Privacy Policy

The responsible body in the sense of the data protection laws, in particular the EU Data Protection Regulation (DSGVO), is the management.

You can reach the data protection officer via our contact offer.

Your data subject rights

You can exercise the following rights at any time using the contact details provided by our data protection officer:

Information about your data stored by us and its processing,
Correction of incorrect personal data,
Deletion of your data stored by us,
Restriction of data processing, if we are not yet allowed to delete your data due to legal obligations,
objection to the processing of your data by us and
Data portability, provided that you have consented to the data processing or have concluded a contract with us.

If you have given us consent, you can revoke this at any time with effect for the future.

You can contact the supervisory authority responsible for you at any time with a complaint. Your competent supervisory authority depends on the federal state of your residence, your work or the alleged violation. A list of supervisory authorities (for the non-public sector) with address can be found at:

https://www.bfdi.bund.de/DE/Infothek/Anschriften_Links/anschriften_links-node.html

Purposes of data processing by the controller and third parties

We process your personal data only for the purposes stated in this privacy policy. We do not transfer your personal data to third parties for purposes other than those stated. We will only share your personal data with third parties if:

you have given your express consent to this,
the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with you,
the processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation,

the processing is necessary to protect legitimate interests and there is no reason to assume that you have an overriding legitimate interest in not disclosing your data.

Collection of general information when you visit our website

When you access our website, information of a general nature is automatically collected by means of a cookie. This information (server log files) includes, for example, the type of web browser, the operating system used, the domain name of your Internet service provider and the like. This is exclusively information that does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about your person.

This information is technically necessary in order to correctly deliver the content of web pages requested by you and is mandatory when using the Internet. In particular, they are processed for the following purposes:

Ensuring a smooth connection setup of the website,
Ensuring the smooth use of our website,
evaluating system security and stability, and
for other administrative purposes.

The processing of your personal data is based on our legitimate interest from the aforementioned data collection purposes. We do not use your data to draw conclusions about your person. Recipients of the data are only the responsible body and, if applicable, order processors.

Anonymous information of this kind is statistically evaluated by us, if necessary, in order to optimize our Internet presence and the technology behind it.Cookies

Like many other websites, we also use so-called “cookies”. Cookies are small text files that are transferred from a website server to your hard drive. Through this, we automatically receive certain data such as IP address, browser used, operating system and your connection to the Internet.

Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to a computer. Based on the information contained in cookies, we can facilitate your navigation and enable the correct display of our web pages.

Under no circumstances will the data we collect be passed on to third parties or linked to personal data without your consent.

Of course, you can also view our website without cookies. Internet browsers are regularly set to accept cookies. In general, you can deactivate the use of cookies at any time via your browser settings. Please use the help functions of your Internet browser to find out how to change these settings. Please note that individual functions of our website may not work if you have disabled the use of cookies.

SSL encryption

To protect the security of your data during transmission, we use state-of-the-art encryption methods (e.g. SSL) via HTTPS.

Newsletter

On the basis of your expressly given consent, we will send you our newsletter or comparable information regularly by e-mail to your specified e-mail address.

To receive the newsletter, it is sufficient to provide your e-mail address. When registering to receive our newsletter, the data you provide will be used exclusively for this purpose. Subscribers may also be informed by e-mail about circumstances relevant to the service or registration (for example, changes to the newsletter offer or technical circumstances).

For an effective registration we need a valid e-mail address. In order to verify that a registration is actually made by the owner of an e-mail address, we use the “double-opt-in” procedure. For this purpose, we log the order of the newsletter, the sending of a confirmation e-mail and the receipt of the response requested herewith. No further data is collected. The data is used exclusively for sending the newsletter and is not passed on to third parties.

You can revoke your consent to the storage of your personal data and its use for the newsletter dispatch at any time. You will find a corresponding link in each newsletter. In addition, you can unsubscribe at any time directly on this website or inform us of your wish to do so using the contact option provided at the end of this privacy policy.
MailChimp

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

MailChimp is a service with which, among other things, the sending of newsletters can be organized and analyzed. When you enter data for the purpose of receiving newsletters (e.g. e-mail address), this data is stored on MailChimp’s servers in the USA.

MailChimp has a certification according to the “EU-US Privacy Shield”. The “Privacy Shield” is an agreement between the European Union (EU) and the USA, which is intended to ensure compliance with European data protection standards in the USA.

With the help of MailChimp, we can analyze our newsletter campaigns. When you open an email sent with MailChimp, a file contained in the email (so-called web-beacon) connects to MailChimp’s servers in the USA. This makes it possible to determine whether a newsletter message has been opened and which links, if any, have been clicked. In addition, technical information is recorded (e.g. time of retrieval, IP address, browser type and operating system). This information cannot be assigned to the respective newsletter recipient. It is used exclusively for the statistical analysis of newsletter campaigns. The results of these analyses can be used to better adapt future newsletters to the interests of the recipients.

If you do not want any analysis by MailChimp, you must unsubscribe from the newsletter. For this purpose, we provide a corresponding link in every newsletter message. Furthermore, you can also unsubscribe from the newsletter directly on the website.

The data processing is based on your consent (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a DSGVO). You can revoke this consent at any time by unsubscribing from the newsletter. The legality of the data processing operations already carried out remains unaffected by the revocation.

The data you have provided to us for the purpose of receiving the newsletter will be stored by us until you unsubscribe from the newsletter and will be deleted from our servers as well as from the servers of MailChimp after you unsubscribe from the newsletter. Data that has been stored by us for other purposes (e.g. e-mail addresses for the member area) remains unaffected by this.

For more details, please refer to the privacy policy of MailChimp at: https://mailchimp.com/legal/terms/.

Conclusion of a data processing agreement

We have concluded a so-called “Data-Processing-Agreement” with MailChimp, in which we oblige MailChimp to protect the data of our customers and not to pass it on to third parties. This agreement can be viewed at the following link: https://mailchimp.com/legal/forms/data-processing-agreement/sample-agreement/.

Use of Google Analytics

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc (hereinafter: Google). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of this website is usually transmitted to a Google server in the USA and stored there. However, due to the activation of IP anonymization on these web pages, your IP address will be truncated beforehand by Google within member states of the European Union or in other contracting states of the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases will the full IP address be transmitted to a Google server in the USA and shortened there. On behalf of the operator of this website, Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage to the website operator. The IP address transmitted by your browser as part of Google Analytics will not be merged with other data from Google.

The purposes of data processing are to evaluate the use of the website and to compile reports on website activities. Based on the use of the website and the Internet, other related services shall then be provided. The processing is based on the legitimate interest of the website operator.

You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. You can also prevent the collection of data generated by the cookie and related to your use of the website (including your IP address) to Google and the processing of this data by Google by downloading and installing the browser plugin available at the following link: Browser Add On to disable Google Analytics.

In addition or as an alternative to the browser add-on, you can prevent tracking by Google Analytics on our pages by clicking this link. This will install an opt-out cookie on your device. This will prevent the collection by Google Analytics for this website and for this browser in the future, as long as the cookie remains installed in your browser.
Use of script libraries (Google Webfonts)

In order to display our content correctly and graphically appealing across browsers, we use script libraries and font libraries such as Google Webfonts (https://www.google.com/webfonts/) on this website. Google Web Fonts are transferred to your browser’s cache to avoid multiple loading. If the browser does not support Google Web Fonts or prevents access, content is displayed in a standard font.

Calling up script libraries or font libraries automatically triggers a connection to the operator of the library. It is theoretically possible – although it is currently also unclear whether and, if so, for what purposes – that operators of corresponding libraries collect data.

The privacy policy of the library operator Google can be found here: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.

Use of Adobe Typekit

We use Adobe Typekit for the visual design of our website. Typekit is a service provided by Adobe Systems Software Ireland Ltd. that gives us access to a font library. To integrate the fonts we use, your browser must connect to an Adobe server in the United States and download the font required for our website. Adobe thereby receives the information that our website was accessed from your IP address. You can find more information about Adobe Typekit in Adobe’s privacy policy, which you can access here: www.adobe.com/privacy/typekit.html.

Use of Google Maps

This website uses Google Maps API to visually display geographic information. When using Google Maps, Google also collects, processes, and uses data about visitors’ use of the map features. You can find more information about data processing by Google in the Google privacy policy. There you can also change your personal privacy settings in the Privacy Center.

Detailed instructions on managing your own data in connection with Google products can be found here.

Embedded YouTube videos

On some of our websites, we embed YouTube videos. The operator of the corresponding plugins is YouTube, LLC, 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066, USA. When you visit a page with the YouTube plugin, a connection to YouTube servers is established. This tells Youtube which pages you are visiting. If you are logged into your Youtube account, Youtube can assign your surfing behavior to you personally. You can prevent this by logging out of your Youtube account beforehand.

If a Youtube video is started, the provider uses cookies that collect information about user behavior.

If you have deactivated the saving of cookies for the Google Ad program, you will not have to deal with such cookies when watching Youtube videos. However, Youtube also stores non-personal usage information in other cookies. If you would like to prevent this, you must block the storage of cookies in the browser.

For more information on data protection at “Youtube”, please refer to the provider’s privacy policy at: https://www.google.de/intl/de/policies/privacy/.

Change of our privacy policy

We reserve the right to adapt this data protection declaration so that it always complies with the current legal requirements or in order to implement changes to our services in the data protection declaration, e.g. when introducing new services. The new privacy policy will then apply to your next visit.