Our website may be used without entering personal information. Different rules may apply to certain services on our site, however,
and are explained separately below. We collect personal information from you (e.g. name, address, email address, telephone number, etc.) in accordance
with the provisions of local data protection statutes. Information is considered personal if it can be associated exclusively to a specific natural person.
The legal framework for data protection may be found in the Federal Data Protection Act. The provisions below serve to provide information as to the manner,
extent and purpose for collecting, using and processing personal information by the provider.
Please be aware that data transfer via the internet is subject to security risks and, therefore, complete protection against third-party access to transferred data cannot be ensured.
Our website makes use of so-called cookies in order to recognize repeat use of our website by the same user/internet connection subscriber.
Cookies are small text files that your internet browser downloads and stores on your computer. They are used to improve our website and services.
In most cases these are so-called “session cookies” that are deleted once you leave our website.
To an extent, however, these cookies also pass along information used to automatically recognize you. Recognition occurs through an IP address saved to the cookies.
The information thereby obtained is used to improve our services and to expedite your access to the website.
You can prevent cookies from being installed by adjusting the settings on your browser software accordingly. You should be aware, however,
that by doing so you may not be able to make full use of all the functions of our website.
Purpose of Registering
We offer you the opportunity to sign up for our website. The information entered when signing up, as shown in the registration form
Name, Email address
is collected and stored solely for use by our website. When signing up for our website, we also store your IP address and the date and time you registered.
This serves to protect us in the event a third party improperly and without your knowledge makes use of your data to sign up for our site.
None of this information is transferred to third parties. Nor is any of this information matched to any information that may be collected by other components
of our website.
Newsletter
Our website offers you the opportunity to subscribe to our newsletter. The newsletter provides you periodically with information about our services.
To receive our newsletter, we require a valid email address. We will review the email address you provide for the purpose of determining whether you are
in fact the owner of the email address provided or whether the actual owner of said address is authorized to receive the newsletter.
When subscribing to our newsletter, we will store your IP address as well as the date and time you subscribed.
This serves to protect us in the event a third party improperly and without your knowledge makes use of your email address to subscribe to our newsletter.
We will not collect any other data. The data thereby collected is used solely for the purpose of receiving our newsletter. No data is transferred to third parties.
Nor is any of this information matched to any information that other components of our website may collect.
You may cancel your subscription to the newsletter at any time. You will find additional details in the email confirming your subscription as well as in each newsletter.
Contacting Us
On our website we offer you the opportunity to contact us, either by email and/or by using a contact form.
In such event, information provided by the user is stored for the purpose of facilitating communications with the user.
No data is transferred to third parties. Nor is any of this information matched to any information that may be collected by other components of our website.
Posting Comments
On our website we offer you the opportunity to post comments about individual articles.
For this purpose, the IP address of the user/internet connection subscriber is stored.
This information is stored for our security in the event the author through his/her comments infringes against third party rights and/or unlawful content is entered.
Consequently, we have a direct interest in the author’s stored data, particularly since we may be potentially liable for such violations.
No data is transferred to third parties. Nor is any of this information matched to any information that may be collected by other components of our website.
Subscribing to Comments
On our website we offer you the opportunity to subscribe to subsequent comments about an article which you intend to comment on.
When you choose this option, you will receive a confirmation email which is used to determine if you are actually the owner of the email address entered.
You may at any time revoke your decision to subscribe to such follow-on comments. You will find additional details in the confirmation email.
No data hereby obtained is transferred to third parties. Nor is any of this information matched to any information that may be collected by other components
of our website.
Use of Google Analytics with anonymization
Our website uses Google Analytics, a web analysis service from Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 USA, hereinafter referred to as “Google“.
Google Analytics employs so-called “cookies“, text files that are stored to your computer in order to facilitate an analysis of your use of the site.
The information generated by these cookies, such as time, place and frequency of your visits to our site, including your IP address,
is transmitted to Google’s location in the US and stored there.
We use Google Analytics with an IP anonymization feature on our website. In doing so,
Google abbreviates and thereby anonymizes your IP address before transferring it from member states of the European Union or signatory states to the Agreement
on the European Economic Area.
Google will use this information to evaluate your usage of our site, to compile reports on website activity for us, and to provide other services related to website-
and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties if this is required by law or to the extent this data is processed by third parties
on Google´s behalf.
Google states that it will in never associate your IP address with other data held by Google.
You can prevent cookies from being installed by adjusting the settings on your browser software accordingly. You should be aware, however,
that by doing so you may not be able to make full use of all the functions of our website.
Google also offers a disabling option for the most common browsers, thus providing you with greater control over the data which is collected and processed by Google.
If you enable this option, no information regarding your website visit is transmitted to Google Analytics.
However, the activation does not prevent the transmission of information to us or to any other web analytics services we may use.
For more information about the disabling option provided by Google, and how to enable this option, visit https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en
Use of reCAPTCHA
In order to protect input forms on our site, we use the “reCAPTCHA” service of Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 USA,
hereinafter “Google.” By means of this service it can be distinguished whether the corresponding input is of human origin or is created improperly by
automated machine processing.
To our knowledge, the referrer URL, the IP address, the behaviour of the website visitors, information about the operating system, browser and length of stay, cookies, display instructions and scripts, user input behaviour and mouse movements in the “reCAPTCHA” checkbox are conveyed to “Google.”
Google uses the information obtained, among other things, to digitize books and other printed matter as well as to optimize services such as Google Street View and Google Maps (e.g. house number and street name recognition).
The IP address provided as part of “reCAPTCHA” is not merged with other data from Google unless you are logged into your Google Account at the time the “reCAPTCHA” plug-in is used. If you want to prevent this transmission and storage of data by “Google” about you and your behaviour on our website, you must log out of “Google” before you visit our site or before using the reCAPTCHA plug-in.
The use of the “reCAPTCHA” service is according to the Google Terms of Use:
https://www.google.com/intl/de/policies/privacy/.
Use of Facebook components
Our website employs components provided by facebook.com. Facebook is a service of Facebook Inc., 1601 S. California Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA.
Each time our website receives an access request equipped with a Facebook component, the component prompts your browser to download an image of this Facebook component. Through this process, Facebook is informed precisely which page of our website is being visited.
When you access our site while logged into Facebook, Facebook uses information gathered by this component to identify the precise page you are viewing and associates this information to your personal account on Facebook. Whenever you click on the “Like“ button, for example, or enter a comment, this information is transmitted to your personal account on Facebook and stored there. In addition, Facebook is informed of your visit to our website. This occurs regardless of whether you click on a component or not.
If you wish to prevent the transfer to and storage of data by Facebook about you and your interaction with our website, you must first log out of Facebook before visiting our website. The data protection policies of Facebook provide additional information, in particular about the collection and use of data by Facebook, your rights in this regard as well as the options available to you for protecting your privacy: https://de-de.facebook.com/about/privacy/
You can find an overview of Facebook plugins at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/
Use of Twitter recommendation components
Our website employs components provided by Twitter. Twitter is a service of Twitter Inc., 795 Folsom St., Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA.
Each time our website receives an access request equipped with a Twitter component, the component prompts your browser to download an image of this component from Twitter. Through this process, Twitter is informed precisely which page of our website is being visited. We have no control over the data that Twitter collects in the process, or over the extent of the data that Twitter collects. To the best of our knowledge, Twitter collects the URL of each website accessed as well as the IP address of the user, but does so solely for the purpose of displaying Twitter components. Additional information may be obtained from the Twitter data privacy policy, at: https://twitter.com/privacy.
You may change your data privacy settings in your account settings, at https://twitter.com/account/settings.
Use of MailChimp Newsletter Consent
You will be asked to consent to the use of your personal data to receive our newsletter as follows:
“I have read the privacy policy and I give my consent to data being processed by a service provider located in the United States”.
We use the newsletter to provide you with regular updates about our offers. To receive our newsletter, you will need a valid email address. We will then check the email address entered to ensure that you are actually its owner or if its owner has agreed to receive our newsletter. By registering for the newsletter, we will save your IP address and date and time of registration. This will be used in case a third party misuses your email address to subscribe to our newsletter without your knowledge.
We will not compare the data collected during newsletter registration with any other data that might be collected by other components of our site.
Newsletter by MailChimp
We use MailChimp to send our newsletter to our subscribers. MailChimp is a service provided by The Rocket Science Group, LLC, 512 Means Street, Suite 404, Atlanta, GA 30318, USA.
The data stored when you registered for the newsletter (email address, name, IP address, and time and date of registration) will be sent to a server operated by The Rocket Science Group in the United States and stored there in accordance with the EU-US Privacy Shield.
Further information about the data protection offered by MailChimp can be found at:
https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/
Further information about the EU-US Privacy Shield can be found at:
Die Bundesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit
https://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/international-transfers/eu-us-privacy-shield/index_en.htm
You may cancel your newsletter subscription and revoke your consent to the storage of this data at any time with future effect. For instructions to take this step, please refer to the confirmation email and each newsletter.
Newsletter tracking
Our newsletter includes so-called web bugs that allow us to recognise if and when an email has been opened and which links in the email have been clicked by its recipient.
This data is stored by us so that we can best align our newsletter to the wishes and interests of our subscribers. Accordingly, the data thus collected is used to send personalised newsletters to each recipient.
You will be asked to consent to the use of your personal data as follows:
“I agree that my data and my user responses will be stored electronically by newsletter tracking so that I can receive a personalised newsletter. The revocation of the consent to receive the newsletter constitutes a revocation of the consent for the tracking described above.”
By revoking the consent to receive the newsletter, the consent to the aforementioned tracking is revoked.
Using PayPal as a payment method
If, while completing your order, you decide to use PayPal as an online payment service, your contact details will be sent to PayPal during the order process. PayPal is a service from PayPal (Europe) S.à.rl & Cie. SCA, 22-24 Boulevard Royal, L-2449 Luxembourg. PayPal assumes the function of an online payment service and trustee, and offers buyer protection services.
The personal data transmitted to PayPal usually includes your first name, last name, address, telephone number, IP address, e-mail address, or other data required to process your order, such as the quantity of articles ordered, the article number, invoice amount, percentage taxes and invoice details, etc.
This information needs to be transferred to process your order using your chosen payment method, mainly in order to confirm your identity and manage your payment and the customer relationship.
Please note the following however: PayPal may also pass on your personal data to subcontractors or other affiliates, to the extent necessary for fulfilling the contractual obligations arising from your order or for processing personal data in your order.
Depending on the payment type you pre-select in your PayPal account, which may include payment by invoice or direct debit, PayPal will transfer the personal data transferred to PayPal to credit agencies. The information transferred serves to identify you and to verify your creditworthiness with regard to the order you have placed. Please refer to the PayPal Privacy Policy for more information on the credit agencies PayPal transfers data to and which data is collected, processed, stored and passed on by PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/de/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full
Use of affilinet tracking cookies
Our website employs affilinet tracking cookies in order to correctly record sales and/or leads. Cookies are small text files that are saved to your computer when you visit a website. These affilinet tracking cookies do not store personal data of any kind. Instead, it only collects the identification number of the intermediary partner as well as the reference number of the advertising material that was clicked on by the visitor to the website. This information is required in order to process the payment transaction between the website operator and the advertiser. The partner identification number serves to designate the intermediary partner to which a commission is to be paid once a transaction has been concluded. You can prevent cookies from being installed by adjusting the settings on your browser software accordingly. You should be aware, however, that by doing so you may not be able to make full use of all the functions of our website.
Information/Cancellation/Deletion
On the basis of the Federal Data Protection Act, you may contact us at no cost if you have questions relating to the collection, processing or use of your personal information, if you wish to request the correction, blocking or deletion of the same, or if you wish to cancel explicitly granted consent. Please note that you have the right to have incorrect data corrected or to have personal data deleted, where such claim is not barred by any legal obligation to retain this data.
