Privacy policy
Privacy
We have written this privacy statement (version 01.03.2021-311267321) to explain to you, in accordance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679, what information we collect, how we use data and what decision-making options you have as a visitor to this website.
Privacy statements usually sound very technical. This version, on the other hand, is intended to describe the most important things to you as simply and clearly as possible. As far as possible, technical terms are explained in a reader-friendly way. We also want to convey that we only collect and use information with this website if there is a corresponding legal basis. This is certainly not possible by providing the most concise, technical explanations possible, as is often standard practice on the Internet when it comes to data protection. I hope you find the following explanations interesting and informative, and perhaps there is one or two pieces of information that you did not yet know.
If you still have questions, we would like to ask you to follow the existing links and look at further information on third party sites, or simply write us an e-mail. You can find our contact details in the imprint.
Automatic data storage
Nowadays, when you visit websites, certain information is automatically created and stored, including on this website. This collected data should be collected as sparingly as possible and only with justification. By the way, by website we mean the entirety of all web pages on your domain, i.e. everything from the home page (homepage) to the very last subpage (like this one). By domain, we mean, for example, example.de or sampleexample.com.
Even while you are visiting our website right now, our web server – that is the computer on which this website is stored – usually automatically saves data such as
- the complete Internet address (URL) of the accessed website (e.g. https://www.beispielwebsite.de/beispielunterseite.html/)
- Browser and browser version (e.g. Chrome 87)
- the operating system used (e.g. Windows 10)
- the address (URL) of the previously visited page (referrer URL) (e.g. https://www.beispielquellsite.de/vondabinichgekommen.html/)
- the hostname and IP address of the device being accessed (e.g. COMPUTERNAME and 194.23.43.121)
- Date and time
- in files called web server log files.
To illustrate:
As a rule, these files are stored for two weeks and then automatically deleted. We do not pass on this data, but we cannot rule out the possibility that this data may be viewed by the authorities in the event of unlawful conduct.
In short, your visit is logged by our provider (company that runs our website on special computers (servers)), but we do not share your data!
Cookies
Our website uses HTTP cookies to store user-specific data.
Below we explain what cookies are and why they are used so that you can better understand the following privacy policy.
What exactly are cookies?
Whenever you browse the Internet, you use a browser. Popular browsers include Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Edge. Most websites store small text files in your browser. These files are called cookies.
One thing cannot be denied: Cookies are really useful little helpers. Almost all websites use cookies. More precisely, they are HTTP cookies, as there are other cookies for other applications. HTTP cookies are small files that are stored on your computer by our website. These cookie files are automatically placed in the cookie folder, effectively the „brain“ of your browser. A cookie consists of a name and a value. When defining a cookie, one or more attributes must also be specified.
Cookies store certain user data about you, such as language or personal page settings. When you return to our site, your browser transmits the „user-related“ information back to our site. Thanks to cookies, our site knows who you are and offers you your usual default setting. In some browsers, each cookie has its own file; in others, such as Firefox, all cookies are stored in a single file.
There are both first-party cookies and third-party cookies. First-party cookies are created directly by our site, third-party cookies are created by partner websites (e.g. Google Analytics). Each cookie must be evaluated individually, as each cookie stores different data. Also, the expiration time of a cookie varies from a few minutes to a few years. Cookies are not software programs and do not contain viruses, Trojans or other „pests“. Cookies also cannot access information on your PC.
For example, cookie data can look like this:
- Name: _ga
- Expiration time: 2 years
- Usage: differentiation of website visitors
- Example value: GA1.2.1326744211.152311267321
A browser should support the following minimum sizes:
- A cookie should be able to contain at least 4096 bytes
- At least 50 cookies should be able to be stored per domain
- A total of at least 3000 cookies should be able to be stored
What are the types of cookies?
The question of which cookies we use in particular depends on the services used and is clarified in the following sections of the privacy policy. At this point, we would like to briefly discuss the different types of HTTP cookies.
We can distinguish 4 types of cookies:
Absolutely necessary cookies
These cookies are necessary to ensure basic website functionality. For example, these cookies are needed when a user adds a product to the shopping cart, then continues browsing on other pages and later goes to the checkout. Through these cookies, the shopping cart is not deleted even if the user closes his browser window.
Functional cookies
These cookies collect information about user behavior and whether the user receives any error messages. In addition, these cookies are also used to measure the loading time and the behavior of the website with different browsers.
Target-oriented cookies
These cookies provide a better user experience. For example, entered locations, font sizes or form data are stored.
Advertising cookies
These cookies are also called targeting cookies. They are used to deliver customized advertising to the user. This can be very convenient, but also very annoying.
Usually, when you visit a website for the first time, you are asked which of these cookie types you want to allow. And, of course, this decision is also stored in a cookie.
How can I delete cookies?
How and whether you want to use cookies, you decide. Regardless of which service or website the cookies come from, you always have the option to delete, only partially allow or disable cookies. For example, you can block third-party cookies, but allow all other cookies.
If you want to determine which cookies have been stored in your browser, if you want to change or delete cookie settings, you can find this in your browser settings:
Chrome: Delete, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Managing cookies and website data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
If you do not want to have cookies in principle, you can set up your browser so that it always informs you when a cookie is to be set. In this way, you can decide for each individual cookie whether you allow the cookie or not. The procedure varies depending on the browser. The best way is to search the instructions in Google with the search term „delete cookies Chrome“ or „disable cookies Chrome“ in case of a Chrome browser or exchange the word „Chrome“ for the name of your browser, e.g. Edge, Firefox, Safari.
What about my privacy?
The so-called „Cookie Guidelines“ have been in place since 2009. These state that the storage of cookies requires your consent. Within the EU countries, however, there are still very different reactions to these directives. In Germany, the Cookie Directives have not been implemented as national law. Instead, this directive was largely implemented in Section 15 (3) of the German Telemedia Act (TMG).
If you want to know more about cookies and are not afraid of technical documentation, we recommend https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6265, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments called „HTTP State Management Mechanism“.
Storage of personal data
Personal data that you transmit to us electronically on this website, such as name, e-mail address, address or other personal information in the context of submitting a form or comments on the blog, will be used by us together with the time and IP address only for the purpose stated in each case, kept secure and not disclosed to third parties.
We thus use your personal data only for communication with those visitors who expressly request contact and for the processing of the services and products offered on this website. We do not disclose your personal data without consent, but we cannot exclude the possibility that this data may be viewed in the event of unlawful conduct.
If you send us personal data by e-mail – thus away from this website – we cannot guarantee secure transmission and protection of your data. We recommend that you never send confidential data by e-mail without encryption.
According to Article 6 (1) a DSGVO (lawfulness of processing), the legal basis is that you give us consent to process the data you have entered. You can revoke this consent at any time – an informal email is sufficient, you will find our contact details in the imprint.
Rights under the General Data Protection Regulation
According to the provisions of the GDPR, you are generally entitled to the following rights:
- Right of rectification (Article 16 GDPR)
- Right to erasure („right to be forgotten“) (Article 17 GDPR)
- Right to restriction of processing (Article 18 DSGVO)
- Right to notification – obligation to notify in connection with the rectification or erasure of personal data or the restriction of processing (Article 19 GDPR)
- Right to data portability (Article 20 GDPR)
- Right to object (Article 21 GDPR)
- Right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling (Article 22 GDPR)
If you believe that the processing of your data violates data protection law or that your data protection rights have been violated in any other way, you can contact the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI).
Evaluation of visitor behavior
In the following privacy policy, we inform you whether and how we evaluate data from your visit to this website. The evaluation of the collected data is usually anonymous and we can not conclude from your behavior on this website to your person.
You can find out more about how to object to this analysis of visit data in the following data protection declaration.
TLS encryption with https
TLS, encryption and https sound very technical and they are. We use HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure stands for „secure hypertext transfer protocol“) to transfer data over the internet in a tap-proof way.
This means that the complete transmission of all data from your browser to our web server is secured – no one can „listen in“.
We have thus introduced an additional layer of security and comply with Data Protection by Design Article 25(1) DSGVO). By using TLS (Transport Layer Security), an encryption protocol for secure data transmission on the Internet, we can ensure the protection of confidential data.
You can recognize the use of this protection of data transmission by the small lock symbol at the top left of the browser to the left of the Internet address (e.g., beispielseite.de) and the use of the scheme https (instead of http) as part of our Internet address.
If you want to know more about encryption, we recommend the Google search for „Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure wiki“ to get good links to further information.
Google Maps Privacy Policy
We use Google Maps of the company Google Inc. on our website. For the European area the company Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street Dublin 4, Ireland) is responsible for all Google services. Google Maps allows us to better show you locations and thus adapt our service to your needs. By using Google Maps, data is transmitted to Google and stored on Google servers. Here we will now go into more detail about what Google Maps is, why we use this Google service, what data is stored and how you can prevent this.
What is Google Maps?
Google Maps is an Internet mapping service from the Google company. With Google Maps, you can search for exact locations of cities, landmarks, accommodations, or businesses online using a PC, tablet, or app. If companies are represented on Google My Business, other information about the company is displayed in addition to the location. To show how to get there, map sections of a location can be embedded in a website using HTML code. Google Maps shows the earth’s surface as a street map or as an aerial or satellite image. Thanks to the Street View images and the high-quality satellite images, very accurate representations are possible.
Why do we use Google Maps on our website?
All our efforts on this site are aimed at providing you with a useful and meaningful time on our website. By integrating Google Maps we can provide you with the most important information about various locations. You can see at a glance where we are located. The directions always show you the best or fastest way to us. You can get the directions for routes by car, by public transport, on foot or by bike. For us, providing Google Maps is part of our customer service.
What data is stored by Google Maps?
In order for Google Maps to fully offer its service, the company must record and store data from you. This includes the search terms entered, your IP address and also the latitude and longitude coordinates. If you use the route planner function, the start address entered is also stored. However, this data storage happens on the websites of Google Maps. We can only inform you about this, but have no influence. Since we have integrated Google Maps into our website, Google sets at least one cookie (name: NID) in your browser. This cookie stores data about your user behavior. Google uses this data primarily to optimize its own services and to provide individual, personalized advertising for you.
The following cookie is set in your browser due to the integration of Google Maps:
Name: NID
Wert: 188=h26c1Ktha7fCQTx8rXgLyATyITJ311267321-5
Purpose: NID is used by Google to customize ads to your Google searches. With the help of the cookie, Google „remembers“ your most frequently entered search queries or your previous interaction with ads. This way, you will always get tailored ads. The cookie contains a unique ID that Google uses to collect your personal preferences for advertising purposes.
Expiration date: after 6 months
Note: We cannot guarantee the completeness of the stored data. Especially when using cookies, changes can never be ruled out. In order to identify the cookie NID, a separate test page was created, where only Google Maps was integrated.
How long and where is the data stored?
Google servers are located in data centers around the world. However, most servers are located in America. For this reason, your data is also increasingly stored in the USA. Here you can read exactly where the Google data centers are located: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=de
Google distributes the data on different data carriers. This means that the data can be retrieved more quickly and is better protected against any attempts at manipulation. Each data center also has special emergency programs. If, for example, there are problems with Google’s hardware or a natural disaster paralyzes the servers, the data will pretty much remain protected anyway.
Google stores some data for a set period of time. For other data, Google only offers the option to delete it manually. Furthermore, the company also anonymizes information (such as advertising data) in server logs by deleting part of the IP address and cookie information after 9 and 18 months, respectively.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
With the automatic deletion of location and activity data introduced in 2019, location and web/app activity information will be stored for either 3 or 18 months – depending on your decision – and then deleted. In addition, you can also manually delete this data from your history at any time via your Google account. If you want to completely prevent your location tracking, you need to pause the „Web and App Activity“ section in Google Account. Click „Data and personalization“ and then click the „Activity setting“ option. Here you can turn the activities on or off.
In your browser, you can also disable, delete or manage individual cookies. Depending on which browser you use, this always works slightly differently. The following instructions show how to manage cookies in your browser:
Chrome: Delete, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Managing cookies and website data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
If you do not want to have cookies in principle, you can set up your browser so that it always informs you when a cookie is to be set. This way, you can decide for each individual cookie whether you allow it or not.
Google is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which governs the accurate and secure transfer of personal data. You can find more information about this at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt000000001L5AAI. If you would like to learn more about Google’s data processing, we recommend that you read the company’s in-house privacy policy at https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=de.
Google Fonts Privacy Policy
On our website we use Google Fonts. These are the „Google Fonts“ of the company Google Inc. For the European area, the company Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street Dublin 4, Ireland) is responsible for all Google services.
You do not need to log in or enter a password to use Google Fonts. Furthermore, no cookies are stored in your browser. The files (CSS, fonts) are requested via the Google domains fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com. According to Google, the requests for CSS and fonts are completely separate from all other Google services. If you have a Google account, you do not need to worry that your Google account information, while using Google Fonts, will be transmitted to Google. Google records the usage of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and the fonts used and stores this data securely. We’ll look at exactly what the data storage looks like in more detail.
What are Google Fonts?
Google Fonts (formerly Google Web Fonts) is a directory of over 800 fonts that Google makes available to its users free of charge.
Many of these fonts are released under the SIL Open Font License, while others are released under the Apache License. Both are free software licenses.
Why do we use Google Fonts on our website?
Google Fonts allows us to use fonts on our own website, but we don’t have to upload them to our own server. Google Fonts is an important component in keeping the quality of our website high. All Google Fonts are automatically optimized for the web and this saves data volume and is a big advantage especially for mobile use. When you visit our site, the low file size ensures a fast loading time. Furthermore, Google Fonts are secure web fonts. Different image synthesis systems (rendering) in different browsers, operating systems and mobile devices can lead to errors. Such errors can sometimes visually distort texts or entire web pages. Thanks to the fast Content Delivery Network (CDN), there are no cross-platform problems with Google Fonts. Google Fonts supports all major browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera) and works reliably on most modern mobile operating systems, including Android 2.2+ and iOS 4.2+ (iPhone, iPad, iPod). So, we use the Google Fonts to make all our online service as beautiful and consistent as possible.
What data is stored by Google?
When you visit our website, the fonts are reloaded via a Google server. Through this external call, data is transmitted to the Google servers. In this way, Google also recognizes that you or your IP address are visiting our website. The Google Fonts API is designed to reduce the use, storage, and collection of end-user data to what is necessary for proper font delivery. By the way, API stands for „Application Programming Interface“ and serves, among other things, as a data transmitter in the software field.
Google Fonts stores CSS and font requests securely at Google and is therefore protected. Through the collected usage figures, Google can determine how well the individual fonts are received. Google publishes the results on internal analysis pages, such as Google Analytics. In addition, Google also uses data from its own web crawler to determine which websites are using Google fonts. This data is published to the Google Fonts BigQuery database. Entrepreneurs and developers use Google’s BigQuery web service to examine and move large amounts of data.
It should be noted, however, that each Google Font request also automatically transmits information such as language settings, IP address, browser version, browser screen resolution and browser name to the Google servers. Whether this data is also stored cannot be clearly determined or is not clearly communicated by Google.
How long and where is the data stored?
Google stores requests for CSS assets for one day on its servers, which are mainly located outside the EU. This allows us to use fonts with the help of a Google stylesheet. A stylesheet is a format template that can be used to easily and quickly change the design or font of a web page, for example.
The font files are stored by Google for one year. Google thus pursues the goal of fundamentally improving the loading time of web pages. When millions of web pages reference the same fonts, they are cached after the first visit and immediately reappear on all other web pages visited later. Sometimes Google updates font files to reduce file size, increase language coverage, and improve design.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
The data that Google stores for one day or one year cannot simply be deleted. The data is automatically transmitted to Google when the page is accessed. In order to delete this data prematurely, you must contact Google support at https://support.google.com/?hl=de&tid=311267321. You can only prevent data storage in this case if you do not visit our site.
Unlike other web fonts, Google allows us unlimited access to all fonts. So we can access an unlimited sea of fonts and get the most out of them for our website. You can find out more about Google Fonts and other issues at https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq?tid=311267321. Google does address privacy-related issues there, but it doesn’t really include detailed information about data storage. It is relatively difficult to get really precise information from Google about stored data.
You can also find out which data is generally collected by Google and what this data is used for at https://www.google.com/intl/de/policies/privacy/.
Google Fonts Local Privacy Policy
On our website we use Google Fonts of the company Google Inc. For the European area the company Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street Dublin 4, Ireland) is responsible. We have embedded the Google fonts locally, i.e. on our web server – not on Google’s servers. This means that there is no connection to Google servers and thus no data transfer or storage.
What are Google Fonts?
Google Fonts used to be called Google Web Fonts. This is an interactive directory of over 800 fonts that Google provides for free. With Google Fonts, you could use fonts without uploading them to your own server. However, in order to prevent any information transfer to Google servers in this regard, we have downloaded the fonts to our server. This way we act privacy compliant and do not send any data to Google Fonts.
Unlike other web fonts, Google allows us unlimited access to all fonts. So we can access an unlimited sea of fonts and get the most out of them for our website. You can find out more about Google Fonts and other issues at https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq?tid=311267321.
Font Awesome Privacy Policy
We use Font Awesome from the American company Fonticons (307 S. Main St., Suite 202, Bentonville, AR 72712, USA) on our website. When you visit one of our web pages, the Font Awesome web font (specifically icons) is loaded via the Font Awesome Content Delivery Network (CDN). This way, the texts or fonts and icons are displayed appropriately on each device. In this privacy policy, we go into more detail about the data storage and data processing by this service.
What is Font Awesome?
Icons play an increasingly important role for websites. Font Awesome is a web font specially designed for web designers and web developers. With Font Awesome, for example, icons can be scaled and colored as desired using the CSS stylesheet language. In this way, they replace old image icons. Font Awesome CDN is the easiest way to upload the icons or fonts to your website. For this, we just had to add a small line of code to our website.
Why do we use Font Awesome on our website?
Font Awesome allows content on our website to be presented in a better way. This makes it easier for you to navigate our website and grasp the content. With the icons you can even sometimes replace whole words and save space. That’s especially handy when we optimize content specifically for smartphones. These icons are inserted as HMTL code instead of an image. This allows us to edit the icons with CSS exactly as we want. At the same time, we also improve our loading speed with Font Awesome because it’s only HTML elements and not icon images. All these advantages help us to make the website even clearer, fresher and faster for you.
What data is stored by Font Awesome?
Font Awesome Content Delivery Network (CDN) is used to load icons and symbols. CDNs are networks of servers that are distributed around the world, making it possible to quickly load files from nearby locations. Thus, as soon as you access one of our pages, the corresponding icons are also provided by Font Awesome.
In order for the web fonts to load, your browser must connect to the servers of the company Fonticons, Inc. In the process, your IP address is detected. Font Awesome also collects data about which icon files are downloaded and when. Furthermore, technical data such as your browser version, screen resolution or the time of the page accessed are also transmitted.
For the following reasons, this data is collected and stored:
- to optimize content delivery networks
- to detect and correct technical errors
- to protect CDNs from misuse and attacks
- to be able to calculate charges from Font Awesome Pro customers
- to know the popularity of icons
- to know which computer and software you are using
If your browser does not allow web fonts, a default font of your PC will be used automatically. As far as we know at the moment, no cookies are set. We are in contact with Font Awesome’s privacy department and will let you know as soon as we learn more.
How long and where is the data stored?
Font Awesome stores data about Content Delivery Network usage on servers also located in the United States of America. However, the CDN servers are located around the world and store user data wherever you are. In identifiable form, the data is usually stored for only a few weeks. Aggregated statistics about usage from the CDNs may be stored longer. Personal data is not included here.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
Font Awesome does not, to the best of our knowledge, store any personal data about content delivery networks. Unfortunately, if you do not want data to be stored about the icons you use, you will not be able to visit our website. If your browser does not allow web fonts, no data will be transmitted or stored. In this case, the default font of your computer will simply be used.
If you would like to learn more about Font Awesome and how they handle data, we encourage you to visit their privacy policy at https://fontawesome.com/privacy and their help page at https://fontawesome.com/help.
OpenStreetMap Privacy Policy
We have integrated map sections of the online mapping tool „OpenStreetMap“ on our website. This is a so-called open source mapping, which we can access via an API (interface). This function is offered by OpenStreetMap Foundation, St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge, CB4 0WS, United Kingdom. By using this map function, your IP address will be forwarded to OpenStreetMap. This privacy policy explains why we use functions of the OpenStreetMap tool, where which data is stored and how you can prevent this data storage.
What is OpenStreetMap?
The OpenStreetMap project was launched in 2004. The goal of the project is and was to create a free map of the world. Users collect data worldwide about buildings, forests, rivers and roads. Over the years, an extensive digital world map has been created by users themselves. Of course, the map is not complete, but in most regions it contains a lot of data.
Why do we use OpenStreetMap on our website?
First and foremost, our website should be helpful to you. And from our point of view, it is always helpful when you can find information quickly and easily. On the one hand, this is of course about our services and products, but on the other hand, we also want to provide you with other helpful information. That’s why we also use the OpenStreetMap map service. Because this way we can show you, for example, exactly how to find our company. The map shows you the best way to us and your journey becomes a breeze.
What data is stored by OpenStreetMap?
When you visit one of our websites that offers OpenStreetMap, user data is transmitted to the service and stored there. OpenStreetMap collects information about your interactions with the digital map, your IP address, data about your browser, device type, operating system and on which day and at what time you used the service. Tracking software is also used to record user interactions for this purpose. The company specifies the „Piwik“ analysis tool here in its own privacy policy.
The collected data is subsequently accessible to the relevant working groups of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. According to the company, personal data is not shared with other individuals or companies unless legally necessary. The third-party provider Piwik does store your IP address, but in shortened form.
The following cookie may be set in your browser when you interact with OpenStreetMap on our website:
Name: _osm_location
Wert: 9.63312%7C52.41500%7C17%7CM
Purpose: The cookie is needed to unlock OpenStreetMap content.
Expiration date: after 10 years
If you want to view the full-screen map, you will be linked to the OpenStreetMap website. There, among other things, the following cookies can be stored in your browser:
Name: _osm_totp_token
Value: 148253311267321-2
Purpose: This cookie is used to ensure the operation of the map section.
Expiration date: after one hour
Name: _osm_session
Wert: 1d9bfa122e0259d5f6db4cb8ef653a1c
Purpose: The cookie can be used to store session information (i.e. user behavior).
Expiration date: after session end
Name: _pk_id.1.cf09
Wert: 4a5.1593684142.2.1593688396.1593688396311267321-9
Purpose: This cookie is set by Piwik to store or measure user data such as click behavior.
Expiration date: after one year
How long and where is the data stored?
The API servers, databases and ancillary services servers are currently located in the United Kingdom (Great Britain and Northern Ireland) and the Netherlands. Your IP address and user information stored in truncated form by the web analytics tool Piwik will be deleted after 180 days.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
You have the right to access your personal data and object to its use and processing at any time. You can manage, delete or deactivate cookies that may be set by OpenStreetMap in your browser at any time. However, this will prevent the service from working to its full extent. For each browser, managing, deleting or disabling cookies works slightly differently. Below you will find links to instructions for the most popular browsers:
Chrome: Delete, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Managing cookies and website data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
If you want to learn more about OpenStreetMap’s data processing, we recommend that you read the company’s privacy policy at https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy.
Google Analytics Privacy Policy
We use on our website the analysis tracking tool Google Analytics (GA) of the American company Google Inc. For the European area the company Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street Dublin 4, Ireland) is responsible for all Google services. Google Analytics collects data about your actions on our website. For example, when you click on a link, this action is stored in a cookie and sent to Google Analytics. Using the reports we receive from Google Analytics, we can better tailor our website and service to your preferences. In the following, we will go into more detail about the tracking tool and, in particular, inform you about what data is stored and how you can prevent this.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a tracking tool used for traffic analysis of our website. In order for Google Analytics to work, a tracking code is built into the code of our website. When you visit our website, this code records various actions you take on our website. Once you leave our website, this data is sent to the Google Analytics servers and stored there.
Google processes the data and we receive reports about your user behavior. These reports may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Target group reports: Through target group reports, we get to know our users better and know more precisely who is interested in our service.
- Ad reports: Ad reports make it easier for us to analyze and improve our online advertising.
- Acquisition reports: Acquisition reports give us helpful information on how to get more people interested in our service.
- Behavior reports: This is where we learn how you interact with our website. We can track which path you take on our site and which links you click.
- Conversion reports: Conversion is the name given to a process in which you take a desired action as a result of a marketing message. For example, when you go from being just a website visitor to a buyer or newsletter subscriber. These reports help us learn more about how our marketing efforts are working for you. This is how we aim to increase our conversion rate.
- Real-time reports: Here we always know immediately what is happening on our website. For example, we can see how many users are reading this text.
Why do we use Google Analytics on our website?
Our goal with this website is clear: we want to provide you with the best possible service. The statistics and data from Google Analytics help us achieve this goal.
The statistically evaluated data shows us a clear picture of the strengths and weaknesses of our website. On the one hand, we can optimize our site so that it is found more easily by interested people on Google. On the other hand, the data helps us to better understand you as a visitor. Thus, we know very well what we need to improve on our website in order to provide you with the best possible service. The data also helps us to carry out our advertising and marketing measures in a more individual and cost-effective way. After all, it only makes sense to show our products and services to people who are interested in them.
What data is stored by Google Analytics?
Google Analytics uses a tracking code to create a random, unique ID associated with your browser cookie. This is how Google Analytics recognizes you as a new user. The next time you visit our site, you will be recognized as a „returning“ user. All collected data is stored together with this user ID. This is how it is possible to evaluate pseudonymous user profiles in the first place.
To be able to analyze our website with Google Analytics, a property ID must be inserted into the tracking code. The data is then stored in the corresponding property. For each newly created property, the Google Analytics 4 property is default. Alternatively, you can also create the Universal Analytics property. Depending on the property used, data is stored for different lengths of time.
Identifiers such as cookies and app instance IDs measure your interactions on our website. Interactions are all types of actions you take on our website. If you also use other Google systems (such as a Google account), data generated through Google Analytics may be linked to third-party cookies. Google does not share Google Analytics data unless we, as the website operator, authorize it. Exceptions may occur if required by law.
The following cookies are used by Google Analytics:
Name: _ga
Wert: 2.1326744211.152311267321-5
Purpose: By default, analytics.js uses the _ga cookie to store the user ID. Basically, it is used to distinguish website visitors.
Expiration date: after 2 years
Name: _gid
Wert: 2.1687193234.152311267321-1
Purpose: the cookie is also used to distinguish website visitors
Expiration date: after 24 hours
Name: _gat_gtag_UA_Value: 1
Purpose: Used to lower the request rate. If Google Analytics is deployed via Google Tag Manager, this cookie will be named _dc_gtm_ .
Expiration date: after 1 minute
Name: AMP_TOKEN
Value: not specified
Purpose: The cookie has a token that can be used to retrieve a user ID from the AMP client ID service. Other possible values indicate a logout, a request, or an error.
Expiration date: after 30 seconds up to one year
Name: __utma
Wert: 1564498958.1564498958.1564498958.1
Purpose: This cookie is used to track your behavior on the website and measure performance. The cookie is updated every time information is sent to Google Analytics.
Expiration date: after 2 years
Name: __utmt
Value: 1
Purpose: The cookie is used like _gat_gtag_UA_ to throttle the request rate.
Expiration date: after 10 minutes
Name: __utmb
Value: 3.10.1564498958
Purpose: This cookie is used to determine new sessions. It is updated every time new data or info is sent to Google Analytics.
Expiration date: after 30 minutes
Name: __utmc
Value: 167421564
Purpose: This cookie is used to set new sessions for returning visitors. This is a session cookie and is only stored until you close the browser again.
Expiration date: After you close the browser.
Name: __utmz
Value: m|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/
Purpose: The cookie is used to identify the source of traffic to our website. That is, the cookie stores from where you came to our website. This may have been another page or an advertisement.
Expiration date: after 6 months
Name: __utmv
Value: not specified
Purpose: The cookie is used to store custom user data. It is updated whenever information is sent to Google Analytics.
Expiration date: after 2 years
Note: This list cannot claim to be complete, as Google also changes the choice of its cookies again and again.
Here we show you an overview of the most important data collected with Google Analytics:
Heatmaps: Google creates so-called heatmaps. Heatmaps allow you to see exactly those areas that you click on. This gives us information about where you are „on the move“ on our site.
Session duration: Google defines session duration as the time you spend on our site without leaving. If you have been inactive for 20 minutes, the session ends automatically.
Bounce rate: A bounce is when you view only one page on our website and then leave our website again.
Account creation: When you create an account or place an order on our website, Google Analytics collects this data.
IP address: The IP address is only shown in abbreviated form so that no clear assignment is possible.
Location: The IP address can be used to determine the country and your approximate location. This process is also called IP location determination.
Technical information: Technical information may include your browser type, Internet service provider, or screen resolution.
Source of origin: Google Analytics or, of course, we are also interested in which website or which advertisement you came to our site from.
Other data include contact details, any ratings, playing media (e.g., when you play a video via our site), sharing content via social media, or adding to your favorites. The enumeration does not claim to be complete and only serves as a general orientation of the data storage by Google Analytics.
How long and where is the data stored?
Google has your servers spread all over the world. Most servers are located in America and consequently your data is mostly stored on American servers. Here you can read exactly where Google data centers are located: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=de
Your data is distributed on different physical data carriers. This has the advantage that the data can be retrieved more quickly and is better protected against manipulation. In every Google data center, there are corresponding emergency programs for your data. If, for example, the hardware at Google fails or natural disasters paralyze servers, the risk of a service interruption at Google still remains low.
The data retention period depends on the properties used. When using the newer Google Analytics 4 properties, the retention period of your user data is set to 14 months. For other so-called event data, we have the option to choose a retention period of 2 months or 14 months.
For Universal Analytics properties, Google Analytics has a default retention period of 26 months for your user data. Then your user data is deleted. However, we have the option to choose the retention period of user data ourselves. We have five variants available for this purpose:
- Deletion after 14 months
- Deletion after 26 months
- Deletion after 38 months
- Deletion after 50 months
- No automatic deletion
In addition, there is also the option that data will only be deleted if you no longer visit our website within the period we have selected. In this case, the retention period is reset each time you visit our website again within the specified period.
Once the specified period has expired, the data is deleted once a month. This retention period applies to your data associated with cookies, user recognition and advertising IDs (e.g. DoubleClick domain cookies). Reporting results are based on aggregated data and are stored separately from user data. Aggregated data is a merging of individual data into a larger unit.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
Under European Union data protection law, you have the right to obtain information about your data, update it, delete it, or restrict it. Using the browser add-on to disable Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, dc.js), you can prevent Google Analytics from using your data. You can download and install the browser add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=de. Please note that this add-on only disables data collection by Google Analytics.
If you generally want to disable, delete or manage cookies (independently of Google Analytics), there are separate instructions for each browser:
Chrome: Delete, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Managing cookies and website data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
Google Analytics is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which regulates the correct and secure transfer of personal data. You can find more information about this at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt000000001L5AAI&tid=311267321. We hope we have been able to provide you with the most important information about Google Analytics data processing. If you want to learn more about the tracking service, we recommend these two links: http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/de.html and https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=de.
Google Analytics IP anonymization
We have implemented Google Analytics IP address anonymization on this website. This feature was developed by Google to enable this website to comply with applicable data protection regulations and recommendations of local data protection authorities when they prohibit storage of the full IP address. The anonymization or masking of the IP takes place as soon as the IP addresses arrive in the Google Analytics data collection network and before any storage or processing of the data takes place.
For more information on IP anonymization, please visit https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2763052?hl=de.
Google Analytics reports on demographic characteristics and interests
We have turned on the advertising reports features in Google Analytics. The demographic and interest reports contain information on age, gender and interests. This allows us – without being able to assign this data to individual persons – to get a better picture of our users. You can learn more about the advertising functions at https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3450482?hl=de_AT&utm_id=ad.
You can stop the use of the activities and information of your Google account under „Advertising settings“ on https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated via checkbox.
Google Analytics deactivation link
If you click on the following deactivation link, you can prevent Google from collecting further visits to this website. Attention: Deleting cookies, using the incognito/private mode of your browser, or using another browser will result in data being collected again.
Google Analytics Data Processing Addendum
We have entered into a direct customer agreement with Google for the use of Google Analytics by accepting the „Data Processing Addendum“ in Google Analytics.
You can find more about the data processing addendum for Google Analytics here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3379636?hl=de&utm_id=ad
Google Analytics Google Signals Privacy Policy
We have enabled Google signals in Google Analytics. This updates existing Google Analytics features (advertising reports, remarketing, cross-device reports, and interest and demographic reports) to obtain aggregated and anonymized data from you, provided you have allowed personalized ads in your Google account.
The special thing about this is that it is cross-device tracking. That means your data can be analyzed across devices. By activating Google signals, data is collected and linked to the Google account. Google can thus recognize, for example, if you view a product on our website via a smartphone and only buy the product later via a laptop. Thanks to the activation of Google signals, we can launch cross-device remarketing campaigns that would otherwise not be possible in this form. Remarketing means that we can also show you our offer on other websites.
Google Analytics also collects other visitor data such as location, search history, YouTube history, and data about your actions on our website through Google signals. This gives us better advertising reports from Google and more useful information about your interests and demographics. This includes your age, what language you speak, where you live, or what gender you are. Furthermore, social criteria such as your profession, your marital status or your income are also added. All these characteristics help Google Analytics to define groups of people or target groups.
The reports also help us to better assess your behavior, wishes and interests. This allows us to optimize and adapt our services and products for you. By default, this data expires after 26 months. Please note that this data collection only occurs if you have allowed personalized advertising in your Google account. This is always aggregated and anonymous data and never individual person data. In your Google account, you can manage this data or delete it.
Google Tag Manager Privacy Policy
For our website we use the Google Tag Manager of the company Google Inc. For the European area the company Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street Dublin 4, Ireland) is responsible for all Google services. This tag manager is one of many helpful marketing products from Google. Through the Google Tag Manager, we can centrally incorporate and manage code sections from various tracking tools that we use on our website.
In this privacy policy, we want to explain in more detail what Google Tag Manager does, why we use it, and in what form data is processed.
What is Google Tag Manager?
Google Tag Manager is an organizational tool that allows us to include and manage website tags centrally and through a user interface. Tags are small sections of code that, for example, record (track) your activities on our website. For this purpose, JavaScript code sections are inserted into the source code of our page. The tags often come from Google-internal products such as Google Ads or Google Analytics, but tags from other companies can also be included and managed via the manager. Such tags perform different tasks. They can collect browser data, feed marketing tools with data, embed buttons, set cookies and also track users across multiple websites.
Why do we use Google Tag Manager for our website?
As the saying goes: organization is half the battle! And that of course also applies to the maintenance of our website. In order to make our website as good as possible for you and all the people who are interested in our products and services, we need various tracking tools such as Google Analytics. The collected data from these tools show us what you are most interested in, where we can improve our services and which people we should still show our offers to. And for this tracking to work, we need to embed appropriate JavaScript codes into our website. In principle, we could include each code section of each tracking tool separately in our source code. However, this requires quite a lot of time and it’s easy to lose track. That’s why we use the Google Tag Manager. We can easily incorporate the necessary scripts and manage them from one place. Moreover, Google Tag Manager offers an easy-to-use interface and you don’t need any programming skills. This is how we manage to keep order in our tag jungle.
What data is stored by Google Tag Manager?
The Tag Manager itself is a domain that does not set any cookies or store any data. It acts as a mere „manager“ of the implemented tags. The data is collected by the individual tags of the different web analytics tools. The data is virtually passed through to the individual tracking tools in the Google Tag Manager and is not stored.
However, the situation is quite different with the embedded tags of the various web analysis tools, such as Google Analytics. Depending on the analysis tool, various data about your web behavior is usually collected, stored and processed with the help of cookies. For this, please read our privacy texts on the individual analysis and tracking tools that we use on our website.
In the Tag Manager account settings, we have allowed Google to receive anonymized data from us. However, this is only the use and usage of our Tag Manager and not your data stored via the code sections. We allow Google and others to receive selected data in anonymized form. We thus consent to the anonymous sharing of our website data. Which summarized and anonymous data is forwarded exactly, we could not find out – despite long research. In any case, Google deletes all information that could identify our website. Google combines the data with hundreds of other anonymous website data and creates user trends as part of benchmarking measures. Benchmarking compares our own results with those of our competitors. Processes can be optimized on the basis of the information collected.
How long and where is the data stored?
When Google stores data, this data is stored on Google’s own servers. The servers are distributed all over the world. Most of them are located in America. At https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=de you can read exactly where the Google servers are located.
How long the individual tracking tools store data from you can be found in our individual privacy texts for the individual tools.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
The Google Tag Manager itself does not set cookies, but manages tags from various tracking websites. In our privacy texts for the individual tracking tools, you will find detailed information on how to delete or manage your data.
Google is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which regulates the correct and secure transfer of personal data. For more information, please visit https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt000000001L5AAI&tid=311267321. If you want to learn more about Google Tag Manager, we recommend the FAQs at https://www.google.com/intl/de/tagmanager/faq.html.
Newsletter Privacy Policy
When you sign up for our newsletter, you submit the above personal data and give us the right to contact you by email. We use the data stored in the context of the registration for the newsletter exclusively for our newsletter and do not pass them on.
If you unsubscribe from the newsletter – you will find the link for this at the bottom of each newsletter – we will delete all data that was stored with the subscription to the newsletter.
MailChimp Privacy Policy
Like many other websites, we also use the services of the newsletter company MailChimp on our website. The operator of MailChimp is the company The Rocket Science Group, LLC, 675 Ponce de Leon Ave NE, Suite 5000, Atlanta, GA 30308 USA. Thanks to MailChimp, we can send you interesting news very easily via newsletter. With MailChimp, we don’t have to install anything and can still draw from a pool of really useful features. In the following, we will go into more detail about this email marketing service and inform you about the most important privacy-relevant aspects.
What is MailChimp?
MailChimp is a cloud-based newsletter management service. „Cloud-based“ means that we do not need to install MailChimp on our own computer or server. Instead, we use the service via an IT infrastructure – which is available over the Internet – on an external server. This way of using a software is also called SaaS (Software as a Service).
With MailChimp we can choose from a wide range of different email types. Depending on what we want to achieve with our newsletter, we can run single campaigns, regular campaigns, autoresponders (automatic email), A/B tests, RSS campaigns (sending in predefined time and frequency) and follow-up campaigns.
Why do we use MailChimp on our website?
Basically, we use a newsletter service to keep in touch with you. We want to tell you what’s new with us or what attractive offers we currently have in our program. For our marketing activities we always look for the simplest and best solutions. And that’s why we chose Mailchimp’s newsletter management service. Although the software is very easy to use, it offers a large number of helpful features. Thus, we can design interesting and beautiful newsletters in just a short time. Through the design templates offered, we make each newsletter completely individual and thanks to the „Responsive Design“, our content is also displayed legibly and beautifully on your smartphone (or any other mobile device).
Through tools such as the A/B test or the extensive analysis options, we see very quickly how our newsletters are received by you. This allows us to react if necessary and improve our offer or our services.
Another advantage is the „cloud system“ of Mailchimp. The data is not stored and processed directly on our server. We can retrieve the data from external servers and save our storage space in this way. In addition, the maintenance effort is significantly reduced.
What data is stored by MailChimp?
Rocket Science Group LLC (MailChimp) maintains online platforms that allow us to contact you (if you have subscribed to our newsletter). When you become a subscriber to our newsletter via our website, you confirm by email that you are a member of an email list of MailChimp. So that MailChimp can also prove that you have subscribed to the „list provider“, the date of subscription and your IP address are stored. Furthermore, MailChimp stores your email address, name, physical address and demographic information, such as language or location.
This information is used to send you emails and enable certain other MailChimp features (such as newsletter evaluation).
MailChimp also shares information with third-party vendors to provide better services. MailChimp also shares some information with third-party advertising partners to better understand the interests and concerns of its customers in order to provide more relevant content and targeted advertising.
Through so-called „web beacons“ (these are small graphics in HTML emails) MailChimp can determine whether the email has arrived, whether it has been opened and whether links have been clicked. All this information is stored on the MailChimp servers. This gives us statistical evaluations and allows us to see exactly how well our newsletter was received by you. This way we can adapt our offer much better to your wishes and improve our service.
MailChimp may also use this data to improve its own service. This means, for example, that the dispatch can be technically optimized or the location (country) of the recipients can be determined.
The following cookies can be set by Mailchimp. This is not a complete cookie list, but rather an exemplary selection:
Name: AVESTA_ENVIRONMENT
Value: Prod
Purpose: This cookie is necessary to provide the Mailchimp services. It is always set when a user signs up for a newsletter mailing list.
Expiration date: after session end
Name: ak_bmsc
Wert: F1766FA98C9BB9DE4A39F70A9E5EEAB55F6517348A7000001311267321-3
Purpose: The cookie is used to be able to distinguish a human from a bot. This allows to create secure reports about the usage of a website.
Expiration date: after 2 hours
Name: bm_sv
Wert: A5A322305B4401C2451FC22FFF547486~FEsKGvX8eovCwTeFTzb8//I3ak2Au…
Purpose: The cookie is from MasterPass Digital Wallet (a MasterCard service) and is used to offer a visitor a virtual payment transaction securely and easily. For this purpose, the user is anonymously identified on the website.
Expiration date: after 2 hours
Name: _abck
Wert: 8D545C8CCA4C3A50579014C449B045311267321-9
Purpose: We could not find out more information about the purpose of this cookie.
Expiration date: after one year
Sometimes it may happen that you open our newsletter via a specified link for better display. This is the case, for example, if your email program does not work or the newsletter is not displayed properly. The newsletter is then displayed via a MailChimp website. MailChimp also uses cookies (small text files that store data on your browser) on its own websites. In the process, personal data may be processed by MailChimp and its partners (e.g. Google Analytics). This data collection is the responsibility of MailChimp and we have no influence on it. In MailChimp’s „Cookie Statement“ (at: https://mailchimp.com/legal/cookies/) you can find out exactly how and why the company uses cookies.
How long and where is the data stored?
Since MailChimp is an American company, all collected data is also stored on American servers.
In principle, the data remains permanently stored on Mailchimp’s servers and is only deleted when a request is made by you. You can have us delete your contact. This permanently removes all your personal data for us and anonymizes you in the Mailchimp reports. However, you can also request MailChimp to delete your data directly. Then all your data will be removed there and we will receive a notification from MailChimp. After we receive the email, we have 30 days to delete your contact from all connected integrations.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
You can withdraw your consent to receive our newsletter at any time within the received email by clicking on the link at the bottom. Once you have unsubscribed by clicking on the unsubscribe link, your data will be deleted from MailChimp.
If you reach a MailChimp website via a link in our newsletter and cookies are set in your browser, you can delete or deactivate these cookies at any time.
Depending on your browser, disabling or deleting them works slightly differently. The following instructions show how to manage cookies in your browser:
Chrome: Delete, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Managing cookies and website data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
If you do not want to have cookies in principle, you can set up your browser so that it always informs you when a cookie is to be set. This way, you can decide for each individual cookie whether you allow it or not.
MailChimp is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which regulates the correct and secure transfer of personal data. For more information, please visit https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000TO6hAAG&tid=311267321. To learn more about MailChimp’s use of cookies, please visit https://mailchimp.com/legal/cookies/. For information about MailChimp’s privacy policy, please visit https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/.
MailChimp order data processing contract
We have concluded an order data processing contract (Data Processing Addendum) with MailChimp. This contract serves to safeguard your personal data and ensures that MailChimp adheres to the applicable data protection regulations and does not disclose your personal data to third parties.
For more information on this contract, visit https://mailchimp.com/legal/data-processing-addendum/.
Google AdSense Privacy Policy
We use Google AdSense on this website. This is an advertising program of the company Google Inc. In Europe, the company Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street Dublin 4, Ireland) is responsible for all Google services. Google AdSense allows us to display ads on this website that match our theme. In this way, we offer you ads that ideally represent a real added value for you. In the course of this privacy policy on Google AdSense, we explain why we use Google AdSense on our website, what data from you is processed and stored and how you can prevent this data storage.
What is Google AdSense?
The Google AdSense advertising program has been around since 2003, but unlike Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords), you can’t place ads yourself. Google AdSense displays advertisements on websites, such as ours. The biggest advantage of this advertising service compared to some others is that Google AdSense only shows you ads that match our content. Google has its own algorithm that calculates which ads you will see. Of course, we only want to show you ads that you are interested in and that offer you added value. Google checks which ads are suitable for our website and for our users based on your interests or your user behavior and based on our offer. At this point we would like to mention that we are not responsible for the selection of the advertisements. We only offer the advertising space with our website. The selection of the displayed advertising is made by Google. Since August 2013, the ads are also adapted to the respective user interface. That is, whether you visit our website from your smartphone, your PC or laptop, the ads adapt to your device.
Why do we use Google AdSense on our website?
Running a quality website requires a lot of dedication and great effort. Basically, we are never done with the work on our website. We always try to maintain our site and keep it as up to date as possible. Of course, we also want to achieve economic success with this work. That’s why we decided to use advertisements as a source of income. However, the most important thing for us is not to disturb your visit on our website by these ads. With the help of Google AdSense you will only be offered ads that fit our topics and your interests.
Similar to Google indexing for a website, a bot examines the relevant content and offers on our website. Then, the ads are adjusted in terms of content and presented on the website. In addition to the content overlap between the ad and the website offer, AdSense also supports interest-based targeting. This means that Google also uses your data to offer advertising tailored to you. So you get advertising that ideally offers you real added value and we have a higher chance of earning a little something.
What data is stored by Google AdSense?
In order for Google AdSense to display customized advertising tailored to you, cookies are used, among other things. Cookies are small text files that store certain information on your computer.
In AdSense, cookies are intended to enable better advertising. The cookies do not contain any personally identifiable data. However, it should be noted that Google considers data such as „pseudonymous cookie IDs“ (name or other identifier is replaced by a pseudonym) or IP addresses as non-personally identifiable information. However, under the GDPR, these data may be considered personal data. Google AdSense sends a cookie to the browser after every impression (this is always the case when you see an ad), every click and every other activity that leads to a call to the Google AdSense servers. If the browser accepts the cookie, it is stored there.
Third-party vendors may place and read cookies in your browser or use web beacons to store data they receive from ad delivery on the website as part of AdSense. Web beacons are small graphics that do log file analysis and log file recording. This analysis enables statistical analysis for online marketing.
Google may collect certain information about your user behavior on our website through these cookies. This includes:
- Information on how you interact with an ad (clicks, impression, mouse movements)
- Information about whether an ad has already appeared in your browser at an earlier time. This data helps to avoid showing you an ad more than once.
In the process, Google analyzes and evaluates the data on the displayed advertising media and your IP address. Google uses the data primarily to measure the effectiveness of an ad and to improve the advertising offer. This data is not linked to personal data that Google may have about you via other Google services.
In the following, we present cookies that Google AdSense uses for tracking purposes. Here we refer to a test website that has Google AdSense installed exclusively:
Name: uid
Value: 891269189311267321-8
Purpose: The cookie is stored under the domain adform.net. It provides a uniquely assigned, machine-generated user ID and collects data about activity on our website.
Expiration date: after 2 months
Name: C
Value: 1
Purpose: This cookie identifies whether your browser accepts cookies. The cookie is stored under the domain track.adform.net.
Expiration date: after 1 month
Name: cid
Wert: 8912691894970695056,0,0,0,0
Purpose: This cookie is stored at the domain track.adform.net, stands for Client ID and is used to improve advertising to you. It can deliver more relevant ads to the visitor and helps to improve campaign performance reports.
Expiration date: after 2 months
Name: IDE
Wert: zOtj4TWxwbFDjaATZ2TzNaQmxrU311267321-1
Purpose: The cookie is stored at the doubleclick.net domain. It is used to register your actions after viewing or clicking the ad. This allows us to measure how well an ad is received by our visitors.
Expiration date: after 1 month
Name: test_cookie
Value: not specified
Purpose: With the help of the „test_cookie“ you can check if your browser supports cookies at all. The cookie is stored under the domain doubleclick.net.
Expiration date: after 1 month
Name: CT592996
Value:733366
Purpose: Stored under the domain adform.net. The cookie is set as soon as you click on an advertisement. We could not find out more detailed information about the use of this cookie.
Expiration date: after one hour
Note: This list cannot claim to be exhaustive, as Google’s experience shows that it changes its choice of cookies time and again.
How long and where is the data stored?
Google collects your IP address and various activities you perform on the website. Cookies store this information about interactions on our website. According to Google, the company collects and stores the specified information in a secure manner on Google’s in-house servers in the USA.
If you do not have a Google account or are not logged in, Google stores the collected data with a unique identifier (ID) mostly on your browser. The unique IDs stored in cookies are used, for example, to ensure personalized advertising. If you are logged into a Google account, Google may also collect personal data.
You can delete some of the data that Google stores at any time (see next section). Much of the information stored in cookies is automatically deleted after a certain period of time. However, there is also data that is stored by Google for a longer period of time. This is the case when Google, due to economic or legal necessities, has to store certain data over an indefinite, longer period of time.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
You always have the option to delete or disable cookies that are on your computer. How exactly this works depends on your browser.
Here you can find the instructions on how to manage cookies in your browser:
Chrome: Delete, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Managing cookies and website data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
If you do not want to have cookies in principle, you can set up your browser so that it always informs you when a cookie is to be set. In this way, you can decide for each individual cookie whether you allow the cookie or not. Downloading and installing this browser plug-in at https://support.google.com/ads/answer/7395996 will also disable all „advertising cookies“. Keep in mind that by disabling these cookies you do not prevent the ads, only the personalized ads.
If you have a Google account, you can deactivate personalized advertising on the https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated website. You will continue to see ads here as well, but they will no longer be customized to your interests. Nevertheless, the ads are displayed based on a few factors, such as your location, browser type and the search terms used.
You can find out what data Google basically collects and what they use this data for at https://www.google.com/intl/de/policies/privacy/.
Embedded Social Media Elements Privacy Policy
We integrate elements of social media services on our website to display images, videos and texts.
When you visit pages that display these elements, data is transferred from your browser to the respective social media service and stored there. We do not have access to this data.
The following links will take you to the pages of the respective social media services where it is explained how they handle your data:
- Instagram Privacy Policy: https://help.instagram.com/519522125107875
- For YouTube, the Google privacy policy applies: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=de
- Facebook Data Policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy
- Twitter Privacy Policy: https://twitter.com/de/privacy
Facebook privacy policy
We use selected tools from Facebook on our website. Facebook is a social media network of the company Facebook Ireland Ltd, 4 Grand Canal Square, Grand Canal Harbour, Dublin 2 Ireland. With the help of these tools we can offer you and people who are interested in our products and services the best possible offer. In the following, we provide an overview of the various Facebook tools, what data is sent to Facebook and how you can delete this data.
What are Facebook tools?
Among many other products, Facebook also offers the so-called „Facebook Business Tools“. This is the official name of Facebook. However, since the term is hardly known, we have decided to simply call them Facebook Tools. Among them are:
- Facebook Pixel
- social plug-ins (such as the „Like“ or „Share“ button)
- Facebook Login
- Account Kit
- APIs (Application Programming Interface)
- SDKs (collection of programming tools)
- Platform integrations
- Plugins
- Codes
- Specifications
- Documentations
- Technologies and services
Through these tools, Facebook extends services and has the ability to obtain information about user activity outside of Facebook.
Why do we use Facebook tools on our website?
We only want to show our services and products to people who are really interested in them. With the help of advertisements (Facebook ads), we can reach precisely these people. However, in order to show users suitable ads, Facebook needs information about people’s wishes and needs. Thus, information about user behavior (and contact data) on our website is made available to the company. As a result, Facebook collects better user data and can show interested people the appropriate advertising about our products or services. The tools thus enable tailored advertising campaigns on Facebook.
Data about your behavior on our website is called „event data“ by Facebook. This is also used for measurement and analysis services. Facebook can thus create „campaign reports“ on our behalf about the impact of our advertising campaigns. Furthermore, analytics give us better insight into how you use our services, website or products. As a result, we use some of these tools to optimize your user experience on our website. For example, social plug-ins allow you to share content on our site directly on Facebook.
What data is stored by Facebook tools?
By using individual Facebook tools, personal data (customer data) can be sent to Facebook. Depending on the tools used, customer data such as name, address, phone number and IP address may be sent.
Facebook uses this information to match the data with the data it itself has from you (if you are a Facebook member). Before customer data is transmitted to Facebook, a so-called „hashing“ takes place. This means that a data record of any size is transformed into a character string. This also serves to encrypt data.
In addition to contact data, „event data“ is also transmitted. Event data“ refers to the information that we receive about you on our website. For example, which subpages you visit or which products you buy from us. Facebook does not share the information it receives with third parties (such as advertisers) unless the company has explicit permission or is legally required to do so. „Event data“ may also be associated with contact information. This allows Facebook to offer better personalized advertising. After the matching process already mentioned, Facebook deletes the contact data again.
In order to deliver ads in an optimized manner, Facebook uses Event Data only when it has been aggregated with other data (collected by Facebook in other ways). Facebook also uses this event data for security, protection, development, and research purposes. Much of this data is transferred to Facebook via cookies. Cookies are small text files used to store data or information in browsers. Depending on the tools you use and whether you are a Facebook member, different numbers of cookies are created in your browser. We go into more detail about individual Facebook cookies in the descriptions of each Facebook tool. General information about the use of Facebook cookies can also be found at https://www.facebook.com/policies/cookies.
How long and where is the data stored?
Basically, Facebook stores data until it is no longer needed for its own services and Facebook products. Facebook has servers all over the world where your data is stored. Customer data, however, is deleted within 48 hours after it has been matched with your own user data.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
In accordance with the Basic Data Protection Regulation, you have the right to information, correction, transferability and deletion of your data.
A complete deletion of the data will only occur if you delete your Facebook account completely. And this is how deleting your Facebook account works:
1) Click Settings on the right side of Facebook.
2) Then click „Your Facebook information“ in the left column.
3) Now click „Deactivation and deletion“.
4) Now select „Delete account“ and then click „Next and delete account“.
5) Now enter your password, click „Next“ and then click „Delete account“.
The storage of data that Facebook receives via our site takes place, among other things, via cookies (e.g. for social plugins). In your browser, you can deactivate, delete or manage individual or all cookies. Depending on which browser you use, this works in different ways. The following instructions show how to manage cookies in your browser:
Chrome: Delete, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Managing cookies and website data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
If you do not want to have cookies in principle, you can set up your browser so that it always informs you when a cookie is to be set. This way, you can decide for each individual cookie whether you allow it or not.
Facebook is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which governs the accurate and secure transfer of personal data. You can find more information about this at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000GnywAAC. We hope we have brought you closer to the most important information about the use and data processing by Facebook tools. If you want to learn more about how Facebook uses your data, we recommend that you read the Data Policy at https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update.
Facebook Social Plug-ins Privacy Policy
So-called social plug-ins of the company Facebook Inc. are installed on our website. You can recognize these buttons by the classic Facebook logo, such as the „Like“ button (the hand with raised thumb) or by a clear „Facebook Plug-in“ label. A social plug-in is a small part of Facebook that is integrated into our site. Each plug-in has its own function. The most commonly used functions are the well-known „Like“ and „Share“ buttons.
The following social plug-ins are offered by Facebook:
- „Save“ button
- „Like“ button, share, send and quote
- Page plug-in
- Comments
- Messenger plug-in
- Embedded posts and video player
- Group plug-in
At https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins you will find more detailed information on how the individual plug-ins are used. We use the social plug-ins on the one hand to offer you a better user experience on our site, and on the other hand because Facebook can optimize our advertisements.
If you have a Facebook account or have already visited facebook.com, Facebook has already set at least one cookie in your browser. In this case, your browser sends information to Facebook via this cookie as soon as you visit our site or interact with social plug-ins (e.g. the „Like“ button).
The information obtained is deleted or anonymized again within 90 days. According to Facebook, this data includes your IP address, which website you visited, the date, the time and other information concerning your browser.
To prevent Facebook from collecting a lot of data during your visit to our website and connecting it with Facebook data, you must log out of Facebook while visiting the website.
If you are not logged into Facebook or do not have a Facebook account, your browser sends less information to Facebook because you have fewer Facebook cookies. Nevertheless, data such as your IP address or which website you visit may be transmitted to Facebook. We would still like to explicitly point out that we do not know exactly about the exact content of the data. However, we try to inform you as best as possible about the data processing according to our current state of knowledge. You can also read about how Facebook uses the data in the company’s data policy at https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update.
The following cookies are set in your browser at least when you visit a website with social plug-ins from Facebook:
Name: dpr
Value: not specified
Purpose: This cookie is used to make the social plug-ins on our website work.
Expiration date: after end of session
Name: fr
Wert: 0jieyh4311267321c2GnlufEJ9..Bde09j…1.0.Bde09j
Purpose: The cookie is also necessary for the plug-ins to work properly.
Expiration date:: after 3 months
Note: These cookies were set after a test, even if you are not a Facebook member.
Provided you are logged in to Facebook, you can change your ad settings yourself at https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_settings_screen. If you are not a Facebook user, you can manage your usage-based online advertising at http://www.youronlinechoices.com/de/praferenzmanagement/grundsätzlich. There you have the option to deactivate or activate providers.
If you want to learn more about Facebook’s privacy policy, we recommend that you read the company’s own data policy at https://www.facebook.com/policy.php.
Facebook Login Privacy Policy
We have integrated the practical Facebook login on our site. This allows you to easily log in to our site with your Facebook account without having to create another user account. If you decide to make your registration via the Facebook Login, you will be redirected to the social media network Facebook. There, the registration takes place via your Facebook user data. Through this login procedure, data about you or your user behavior is stored and transmitted to Facebook.
To store the data, Facebook uses various cookies. Below we show you the most important cookies that are set in your browser or already exist when you log in to our site via the Facebook login:
Name: fr
Value: 0jieyh4c2GnlufEJ9..Bde09j…1.0.Bde09j
Purpose: This cookie is used to make the social plugin on our website work in the best possible way.
Expiration date: after 3 months
Name: datr
Wert: 4Jh7XUA2311267321SEmPsSfzCOO4JFFl
Purpose: Facebook sets the „datr“ cookie when a web browser accesses facebook.com, and the cookie helps identify login activity and protect users.
Expiration date: after 2 years
Name: _js_datr
Value: deleted
Purpose: This session cookie sets Facebook for tracking purposes, even if you don’t have a Facebook account or are logged out.
Expiration date: after session end
Note: The cookies listed are only a small selection of the cookies available to Facebook. Other cookies are, for example, _ fbp, sb or wd. A complete list is not possible, since Facebook has a large number of cookies and uses them variably.
The Facebook login offers you a quick and easy registration process on the one hand, on the other hand it gives us the opportunity to share data with Facebook. This allows us to better tailor our offer and promotions to your interests and needs. Data that we receive from Facebook in this way is public data such as.
- Your Facebook name
- Your profile picture
- a deposited e-mail address
- Friends lists
- Buttons details (e.g. „Like“ button)
- Birthday date
- Language
- Residence
In return, we provide Facebook with information about your activities on our website. This includes information about the device you are using, which of our subpages you visit, or which products you have purchased from us.
By using Facebook Login, you consent to the data processing. You can revoke this agreement at any time. If you want to learn more information about data processing by Facebook, we recommend the Facebook privacy policy at https://de-de.facebook.com/policy.php.
As long as you are logged in to Facebook, you can change your ad settings yourself at https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_settings_screen.
Instagram privacy policy
We have integrated Instagram functions on our website. Instagram is a social media platform of the company Instagram LLC, 1601 Willow Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025, USA. Instagram has been a subsidiary of Facebook Inc. since 2012 and is one of the Facebook products. Embedding Instagram content on our website is called embedding. This allows us to show you content such as buttons, photos or videos from Instagram directly on our website. When you call up web pages on our website that have an Instagram function integrated, data is transmitted to Instagram, stored and processed. Instagram uses the same systems and technologies as Facebook. Your data is thus processed across all Facebook companies.
In the following, we want to give you a more detailed insight into why Instagram collects data, what kind of data it is and how you can largely control the data processing. Since Instagram belongs to Facebook Inc., we obtain our information from the Instagram policies on the one hand, but also from the Facebook data policies themselves on the other hand.
What is Instagram?
Instagram is one of the most popular social media networks in the world. Instagram combines the advantages of a blog with those of audiovisual platforms like YouTube or Vimeo. You can upload photos and short videos on „Insta“ (as many of the users casually call the platform), edit them with various filters and also distribute them on other social networks. And if you don’t want to be active yourself, you can just follow other interesting users.
Why do we use Instagram on our website?
Instagram is the social media platform that has really gone through the roof in recent years. And of course we have also responded to this boom. We want you to feel as comfortable as possible on our website. That’s why a varied preparation of our content is a matter of course for us. Through the embedded Instagram features, we can enrich our content with helpful, funny or exciting content from the Instagram world. Since Instagram is a subsidiary of Facebook, the data collected can also serve us for personalized advertising on Facebook. This way, only people who are really interested in our products or services receive our ads.
Instagram also uses the collected data for measurement and analytics purposes. We get aggregate statistics and thus more insight about your likes and interests. It’s important to note that these reports do not identify you personally.
What data is stored by Instagram?
When you come across one of our pages that have Instagram features (such as Instagram images or plug-ins) built in, your browser automatically connects to Instagram’s servers. In the process, data is sent to Instagram, stored and processed. And this is regardless of whether you have an Instagram account or not. This includes information about our website, about your computer, about purchases made, about advertisements you see and how you use our offer. Furthermore, the date and time of your interaction with Instagram is also stored. If you have an Instagram account or are logged in, Instagram stores significantly more data about you.
Facebook distinguishes between customer data and event data. We assume that this is exactly the same for Instagram. Customer data is, for example, name, address, phone number and IP address. It is important to mention that these customer data are only transmitted to Instagram if they have been „hashed“ beforehand. Hashing means that a data record is transformed into a string. This allows you to encrypt the contact data. In addition, the „event data“ mentioned above is also transmitted. By „event data“ Facebook – and consequently Instagram – understands data about your user behavior. It may also happen that contact data is combined with event data. The collected contact data is matched with the data that Instagram already has from you.
Via small text files (cookies), which are usually set in your browser, the collected data is transmitted to Facebook. Depending on the Instagram functions used and whether you have an Instagram account yourself, different amounts of data are stored.
We assume that Instagram’s data processing works the same way as Facebook’s. This means that if you have an Instagram account or have visited www.instagram.com, Instagram has at least set a cookie. If this is the case, your browser sends info to Instagram via the cookie as soon as you come into contact with an Instagram function. After 90 days at the latest (after matching), this data is deleted again or anonymized. Although we have intensively studied Instagram’s data processing, we cannot say exactly what data Instagram collects and stores.
Below we show you cookies that are set in your browser at least when you click on an Instagram feature (such as button or an Insta image). In our test, we assume that you do not have an Instagram account. Of course, if you are logged in to Instagram, significantly more cookies are set in your browser.
These cookies were used in our test:
Name: csrftoken
Value: „“
Purpose: This cookie is most likely set for security reasons, to prevent falsification of requests. However, we could not find out more precisely.
Expiration date: after one year
Name: mid
Value: „“
Purpose: Instagram sets this cookie to optimize its own services and offerings on and off Instagram. The cookie sets a unique user ID.
Expiration date: after the end of the session
Name: fbsr_311267321124024
Value: not specified
Purpose: This cookie stores the log-in request for users of the Instagram app.
Expiration date: after the end of the session
Name: rur
Value: ATN
Purpose: This is an Instagram cookie that ensures functionality on Instagram.
Expiration date: after the end of the session
Name: urlgen
Wert: „{\“194.96.75.33\“: 1901}:1iEtYv:Y833k2_UjKvXgYe311267321″
Purpose: This cookie is used for Instagram’s marketing purposes.
Expiration date: after the end of the session
Note: We cannot claim completeness here. Which cookies are set in individual cases depends on the embedded features and your use of Instagram.
How long and where is the data stored?
Instagram shares the information it receives between Facebook companies with external partners and with people you connect with around the world. The data processing is done in compliance with its own data policy. Your data is distributed, among other things for security reasons, on Facebook servers around the world. Most of these servers are located in the USA.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
Thanks to the Basic Data Protection Regulation, you have the right of access, portability, rectification and deletion of your data. You can manage your data in the Instagram settings. If you want to completely delete your data on Instagram, you must permanently delete your Instagram account.
And this is how the deletion of the Instagram account works:
First, open the Instagram app. On your profile page, go down and click on „Help section“. Now you will get to the company’s website. On the webpage, click „Manage account“ and then click „Delete your account“.
When you delete your account entirely, Instagram deletes posts such as your photos and status updates. Information that other people have shared about you does not belong to your account and consequently will not be deleted.
As mentioned above, Instagram stores your data primarily via cookies. You can manage, disable or delete these cookies in your browser. Depending on your browser, the management always works a bit differently. Here we show you the instructions for the most important browsers.
Chrome: Delete, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Managing cookies and website data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
You can also basically set up your browser so that you are always informed when a cookie is to be set. Then you can always decide individually whether you want to allow the cookie or not.
Instagram is a subsidiary of Facebook Inc. and Facebook is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. This framework ensures proper data transfer between the U.S. and the European Union. You can learn more about it at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000GnywAAC. We have tried to bring you closer to the most important information about data processing by Instagram. At
https://help.instagram.com/519522125107875können you can learn even more about Instagram’s data policies.
Twitter privacy policy
We have integrated Twitter functions on our website. These are, for example, embedded tweets, timelines, buttons or hashtags. Twitter is a short message service and a social media platform of the company Twitter Inc, One Cumberland Place, Fenian Street, Dublin 2 D02 AX07, Ireland.
To our knowledge, in the European Economic Area and Switzerland, no personal data or data about your web activities is transmitted to Twitter by the mere inclusion of Twitter functions. Only when you interact with the Twitter functions, such as clicking on a button, can data be sent to Twitter, stored there and processed. We have no influence on this data processing and bear no responsibility for it. Within the framework of this privacy policy, we want to give you an overview of what data Twitter stores, what Twitter does with this data and how you can protect yourself from the data transfer to a large extent.
What is Twitter?
For some, Twitter is a news service, for others a social media platform, and still others speak of a microblogging service. All these terms have their justification and mean more or less the same thing.
Both private individuals and companies use Twitter to communicate with interested people via short messages. Twitter only allows 280 characters per message. These messages are called „tweets. Unlike Facebook, for example, the service does not focus on expanding a network for „friends“, but wants to be understood as a worldwide and open news platform. Twitter also allows users to have an anonymous account, and tweets can be deleted by the company on the one hand and by the users themselves on the other.
Why do we use Twitter on our website?
Like many other websites and companies, we try to offer our services and communicate with our customers through different channels. Especially Twitter has grown on us as a useful „little“ news service. Again and again we tweet or retweet exciting, funny or interesting content. We realize that you can’t follow every channel separately. After all, you also have something else to do. That’s why we have included Twitter features on our website. You can follow our Twitter activity „on the spot“ or follow a direct link to our Twitter page. Through this integration, we want to strengthen our service and user-friendliness on our website.
What data is stored by Twitter?
On some of our subpages you will find the built-in Twitter functions. When you interact with the Twitter content, such as clicking on a button, Twitter may collect and store data. This is the case even if you do not have a Twitter account yourself. Twitter calls this data „log data.“ It includes demographic data, browser cookie IDs, your smartphone’s ID, hashed email addresses, and information about what pages you visited on Twitter and what actions you took. Twitter, of course, stores more data if you have a Twitter account and are logged in. Most of the time, this storage happens via cookies. Cookies are small text files that are usually set in your browser and transmit different information to Twitter.
We will now show you which cookies are set when you are not logged in to Twitter but visit a website with built-in Twitter functions. Please consider this list as an example. We can by no means guarantee a claim to completeness here, as the choice of cookies always changes and depends on your individual actions with the Twitter content.
These cookies were used in our test:
Name: personalization_id
Wert: „v1_cSJIsogU51SeE311267321“
Purpose: This cookie stores information about how you use the website and through which advertisements you may have come to Twitter.
Expiration date: after 2 years
Name: lang
Value: en
Purpose: This cookie stores your default or preferred language.
Expiration date: after end of session
Name: guest_id
Value: 311267321v1%3A157132626
Purpose: This cookie is set to identify you as a guest.
Expiration date: after 2 years
Name: fm
Value: 0
Purpose: Unfortunately, we could not find out the purpose of this cookie.
Expiration date: after end of session
Name: external_referer
Wert: 3112673212beTA0sf5lkMrlGt
Purpose: This cookie collects anonymous data, such as how often you visit Twitter and how long you visit Twitter.
Expiration date: After 6 days
Name: eu_cn
Value: 1
Purpose: This cookie stores user activity and is used for various advertising purposes by Twitter.
Expiration date: After one year
Name: ct0
Wert: c1179f07163a365d2ed7aad84c99d966
Purpose: Unfortunately, we have not found any information about this cookie.
Expiration date: after 6 hours
Name: _twitter_sess
Wert: 53D%253D-dd0248311267321-
Purpose: This cookie allows you to use features within the Twitter website.
Expiration date: after end of session
Note: Twitter also works with third-party providers. That’s why we also detected the three Google Analytics cookies _ga, _gat, _gid in our test.
Twitter uses the collected data on the one hand to better understand user behavior and thus improve its own services and advertising offers, and on the other hand the data is also used for internal security measures.
How long and where is the data stored?
When Twitter collects data from other websites, it is deleted, aggregated, or otherwise obscured after a maximum of 30 days. Twitter’s servers are located on various server centers in the United States. Accordingly, it can be assumed that collected data is collected and stored in America. After our research, we could not clearly determine whether Twitter also has its own servers in Europe. In principle, Twitter can store the collected data until it is no longer useful to the company, you delete the data or there is a legal deletion period.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
Twitter repeatedly emphasizes in its privacy policy that it does not store any data from external website visits if you or your browser are located in the European Economic Area or Switzerland. However, if you interact with Twitter directly, Twitter will of course store data about you.
If you have a Twitter account, you can manage your data by clicking „More“ under the „Profile“ button. Then click on „Settings and privacy“. Here you can manage the data processing individually.
If you do not have a Twitter account, you can go to twitter.com and then click on „Individualization“. Under the item „Individualization and data“ you can manage your collected data.
Most data is stored via cookies, as mentioned above, and you can manage, disable or delete them in your browser. Please note that you only „edit“ the cookies in the browser you have chosen. That means: if you use another browser in the future, you will have to manage your cookies there again according to your wishes. Here are the instructions for cookie management of the most popular browsers.
Chrome: Delete, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Managing cookies and website data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
You can also manage your browser in such a way that you are informed for each individual cookie. Then you can always decide individually whether to allow a cookie or not.
Twitter also uses the data for personalized advertising inside and outside Twitter. You can disable personalized advertising in the settings under „Personalization and data“. If you use Twitter on a browser, you can disable personalized advertising at http://optout.aboutads.info/?c=2&lang=EN.
Twitter is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. This framework ensures proper data transfer between the U.S. and the European Union. Visit https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000TORzAAO to learn more.
We hope we have given you a basic overview of Twitter’s data processing. We do not receive any data from Twitter and are not responsible for what Twitter does with your data. If you have any further questions on this topic, we recommend that you read the Twitter privacy statement at https://twitter.com/de/privacy.
LinkedIn Privacy Policy
We use social plug-ins of the social media network LinkedIn, of the company LinkedIn Corporation, 2029 Stierlin Court, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA on our website. The social plug-ins may be feeds, content sharing or links to our LinkedIn page. The social plug-ins are clearly marked with the familiar LinkedIn logo and allow, for example, interesting content to be shared directly via our website. For the European Economic Area and Switzerland, LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company Wilton Place in Dublin is responsible for data processing.
By embedding such plug-ins, data can be sent to LinkedIn, stored and processed there. In this privacy policy, we want to inform you about what data is involved, how the network uses this data and how you can manage or prevent the data storage.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is the largest social network for business contacts. Unlike Facebook, for example, the company focuses exclusively on building business contacts. Companies can present services and products on the platform and establish business relationships. Many people also use LinkedIn to look for jobs or to find suitable employees for their own company. In Germany alone, the network has over 11 million members. In Austria, there are around 1.3 million.
Why do we use LinkedIn on our website?
We know how busy you are. You can’t follow all the social media channels individually. Even if it would be worth it, as in our case. Because time and again we post interesting news or reports that are worth spreading. That’s why we’ve made it possible on our website to share interesting content directly on LinkedIn or to link directly to our LinkedIn page. We consider built-in social plug-ins as an extended service on our website. The data that LinkedIn collects also helps us to show possible advertising measures only to people who are interested in our offer.
What data is stored by LinkedIn?
Only through the mere integration of the social plug-ins LinkedIn does not store any personal data. LinkedIn calls this data generated by plug-ins passive impressions. However, when you click on a social plug-in, for example to share our content, the platform stores personal data as so-called „active impressions“. And this is regardless of whether you have a LinkedIn account or not. If you are logged in, the collected data is assigned to your account.
Your browser establishes a direct connection to LinkedIn’s servers when you interact with our plug-ins. In this way, the company logs various usage data. In addition to your IP address, this may include login data, device information, or information about your Internet or mobile provider. If you access LinkedIn services via your smartphone, your location (after you have allowed this) can also be determined. LinkedIn may also share this data in „hashed“ form with third-party advertisers. Hashing means turning a record into a string of characters. This makes it possible to encrypt the data in such a way that people can no longer be identified.
Most data about your user behavior is stored in cookies. These are small text files that are usually set in your browser. LinkedIn may also use web beacons, pixel tags, display tags, and other device identifiers.
Various tests also show which cookies are set when a user interacts with a social plug-in. The data found cannot claim to be complete and only serves as an example. The following cookies were set without being logged in to LinkedIn:
Name: bcookie
Wert: =2&34aab2aa-2ae1-4d2a-8baf-c2e2d7235c16311267321-
Purpose: The cookie is a so-called „browser ID cookie“ and consequently stores your identification number (ID).
Expiration date: After 2 years
Name: lang
Value: v=2&lang=en-en
Purpose: This cookie stores your default or preferred language.
Expiration date: after session end
Name: lidc
Wert: 1818367:t=1571904767:s=AQF6KNnJ0G311267321…
Purpose: This cookie is used for routing. Routing records the ways you came to LinkedIn and how you navigate through the website there.
Expiration date: after 24 hours
Name: rtc
Value: kt0lrv3NF3x3t6xvDgGrZGDKkX
Purpose: No further information could be found about this cookie.
Expiration date: after 2 minutes
Name: JSESSIONID
Wert: ajax:3112673212900777718326218137
Purpose: This is a session cookie that LinkedIn uses to maintain anonymous user sessions through the server.
Expiration date: after session end
Name: bscookie
Value: „v=1&201910230812…
Purpose: This cookie is a security cookie. LinkedIn describes it as a secure browser ID cookie.
Expiration date: after 2 years
Name: fid
Value: AQHj7Ii23ZBcqAAAA…
Purpose: No further information could be found about this cookie.
Expiration date: after 7 days
Note: LinkedIn also works with third-party providers. That is why we also detected the two Google Analytics cookies _ga and _gat during our test.
How long and where is the data stored?
In principle, LinkedIn retains your personal data for as long as the company deems it necessary to provide its own services. However, LinkedIn deletes your personal data when you delete your account. In some exceptional cases, LinkedIn retains some data in aggregate and anonymized form even after you delete your account. Once you delete your account, other people will not be able to see your data within one day. LinkedIn generally deletes data within 30 days. However, LinkedIn retains data if it is necessary due to legal obligation. Data that can no longer be assigned to individuals remain stored even after the account is closed. The data is stored on various servers in America and presumably also in Europe.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
You have the right to access and also delete your personal data at any time. In your LinkedIn account you can manage, change and delete your data. In addition, you can also request a copy of your personal data from LinkedIn.
Here’s how to access the account information in your LinkedIn profile:
In LinkedIn, click on your profile icon and select the „Settings and Privacy“ section. Now click „Privacy“ and then click „Change“ in the „How LinkedIn uses your data“ section. In just a short time, you will be able to download selected data about your web activity and account history.
You also have the option in your browser to prevent data processing by LinkedIn. As mentioned above, LinkedIn stores most data via cookies that are set in your browser. You can manage, deactivate or delete these cookies. Depending on which browser you have, the management works slightly differently. You can find the instructions for the most common browsers here:
Chrome: Delete, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Managing cookies and website data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
You can also basically set up your browser so that you are always informed when a cookie is to be set. Then you can always decide individually whether you want to allow the cookie or not.
LinkedIn is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. This framework ensures proper data transfer between the U.S. and the European Union. You can learn more about it at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000L0UZAA0. We have tried to bring you closer to the most important information about LinkedIn’s data processing. At https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy you can learn even more about the data processing of the social media network LinkedIn.
Pinterest Privacy Policy
We use buttons and widgets of the social media network Pinterest, of the company Pinterest Inc.,808 Brannan Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA on our site.
By calling up pages that use such functions, data (IP address, browser data, date and time, cookies) are transmitted to Pinterest, stored and evaluated.
The privacy policy, what information Pinterest collects and how they use it can be found at https://policy.pinterest.com/de/privacy-policy.
XING Privacy Policy
We use social plugins of the social media network Xing, of the company Xing SE, Dammtorstraße 30, 20354 Hamburg, Germany, on our website. Through these functions, you can, for example, share content on Xing directly via our website, log in via Xing or follow interesting content. You can recognize the plug-ins by the company name or the Xing logo. When you call up a website that uses a Xing plug-in, data may be transmitted to the „Xing servers“, stored and analyzed. In this data protection declaration, we want to inform you about what data is involved and how you can manage or prevent this data storage.
What is Xing?
Xing is a social network with its headquarters in Hamburg. The company specializes in managing professional contacts. That is, unlike other networks, Xing is primarily about professional networking. The platform is often used for job searches or to find employees for one’s own company. In addition, Xing offers interesting content on various professional topics. The global counterpart is the American company LinkedIn.
Why do we use Xing on our website?
There is now a flood of social media channels and we are well aware that your time is very precious. Not every company’s social media channel can be scrutinized closely. That’s why we want to make your life as easy as possible, so you can share or follow interesting content directly from our website on Xing. With such „social plug-ins“ we expand our service on our website. In addition, the data collected by Xing helps us to carry out targeted advertising measures on the platform. This means that our service is only shown to people who are really interested in it.
What data is stored by Xing?
Xing offers the Share button, the Follow button, and the Log-in button as plug-ins for websites. As soon as you open a page where a social plug-in from Xing is installed, your browser connects to servers in a data center used by Xing. In the case of the share button, no data is to be stored – according to Xing – that could infer a direct reference to a person. In particular, Xing does not store your IP address. Furthermore, no cookies are set in connection with the share button. Thus, no evaluation of your user behavior takes place. For more information, please contact https://www.xing.com/app/share%3Fop%3Ddata_protection.
For the other Xing plug-ins, cookies are only set in your browser when you interact with the plug-in or click on it. Here, personal data such as your IP address, browser data, date and time of your page view on Xing may be stored. If you have a XING account and are logged in, collected data will be assigned to your personal account and the data stored therein.
The following cookies are set in your browser when you click on the follow or log-in button and are not yet logged in to Xing. Please keep in mind that this is an exemplary list and we cannot claim completeness:
Name: AMCVS_0894FF2554F733210A4C98C6%40AdobeOrg
Value: 1
Purpose: This cookie is used to create and store website visitor identifiers.
Expiration date: after end of session
Name: c_
Wert: 157c609dc9fe7d7ff56064c6de87b019311267321-8
Purpose: We could not find out any more information about this cookie.
Expiration date: after one day
Name: prevPage
Value: wbm%2FWelcome%2Flogin
Purpose: This cookie stores the URL of the previous web page you visited.
Expiration date: after 30 minutes
Name: s_cc
Value: true
Purpose: This Adobe Site Catalyst cookie determines whether cookies are generally enabled in the browser.
Expiration date: after end of session
Name: s_fid
Wert: 6897CDCD1013221C-39DDACC982217CD1311267321-2
Purpose: This cookie is used to identify a unique visitor.
Expiration date: after 5 years
Name: visitor_id
Wert: fe59fbe5-e9c6-4fca-8776-30d0c1a89c32
Purpose: The visitor cookie contains a unique visitor ID and the unique identifier for your account.
Expiration date: after 2 years
Name:_session_id
Wert: 533a0a6641df82b46383da06ea0e84e7311267321-2
Purpose: This cookie creates a temporary session ID that is used as an in-session user ID. The cookie is absolutely necessary to provide Xing’s features.
Expiration date: after the end of the session
As soon as you are logged in to Xing or become a member, further personal data is definitely collected, processed and stored. Xing also discloses personal data to third parties if this is necessary for the fulfillment of its own business purposes, if you have given your consent, or if there is a legal obligation.
How long and where is the data stored?
Xing stores the data on various servers in various data centers. The company stores this data until you delete the data or until a user account is deleted. Of course, this only affects users who are already Xing members.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
You have the right to access and also delete your personal data at any time. Even if you are not a Xing member, you can use your browser to prevent possible data processing or manage it according to your wishes. Most data is stored via cookies. Depending on which browser you have, the management works slightly differently. You can find the instructions for the most common browsers here:
Chrome: Delete, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Managing cookies and website data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
You can also basically set up your browser so that you are always informed when a cookie is to be set. Then you can always decide individually whether you want to allow the cookie or not.
We have tried to bring you closer to the most important information about data processing by Xing. At https://privacy.xing.com/de/datenschutzerklaerung you can learn even more about the data processing of the social media network Xing.
Gravatar Privacy Policy
On our website, we have integrated the Gravatar plug-in of Automattic Inc. (60 29th Street #343, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA). Gravatar is automatically activated on all WordPress websites, among others. The function allows to display user images (avatars) on published posts or comments, provided that the corresponding email address is registered at www.gravatar.com.
Through this function, data is sent to the company Gravatar or Automattic Inc., stored and processed there. In this privacy policy, we want to inform you about what data is involved, how the network uses this data and how you can manage or prevent the data storage.
What is Gravatar?
Gravatar basically stands for „Globally Recognized Avatar“ and this means a globally available avatar (a user image) associated with the email address. The Gravatar company is the world’s leading service provider for this service. As soon as a user enters the e-mail address on a website that is also registered with the Gravatar company at www.gravatar.com, a previously deposited image is automatically displayed together with a published post or comment.
Why do we use Gravatar on our website?
There is often talk about anonymity on the Internet. Through an avatar, users get a face to the people commenting. In addition, it is basically easier to be recognized on the net and can thus build up a certain level of recognition. Many users enjoy the advantages of such a user image and also want to appear personally and authentically on the net. Of course, we want to offer you the possibility to display your Gravatar on our website as well. In addition, we also like to see faces to our commenting users. With the Gravatar feature enabled, we are also expanding our service on our website. After all, we want you to feel comfortable on our website and get a comprehensive and interesting offer.
What data is stored by Gravatar?
For example, when you post a comment on a blog post that requires an email address, WordPress checks to see if the email address is associated with an avatar on Gravatar. For this request, your email address is sent to Gravatar’s or Automattic’s servers in encrypted or hashed form, along with the IP address and our URL. This verifies that this email address is registered with Gravatar.
If this is the case, the image stored there (Gravatar) will be displayed together with the published comment. If you have registered an email address with Gravatar and comment on our website, further data will be transmitted to Gravatar, stored and processed. In addition to IP address and user behavior data, this includes, for example, browser type, unique device identifier, preferred language, dates and times of page entry, operating system and mobile network information. Gravatar uses this information to improve its own services and offers and to obtain better insights into the use of its own service.
The following cookies are set by Automattic when a user uses an email address registered with Gravatar for a comment:
Name: gravatar
Wert: 16b3191024acc05a238209d51ffcb92bdd710bd19311267321-7
Purpose: we could not find out exact information about the cookie.
Expiration date: after 50 years
Name: is-logged-in
Value: 1311267321-1
Purpose: This cookie stores the information that the user is logged in via the registered email address.
Expiration date: after 50 years
How long and where is the data stored?
Automattic deletes the collected data when it is no longer used for its own services and the company is not required by law to retain the data. Web server logs such as IP address, browser type and operating system are deleted after about 30 days. Until then, Automattic uses the data to analyze traffic on its own websites (for example, all WordPress sites) and to fix potential problems. The data is also stored on Automattic’s American servers.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
You have the right to access and delete your personal data at any time. If you have registered with Gravatar with an email address, you can delete your account or the email address there at any time.
Since only using an email address registered with Gravatar will display an image and thus transmit data to Gravatar, you can also prevent your data from being transmitted to Gravatar by commenting or posting on our website using an email address not registered with Gravatar.
Possible cookies that are set during commenting can be managed, deactivated or deleted in your browser. Please only note that any comment functions will then no longer be available to the full extent. Depending on which browser you use, cookie management works a bit differently. You can find the instructions for the most common browsers here:
Chrome: Delete, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Managing cookies and website data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
Automattic is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which governs the accurate and secure transfer of personal data. For more information, please visit https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000CbqcAAC .
More details about the privacy policy and what data is collected by
Gravatar and how can be found at https://automattic.com/privacy/, general information about Gravatar can be found at http://de.gravatar.com/.
YouTube privacy policy
We have incorporated YouTube videos on our website. This way we can present you interesting videos directly on our site. YouTube is a video portal that has been a subsidiary of Google since 2006. The video portal is operated by YouTube, LLC, 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066, USA. When you call up a page on our website that has a YouTube video embedded, your browser automatically connects to the YouTube or Google servers. In the process, various data are transferred (depending on the settings). Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street Dublin 4, Ireland) is responsible for all data processing in the European area.
In the following, we would like to explain in more detail what data is processed, why we have embedded YouTube videos and how you can manage or delete your data.
What is YouTube?
On YouTube, users can watch, rate, comment on and upload videos for free. Over the last few years, YouTube has become one of the most important social media channels in the world. In order for us to display videos on our website, YouTube provides a code snippet that we have built into our site.
Why do we use YouTube videos on our website?
YouTube is the video platform with the most visitors and the best content. We are committed to providing you with the best possible user experience on our website. And of course, we can’t do without interesting videos. With the help of our embedded videos, we provide you with other helpful content in addition to our text and images. In addition, the embedded videos make our website easier to find on the Google search engine. Also, when we run ads via Google Ads, Google – thanks to the collected data – can really only show these ads to people who are interested in our offers.
What data is stored by YouTube?
As soon as you visit one of our pages that has a YouTube video embedded, YouTube sets at least one cookie that stores your IP address and our URL. If you are logged into your YouTube account, YouTube can usually assign your interactions on our website to your profile using cookies. This includes data such as session duration, bounce rate, approximate location, technical information such as browser type, screen resolution or your internet provider. Other data may include contact details, any ratings, sharing of content via social media or adding to your favorites on YouTube.
If you are not signed in to a Google Account or YouTube account, Google stores data with a unique identifier associated with your device, browser, or app. For example, your preferred language setting is retained. But a lot of interaction data can’t be stored because fewer cookies are set.
In the following list we show cookies that were set in a test in the browser. On the one hand, we show cookies that are set without a logged-in YouTube account. On the other hand, we show cookies that are set with a logged-in account. The list cannot claim to be complete, because the user data always depends on the interactions on YouTube.
Name: YSC
Value: b9-CV6ojI5Y311267321-1
Purpose: This cookie registers a unique ID to store statistics of the video watched.
Expiration date: after session end
Name: PREF
Value: f1=50000000
Purpose: This cookie also registers your unique ID. Google gets statistics about how you use YouTube videos on our website via PREF.
Expiration date: after 8 months
Name: GPS
Value: 1
Purpose: This cookie registers your unique ID on mobile devices to track GPS location.
Expiration date: after 30 minutes
Name: VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
Value: 95Chz8bagyU
Purpose: This cookie tries to estimate the user’s bandwidth on our web pages (with embedded YouTube video).
Expiration date: after 8 months
Other cookies that are set when you are logged in with your YouTube account:
Name: APISID
Wert: zILlvClZSkqGsSwI/AU1aZI6HY7311267321-
Purpose: This cookie is used to create a profile about your interests. Used for personalized advertisements.
Expiration date: after 2 years
Name: CONSENT
Value: YES+AT.en+20150628-20-0
Purpose: The cookie stores the status of a user’s consent to use various services from Google. CONSENT is also used for security purposes to verify users and protect user data from unauthorized attacks.
Expiration date: after 19 years
Name: HSID
Value: AcRwpgUik9Dveht0I
Purpose: This cookie is used to create a profile about your interests. This data helps to display personalized advertisements.
Expiration date: after 2 years
Name: LOGIN_INFO
Value: AFmmF2swRQIhALl6aL…
Purpose: This cookie stores information about your login details.
Expiration date: after 2 years
Name: SAPISID
Value: 7oaPxoG-pZsJuuF5/AnUdDUIsJ9iJz2vdM
Purpose: This cookie works by uniquely identifying your browser and device. It is used to create a profile about your interests.
Expiration date: after 2 years
Name: SID
Value: oQfNKjAsI311267321-.
Purpose: This cookie stores your Google account ID and your last login time in digitally signed and encrypted form.
Expiration date: after 2 years
Name: SIDCC
Value: AN0-TYuqub2JOcDTyL
Purpose: This cookie stores information about how you use the website and what advertisements you may have seen before visiting our site.
Expiration date: after 3 months
How long and where is the data stored?
The data that YouTube receives from you and processes is stored on Google servers. Most of these servers are located in America. You can see exactly where Google data centers are located at https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=de. Your data is distributed across the servers. Thus, the data can be accessed more quickly and is better protected against manipulation.
Google stores the collected data for different lengths of time. Some data you can delete at any time, others are automatically deleted after a limited time, and still others are stored by Google for a longer period of time. Some data (such as items from „My Activity“, photos or documents, products) stored in your Google Account will remain stored until you delete them. Even if you are not signed into a Google account, you can delete some data associated with your device, browser, or app.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
Basically, you can delete data in Google Account manually. With the automatic deletion function of location and activity data introduced in 2019, information is stored depending on your decision – either 3 or 18 months and then deleted.
Whether you have a Google account or not, you can configure your browser to delete or disable cookies from Google. Depending on which browser you use, this works in different ways. The following instructions show how to manage cookies in your browser:
Chrome: Delete, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Managing cookies and website data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
If you do not want to have cookies in principle, you can set up your browser so that it always informs you when a cookie is to be set. This way, you can decide for each individual cookie whether you allow it or not. Since YouTube is a subsidiary of Google, there is a common privacy policy. If you want to learn more about how your data is handled, we recommend the privacy policy at https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=de.
YouTube Subscribe Button Privacy Policy
We have installed the YouTube Subscribe button on our website. You can usually recognize the button by the classic YouTube logo. The logo shows the words „Subscribe“ or „YouTube“ in white letters on a red background and the white „Play“ icon to the left. However, the button can also be displayed in a different design.
Our YouTube channel always offers you funny, interesting or exciting videos. With the built-in „Subscribe“ button, you can subscribe to our channel directly from our website and do not have to go to the YouTube website. In this way, we want to make it as easy as possible for you to access our extensive content. Please note that YouTube may store and process data about you as a result.
When you see a built-in subscribe button on our site, YouTube – according to Google – sets at least one cookie. This cookie stores your IP address and our URL. Also information about your browser, your approximate location and your preset language can YouTube learn so. In our test, the following four cookies were set without being logged into YouTube:
Name: YSC
Value: b9-CV6ojI5311267321Y
Purpose: This cookie registers a unique ID to store statistics of the video watched.
Expiration date: after session end
Name: PREF
Value: f1=50000000
Purpose: This cookie also registers your unique ID. Google gets statistics about how you use YouTube videos on our website via PREF.
Expiration date: after 8 months
Name: GPS
Value: 1
Purpose: This cookie registers your unique ID on mobile devices to track GPS location.
Expiration date: after 30 minutes
Name: VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
Value: 31126732195Chz8bagyU
Purpose: This cookie tries to estimate the user’s bandwidth on our web pages (with embedded YouTube video).
Expiration date: after 8 months
Note: These cookies were set after a test and cannot claim to be complete.
If you are logged into your YouTube account, YouTube can save many of your actions/interactions on our website with the help of cookies and assign them to your YouTube account. YouTube thereby receives, for example, information on how long you surf our site, which browser type you use, which screen resolution you prefer or which actions you perform.
YouTube uses this data on the one hand to improve its own services and offers, and on the other hand to provide analyses and statistics for advertisers (who use Google Ads).
Google reCAPTCHA Privacy Policy
Our primary goal is to secure and protect our website for you and for us in the best possible way. To ensure this, we use Google reCAPTCHA of the company Google Inc. For the European area, the company Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street Dublin 4, Ireland) is responsible for all Google services. With reCAPTCHA we can determine whether you are really a flesh and blood human being and not a robot or other spam software. By spam we mean any unsolicited information sent to us electronically. With the classic CAPTCHAS, you usually had to solve text or image puzzles to verify the information. With reCAPTCHA from Google, we usually don’t have to bother you with such puzzles. Here, in most cases, it is enough to simply check a box to confirm that you are not a bot. With the new Invisible reCAPTCHA version, you don’t even have to set a checkmark anymore. How this works exactly and especially which data is used for this, you will learn in the course of this privacy policy.
What is reCAPTCHA?
reCAPTCHA is a free captcha service from Google that protects websites from spam software and abuse by non-human visitors. The most common use of this service is when you fill out forms on the Internet. A captcha service is a kind of automatic Turing test, designed to ensure that an action on the Internet is performed by a human and not by a bot. In the classic Turing test (named after computer scientist Alan Turing), a human determines the distinction between a bot and a human. In captchas, the computer or a software program also does this. Classic captchas work with small tasks that are easy for humans to solve, but present significant difficulties for machines. With reCAPTCHA, you no longer have to actively solve puzzles. The tool uses modern risk techniques to distinguish humans from bots. Here, you only need to check the „I am not a robot“ text box, or with Invisible reCAPTCHA, even that is no longer necessary. With reCAPTCHA, a JavaScript element is included in the source code and then the tool runs in the background and analyzes your user behavior. From these user actions, the software calculates a so-called captcha score. Google uses this score to calculate even before the captcha is entered how likely you are to be a human. reCAPTCHA or captchas in general are always used when bots could manipulate or abuse certain actions (such as registrations, surveys, etc.).
Why do we use reCAPTCHA on our website?
We only want to welcome flesh and blood people on our site. Bots or spam software of any kind can safely stay at home. That’s why we pull out all the stops to protect ourselves and offer the best possible user experience for you. For this reason we use Google reCAPTCHA from Google. This way we can be pretty sure that we remain a „bot-free“ website. By using reCAPTCHA, data is transmitted to Google to determine whether you are actually human. reCAPTCHA is therefore used to ensure the security of our website and, by extension, your security. For example, without reCAPTCHA, it could happen that a bot registers as many e-mail addresses as possible during registration in order to „spam“ forums or blogs with unwanted advertising content. With reCAPTCHA we can avoid such bot attacks.
What data is stored by reCAPTCHA?
reCAPTCHA collects personal data from users to determine whether the actions on our website really come from people. Thus, the IP address and other data required by Google for the reCAPTCHA service may be sent to Google. IP addresses are almost always shortened beforehand within the member states of the EU or other contracting states to the Agreement on the European Economic Area before the data ends up on a server in the USA. The IP address is not combined with other data from Google unless you are logged in with your Google account while using reCAPTCHA. First, the reCAPTCHA algorithm checks whether Google cookies from other Google services (YouTube. Gmail, etc.) are already placed on your browser. Then, reCAPTCHA places an additional cookie on your browser and captures a snapshot of your browser window.
The following list of collected browser and user data does not claim to be complete. Rather, they are examples of data that, to our knowledge, are processed by Google.
- Referrer URL (the address of the page from which the visitor comes)
- IP address (e.g. 256.123.123.1)
- Info about the operating system (the software that allows your computer to run. Known operating systems are Windows, Mac OS X or Linux).
- Cookies (small text files that store data in your browser)
- Mouse and keyboard behavior (every action you perform with the mouse or keyboard is saved)
- Date and language settings (which language or date you have preset on your PC will be saved)
- All JavaScript objects (JavaScript is a programming language that allows websites to adapt to the user. JavaScript objects can collect all kinds of data under one name).
- Screen resolution (shows how many pixels the image display consists of)
It is undisputed that Google uses and analyzes this data even before you click the „I am not a robot“ checkbox. With the Invisible reCAPTCHA version, even the ticking is omitted and the whole recognition process runs in the background. How much and which data Google stores exactly, Google does not tell you in detail.
The following cookies are used by reCAPTCHA: Here we refer to the reCAPTCHA demo version from Google at https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo. All of these cookies require a unique identifier for tracking purposes. Here is a list of cookies that Google reCAPTCHA has set on the demo version:
Name: IDE
Value: WqTUmlnmv_qXyi_DGNPLESKnRNrpgXoy1K-pAZtAkMbHI-311267321-8
Purpose: This cookie is set by the DoubleClick company (also owned by Google) to register and report a user’s actions on the website in dealing with advertisements. In this way, advertising effectiveness can be measured and appropriate optimization measures can be taken. IDE is stored in browsers under the domain doubleclick.net.
Expiration date: after one year
Name: 1P_JAR
Value: 2019-5-14-12
Purpose: This cookie collects statistics about website usage and measures conversions. For example, a conversion occurs when a user becomes a buyer. The cookie is also used to display relevant advertisements to users. Furthermore, the cookie can be used to prevent a user from seeing the same ad more than once.
Expiration date: after one month
Name: ANID
Wert: U7j1v3dZa3112673210xgZFmiqWppRWKOr
Purpose: We could not find out much info about this cookie. Google’s privacy policy mentions the cookie in the context of „advertising cookies“ such as „DSID“, „FLC“, „AID“, „TAID“. ANID is stored under domain google.com.
Expiration date: after 9 months
Name: CONSENT
Value: YES+AT.en+20150628-20-0
Purpose: The cookie stores the status of a user’s consent to use various services from Google. CONSENT is also used for security purposes to verify users, prevent credential fraud, and protect user data from unauthorized attacks.
Expiration date: after 19 years
Name: NID
Wert: 0WmuWqy311267321zILzqV_nmt3sDXwPeM5Q
Purpose: NID is used by Google to customize ads to your Google searches. With the help of the cookie, Google „remembers“ your most typed search queries or your previous interaction with ads. This way you will always get tailored ads. The cookie contains a unique ID to collect personal settings of the user for advertising purposes.
Expiration date: after 6 months
Name: DV
Wert: gEAABBCjJMXcI0dSAAAANbqc311267321-4
Purpose: Once you have checked the „I am not a robot“ box, this cookie will be set. The cookie is used by Google Analytics for personalized advertising. DV collects information in anonymous form and is further used to make user distinctions.
Expiration date: after 10 minutes
Note: This list cannot claim to be exhaustive, as Google’s experience shows that it changes its choice of cookies time and again.
How long and where is the data stored?
By inserting reCAPTCHA, data is transferred from you to the Google server. Where exactly this data is stored, Google does not make clear, even after repeated inquiries. Without having received confirmation from Google, it can be assumed that data such as mouse interaction, time spent on the website or language settings are stored on Google’s European or American servers. The IP address that your browser transmits to Google is generally not merged with other Google data from other Google services. However, if you are logged into your Google account while using the reCAPTCHA plug-in, the data will be merged. The deviating data protection provisions of the Google company apply to this.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
If you do not want any data about you and your behavior to be transmitted to Google, you must log out of Google completely and delete all Google cookies before you visit our website or use the reCAPTCHA software. Basically, as soon as you visit our site, the data is automatically transmitted to Google. To delete this data again, you must contact Google support at https://support.google.com/?hl=de&tid=311267321.
Thus, by using our website, you consent to the automatic collection, processing and use of data by Google LLC and its agents.
You can learn a bit more about reCAPTCHA on Google’s web developer page at https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/. Google does go into more detail here about the technical development of reCAPTCHA, but you will search in vain for precise information about data storage and privacy-related topics there as well. A good overview of the basic use of data at Google can be found in the in-house privacy policy at https://www.google.com/intl/de/policies/privacy/.
Source: Created with the privacy generator from AdSimple