of cook­ies in cer­tain cas­es or in gen­er­al or acti­vate the delete func­tion for the auto­mat­ic erad­i­ca­tion of cook­ies when the brows­er clos­es. If cook­ies are deac­ti­vat­ed, the func­tions of this web­site may be limited.

In the event that third-par­ty cook­ies are used or if cook­ies are used for ana­lyt­i­cal pur­pos­es, we will sep­a­rate­ly noti­fy you in con­junc­tion with this Data Pro­tec­tion Pol­i­cy and, if applic­a­ble, ask for your consent.

Cookie Consent with Usercentrics

This web­site uses the cook­ie con­sent tech­nol­o­gy of User­centrics to obtain your con­sent to the stor­age of cer­tain cook­ies on your device or for the use of spe­cif­ic tech­nolo­gies, and to doc­u­ment the for­mer in a data pro­tec­tion com­pli­ant man­ner. The par­ty offer­ing this tech­nol­o­gy is User­centrics GmbH, Rosen­tal 4, 80331 München, Ger­many, web­site: https://usercentrics.com/ (here­inafter referred to as “User­centrics”).

When­ev­er you vis­it our web­site, the fol­low­ing per­son­al data will be trans­ferred to Usercentrics:

• Your declaration(s) of con­sent or your revo­ca­tion of your declaration(s) of consent
• Your IP address
• Infor­ma­tion about your browser
• Infor­ma­tion about your device
• The date and time you vis­it­ed our website

More­over, User­centrics shall store a cook­ie in your brows­er to be able to allo­cate your declaration(s) of con­sent or any revo­ca­tions of the for­mer. The data that are record­ed in this man­ner shall be stored until you ask us to erad­i­cate them, delete the User­centrics cook­ie or until the pur­pose for archiv­ing the data no longer exists. This shall be with­out prej­u­dice to any manda­to­ry legal reten­tion periods.

User­centrics uses cook­ies to obtain the dec­la­ra­tions of con­sent man­dat­ed by law. The legal basis for the use of spe­cif­ic tech­nolo­gies is Art. 6 Sect. 1 Sen­tence 1 lit. c GDPR.

Contract data processing agreement

Our com­pa­ny has exe­cut­ed a Con­tract Data Pro­cess­ing Agree­ment with User­centrics. This is an agree­ment man­dat­ed by data pri­va­cy pro­tec­tion leg­is­la­tion that war­rants that User­centrics process­es all per­son­al data of our web­site vis­i­tors exclu­sive­ly in com­pli­ance with our instruc­tions and in com­pli­ance with the GDPR.

Contact form

If you sub­mit inquiries to us via our con­tact form, the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed in the con­tact form as well as any con­tact infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed there­in will be stored by us in order to han­dle your inquiry and in the event that we have fur­ther ques­tions. We will not share this infor­ma­tion with­out your consent.

The pro­cess­ing of these data is based on Art. 6 para. 1 lit. b GDPR, if your request is relat­ed to the exe­cu­tion of a con­tract or if it is nec­es­sary to car­ry out pre-con­trac­tu­al mea­sures. In all oth­er cas­es the pro­cess­ing is based on our legit­i­mate inter­est in the effec­tive pro­cess­ing of the requests addressed to us (Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. f GDPR) or on your agree­ment (Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. a GDPR) if this has been requested.

The infor­ma­tion you have entered into the con­tact form shall remain with us until you ask us to erad­i­cate the data, revoke your con­sent to the archiv­ing of data or if the pur­pose for which the infor­ma­tion is being archived no longer exists (e.g., after we have con­clud­ed our response to your inquiry). This shall be with­out prej­u­dice to any manda­to­ry legal pro­vi­sions, in par­tic­u­lar reten­tion periods.

Request by e‑mail, telephone, or fax

If you con­tact us by e‑mail, tele­phone or fax, your request, includ­ing all result­ing per­son­al data (name, request) will be stored and processed by us for the pur­pose of pro­cess­ing your request. We do not pass these data on with­out your consent.

These data are processed on the basis of Art. 6 Sect. 1 lit. b GDPR if your inquiry is relat­ed to the ful­fill­ment of a con­tract or is required for the per­for­mance of pre-con­trac­tu­al mea­sures. In all oth­er cas­es, the data are processed on the basis of our legit­i­mate inter­est in the effec­tive han­dling of inquiries sub­mit­ted to us (Art. 6 Sect. 1 lit. f GDPR) or on the basis of your con­sent (Art. 6 Sect. 1 lit. a GDPR) if it has been obtained.

The data sent by you to us via con­tact requests remain with us until you request us to delete, revoke your con­sent to the stor­age or the pur­pose for the data stor­age laps­es (e.g. after com­ple­tion of your request). Manda­to­ry statu­to­ry pro­vi­sions — in par­tic­u­lar statu­to­ry reten­tion peri­ods — remain unaffected.

5. Analysis tools and advertising

Google Tag Manager

We use the Google Tag Man­ag­er. The provider is Google Ire­land Lim­it­ed, Gor­don House, Bar­row Street, Dublin 4, Ireland

The Google Tag Man­ag­er is a tool that allows us to inte­grate track­ing or sta­tis­ti­cal tools and oth­er tech­nolo­gies on our web­site. The Google Tag Man­ag­er itself does not cre­ate any user pro­files, does not store cook­ies, and does not car­ry out any inde­pen­dent analy­ses. It only man­ages and runs the tools inte­grat­ed via it. How­ev­er, the Google Tag Man­ag­er does col­lect your IP address, which may also be trans­ferred to Google’s par­ent com­pa­ny in the Unit­ed States.

The Google Tag Man­ag­er is used on the basis of Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. The web­site oper­a­tor has a legit­i­mate inter­est in the quick and uncom­pli­cat­ed inte­gra­tion and admin­is­tra­tion of var­i­ous tools on his web­site. If the rel­e­vant con­sent has been request­ed, the pro­cess­ing is car­ried out exclu­sive­ly on the basis of Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR; the con­sent can be revoked at any time.

Google Analytics

This web­site uses func­tions of the web analy­sis ser­vice Google Ana­lyt­ics. The provider of this ser­vice is Google Ire­land Lim­it­ed (“Google”), Gor­don House, Bar­row Street, Dublin 4, Ireland.

Google Ana­lyt­ics enables the web­site oper­a­tor to ana­lyze the behav­ior pat­terns of web­site vis­i­tors. To that end, the web­site oper­a­tor receives a vari­ety of user data, such as pages accessed, time spent on the page, the uti­lized oper­at­ing sys­tem and the user’s ori­gin. Google may con­sol­i­date these data in a pro­file that is allo­cat­ed to the respec­tive user or the user’s device.

Google Ana­lyt­ics uses tech­nolo­gies that make the recog­ni­tion of the user for the pur­pose of ana­lyz­ing the user behav­ior pat­terns (e.g., cook­ies or device fin­ger­print­ing). The web­site use infor­ma­tion record­ed by Google is, as a rule trans­ferred to a Google serv­er in the Unit­ed States, where it is stored.

This analy­sis tool is used on the basis of Art. 6 Sect. 1 lit. f GDPR. The oper­a­tor of this web­site has a legit­i­mate inter­est in the analy­sis of user pat­terns to opti­mize both, the ser­vices offered online and the operator’s adver­tis­ing activ­i­ties. If a cor­re­spond­ing agree­ment has been request­ed (e.g., an agree­ment to the stor­age of cook­ies), the pro­cess­ing takes place exclu­sive­ly on the basis of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a GDPR; the agree­ment can be revoked at any time.

Data trans­mis­sion to the US is based on the Stan­dard Con­trac­tu­al Claus­es (SCC) of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. Details can be found here: https://privacy.google.com/businesses/controllerterms/mccs/.

IP anonymization

On this web­site, we have acti­vat­ed the IP anonymiza­tion func­tion. As a result, your IP address will be abbre­vi­at­ed by Google with­in the mem­ber states of the Euro­pean Union or in oth­er states that have rat­i­fied the Con­ven­tion on the Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Area pri­or to its trans­mis­sion to the Unit­ed States. The full IP address will be trans­mit­ted to one of Google’s servers in the Unit­ed States and abbre­vi­at­ed there only in excep­tion­al cas­es. On behalf of the oper­a­tor of this web­site, Google shall use this infor­ma­tion to ana­lyze your use of this web­site to gen­er­ate reports on web­site activ­i­ties and to ren­der oth­er ser­vices to the oper­a­tor of this web­site that are relat­ed to the use of the web­site and the Inter­net. The IP address trans­mit­ted in con­junc­tion with Google Ana­lyt­ics from your brows­er shall not be merged with oth­er data in Google’s possession.

Browser plug-in

You can pre­vent the record­ing and pro­cess­ing of your data by Google by down­load­ing and installing the brows­er plu­g­in avail­able under the fol­low­ing link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en.

For more infor­ma­tion about the han­dling of user data by Google Ana­lyt­ics, please con­sult Google’s Data Pri­va­cy Dec­la­ra­tion at: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en.

Contract data processing

We have exe­cut­ed a con­tract data pro­cess­ing agree­ment with Google and are imple­ment­ing the strin­gent pro­vi­sions of the Ger­man data pro­tec­tion agen­cies to the fullest when using Google Analytics.

Demographic parameters provided by Google Analytics

This web­site uses the “demo­graph­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics” func­tion of Google Ana­lyt­ics, to be able to dis­play to the web­site vis­i­tor com­pat­i­ble ads with­in the Google adver­tis­ing net­work. This allows reports to be cre­at­ed that con­tain infor­ma­tion about the age, gen­der, and inter­ests of the web­site vis­i­tors. The sources of this infor­ma­tion are inter­est-relat­ed adver­tis­ing by Google as well as vis­i­tor data obtained from third-par­ty providers. This data can­not be allo­cat­ed to a spe­cif­ic indi­vid­ual. You have the option to deac­ti­vate this func­tion at any time by mak­ing per­ti­nent set­tings changes for adver­tis­ing in your Google account or you can gen­er­al­ly pro­hib­it the record­ing of your data by Google Ana­lyt­ics as explained in sec­tion “Objec­tion to the record­ing of data”.

Archiving period

Data on the user or inci­dent lev­el stored by Google linked to cook­ies, user IDs or adver­tis­ing IDs (e.g., Dou­bleClick cook­ies, Android adver­tis­ing ID) will be anonymized or delet­ed after 14 month. For details, please click the fol­low­ing link: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/7667196?hl=en

WP Statistics

This web­site uses the WP Sta­tis­tics analy­sis tool to eval­u­ate vis­i­tor access­es sta­tis­ti­cal­ly. The provider is Veronal­abs, ARENCO Tow­er, 27th Floor, Dubai Media City, Dubai, Dubai 23816, UAE (https://veronalabs.com).

WP Sta­tis­tics can be used to ana­lyze the use of our web­site. In doing so, WP Sta­tis­tics records, among oth­er things, log files (IP address, refer­rer, brows­er used, ori­gin of the user, search engine used) and actions that the web­site vis­i­tors have tak­en on the site (e.g. clicks and views).

The data col­lect­ed with WP Sta­tis­tics is stored exclu­sive­ly on our own serv­er and is not passed on to WordPress.

The use of this analy­sis tool is based on Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. We have a legit­i­mate inter­est in the anonymized analy­sis of user behav­ior in order to opti­mize both our web­sites and our adver­tis­ing. If con­sent has been request­ed (e.g. con­sent to the stor­age of cook­ies), pro­cess­ing will be car­ried out exclu­sive­ly on the basis of Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR; con­sent may be revoked at any time.

Facebook Pixel

To mea­sure con­ver­sion rates, this web­site uses the vis­i­tor activ­i­ty pix­el of Face­book. The provider of this ser­vice is Face­book Ire­land Lim­it­ed, 4 Grand Canal Square, Dublin 2, Ire­land. Accord­ing to Facebook’s state­ment the col­lect­ed data will be trans­ferred to the USA and oth­er third-par­ty coun­tries too.

This tool allows the track­ing of page vis­i­tors after they have been linked to the web­site of the provider after click­ing on a Face­book ad. This makes it pos­si­ble to ana­lyze the effec­tive­ness of Face­book ads for sta­tis­ti­cal and mar­ket research pur­pos­es and to opti­mize future adver­tis­ing campaigns.

For us as the oper­a­tors of this web­site, the col­lect­ed data is anony­mous. We are not in a posi­tion to arrive at any con­clu­sions as to the iden­ti­ty of users. How­ev­er, Face­book archives the infor­ma­tion and process­es it, so that it is pos­si­ble to make a con­nec­tion to the respec­tive user pro­file and Face­book is in a posi­tion to use the data for its own pro­mo­tion­al pur­pos­es in com­pli­ance with the Face­book Data Usage Pol­i­cy. This enables Face­book to dis­play ads on Face­book pages as well as in loca­tions out­side of Face­book. We as the oper­a­tor of this web­site have no con­trol over the use of such data.

The use of Face­book Pix­el is based on Art. 6 Sect. 1 lit. f GDPR. The oper­a­tor of the web­site has a legit­i­mate inter­est in effec­tive adver­tis­ing cam­paigns, which also include social media. If a cor­re­spond­ing agree­ment has been request­ed (e.g., an agree­ment to the stor­age of cook­ies), the pro­cess­ing takes place exclu­sive­ly on the basis of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a GDPR; the agree­ment can be revoked at any time.

Data trans­mis­sion to the US is based on the Stan­dard Con­trac­tu­al Claus­es (SCC) of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. Details can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/legal/EU_data_transfer_addendum und https://de-de.facebook.com/help/566994660333381.

Inso­far as per­son­al data is col­lect­ed on our web­site with the help of the tool described here and for­ward­ed to Face­book, we and Face­book Ire­land Lim­it­ed, 4 Grand Canal Square, Grand Canal Har­bour, Dublin 2, Ire­land are joint­ly respon­si­ble for this data pro­cess­ing (Art. 26 DSGVO). The joint respon­si­bil­i­ty is lim­it­ed exclu­sive­ly to the col­lec­tion of the data and its for­ward­ing to Face­book. The pro­cess­ing by Face­book that takes place after the onward trans­fer is not part of the joint respon­si­bil­i­ty. The oblig­a­tions incum­bent on us joint­ly have been set out in a joint pro­cess­ing agree­ment. The word­ing of the agree­ment can be found under: https://www.facebook.com/legal/controller_addendum. Accord­ing to this agree­ment, we are respon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing the pri­va­cy infor­ma­tion when using the Face­book tool and for the pri­va­cy-secure imple­men­ta­tion of the tool on our web­site. Face­book is respon­si­ble for the data secu­ri­ty of Face­book prod­ucts. You can assert data sub­ject rights (e.g., requests for infor­ma­tion) regard­ing data processed by Face­book direct­ly with Face­book. If you assert the data sub­ject rights with us, we are oblig­ed to for­ward them to Facebook.

In Facebook’s Data Pri­va­cy Poli­cies, you will find addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about the pro­tec­tion of your pri­va­cy at: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/.

You also have the option to deac­ti­vate the remar­ket­ing func­tion “Cus­tom Audi­ences” in the ad set­tings sec­tion under  https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_settings_screen. To do this, you first have to log into Facebook.

If you do not have a Face­book account, you can deac­ti­vate any user-based adver­tis­ing by Face­book on the web­site of the Euro­pean Inter­ac­tive Dig­i­tal Adver­tis­ing Alliance: http://www.youronlinechoices.com/de/praferenzmanagement/.

6. Newsletter

Newsletter data

If you would like to sub­scribe to the newslet­ter offered on this web­site, we will need from you an e‑mail address as well as infor­ma­tion that allow us to ver­i­fy that you are the own­er of the e‑mail address pro­vid­ed, and con­sent to the receipt of the newslet­ter. No fur­ther data shall be col­lect­ed or shall be col­lect­ed only on a vol­un­tary basis. We shall use such data only for the send­ing of the request­ed infor­ma­tion and shall not share such data with any third parties.

The pro­cess­ing of the infor­ma­tion entered into the newslet­ter sub­scrip­tion form shall occur exclu­sive­ly on the basis of your con­sent (Art. 6 Sect. 1 lit. a GDPR). You may revoke the con­sent you have giv­en to the archiv­ing of data, the e‑mail address and the use of this infor­ma­tion for the send­ing of the newslet­ter at any time, for instance by click­ing on the “Unsub­scribe” link in the newslet­ter. This shall be with­out prej­u­dice to the law­ful­ness of any data pro­cess­ing trans­ac­tions that have tak­en place to date.

The data deposit­ed with us for the pur­pose of sub­scrib­ing to the newslet­ter will be stored by us until you unsub­scribe from the newslet­ter or the newslet­ter ser­vice provider and delet­ed from the newslet­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion list after you unsub­scribe from the newslet­ter or after the pur­pose has ceased to apply. We reserve the right to delete or block e‑mail address­es from our newslet­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion list at our own dis­cre­tion with­in the scope of our legit­i­mate inter­est in accor­dance with Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR.

After you unsub­scribe from the newslet­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion list, your e‑mail address may be stored by us or the newslet­ter ser­vice provider in a black­list to pre­vent future mail­ings. The data from the black­list is used only for this pur­pose and not merged with oth­er data. This serves both your inter­est and our inter­est in com­ply­ing with the legal require­ments when send­ing newslet­ters (legit­i­mate inter­est with­in the mean­ing of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR). The stor­age in the black­list is indef­i­nite. You may object to the stor­age if your inter­ests out­weigh our legit­i­mate interest.

MailChimp

This web­site uses the ser­vices of MailChimp to send out its newslet­ters. The provider is the Rock­et Sci­ence Group LLC, 675 Ponce De Leon Ave NE, Suite 5000, Atlanta, GA 30308, USA.

Among oth­er things, MailChimp is a ser­vice that can be deployed to orga­nize and ana­lyze the send­ing of newslet­ters. When­ev­er you enter data for the pur­pose of sub­scrib­ing to a newslet­ter (e.g. your e‑mail address), the infor­ma­tion is stored on MailChimp servers in the Unit­ed States.

With the assis­tance of the MailChimp tool, we can ana­lyze the per­for­mance of our newslet­ter cam­paigns. If you open an e‑mail that has been sent through the MailChimp tool, a file that has been inte­grat­ed into the e‑mail (a so-called web-bea­con) con­nects to MailChimp’s servers in the Unit­ed States. As a result, it can be deter­mined whether a newslet­ter mes­sage has been opened and which links the recip­i­ent pos­si­bly clicked on. Tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion is also record­ed at that time (e.g. the time of access, the IP address, type of brows­er and oper­at­ing sys­tem). This infor­ma­tion can­not be allo­cat­ed to the respec­tive newslet­ter recip­i­ent. Their sole pur­pose is the per­for­mance of sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses of newslet­ter cam­paigns. The results of such analy­ses can be used to tai­lor future newslet­ters to the inter­ests of their recip­i­ents more effectively.

If you do not want to per­mit an analy­sis by MailChimp, you must unsub­scribe from the newslet­ter. We pro­vide a link for you to do this in every newslet­ter message.

The data is processed based on your con­sent (Art. 6 Sect. 1 lit. a GDPR).  You may revoke any con­sent you have giv­en at any time by unsub­scrib­ing from the newslet­ter. This shall be with­out prej­u­dice to the law­ful­ness of any data pro­cess­ing trans­ac­tions that have tak­en place pri­or to your revocation.

The data deposit­ed with us for the pur­pose of sub­scrib­ing to the newslet­ter will be stored by us until you unsub­scribe from the newslet­ter or the newslet­ter ser­vice provider and delet­ed from the newslet­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion list after you unsub­scribe from the newslet­ter. Data stored for oth­er pur­pos­es with us remain unaffected.

Data trans­mis­sion to the US is based on the Stan­dard Con­trac­tu­al Claus­es (SCC) of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. Details can be found here: https://mailchimp.com/eu-us-data-transfer-statement/ and https://mailchimp.com/legal/data-processing-addendum/#Annex_C_-_Standard_Contractual_Clauses.

After you unsub­scribe from the newslet­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion list, your e‑mail address may be stored by us or the newslet­ter ser­vice provider in a black­list to pre­vent future mail­ings. The data from the black­list is used only for this pur­pose and not merged with oth­er data. This serves both your inter­est and our inter­est in com­ply­ing with the legal require­ments when send­ing newslet­ters (legit­i­mate inter­est with­in the mean­ing of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR). The stor­age in the black­list is indef­i­nite. You may object to the stor­age if your inter­ests out­weigh our legit­i­mate interest.

For more details, please con­sult the Data Pri­va­cy Poli­cies of MailChimp at: https://mailchimp.com/legal/terms/.

Execution of a contract data processing agreement

We have exe­cut­ed a so-called “Data Pro­cess­ing Agree­ment” with MailChimp, in which we man­date that MailChimp under­takes to pro­tect the data of our cus­tomers and to refrain from shar­ing it with third parties.

7. Plug-ins and Tools

YouTube with expanded data protection integration

Our web­site embeds videos of the web­site YouTube. The web­site oper­a­tor is Google Ire­land Lim­it­ed (“Google”), Gor­don House, Bar­row Street, Dublin 4, Ireland.

We use YouTube in the expand­ed data pro­tec­tion mode. Accord­ing to YouTube, this mode ensures that YouTube does not store any infor­ma­tion about vis­i­tors to this web­site before they watch the video. Nev­er­the­less, this does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that the shar­ing of data with YouTube part­ners can be ruled out as a result of the expand­ed data pro­tec­tion mode. For instance, regard­less of whether you are watch­ing a video, YouTube will always estab­lish a con­nec­tion with the Google Dou­bleClick network.

As soon as you start to play a YouTube video on this web­site, a con­nec­tion to YouTube’s servers will be estab­lished. As a result, the YouTube serv­er will be noti­fied, which of our pages you have vis­it­ed. If you are logged into your YouTube account while you vis­it our site, you enable YouTube to direct­ly allo­cate your brows­ing pat­terns to your per­son­al pro­file. You have the option to pre­vent this by log­ging out of your YouTube account.

Fur­ther­more, after you have start­ed to play a video, YouTube will be able to place var­i­ous cook­ies on your device or com­pa­ra­ble tech­nolo­gies for recog­ni­tion (e.g. device fin­ger­print­ing). In this way YouTube will be able to obtain infor­ma­tion about this website’s vis­i­tors. Among oth­er things, this infor­ma­tion will be used to gen­er­ate video sta­tis­tics with the aim of improv­ing the user friend­li­ness of the site and to pre­vent attempts to com­mit fraud.

Under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, addi­tion­al data pro­cess­ing trans­ac­tions may be trig­gered after you have start­ed to play a YouTube video, which are beyond our control.

The use of YouTube is based on our inter­est in pre­sent­ing our online con­tent in an appeal­ing man­ner. Pur­suant to Art. 6 Sect. 1 lit. f GDPR, this is a legit­i­mate inter­est. If a cor­re­spond­ing agree­ment has been request­ed, the pro­cess­ing takes place exclu­sive­ly on the basis of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a GDPR; the agree­ment can be revoked at any time.

For more infor­ma­tion on how YouTube han­dles user data, please con­sult the YouTube Data Pri­va­cy Pol­i­cy under: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en.

Google Web Fonts (local embedding)

This web­site uses so-called Web Fonts pro­vid­ed by Google to ensure the uni­form use of fonts on this site. These Google fonts are local­ly installed so that a con­nec­tion to Google’s servers will not be estab­lished in con­junc­tion with this application.

For more infor­ma­tion on Google Web Fonts, please fol­low this link: https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq and con­sult Google’s Data Pri­va­cy Dec­la­ra­tion under: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en.