Data protection
We have drawn up this data protection declaration (version 27.12.2019) in order to explain to you, in accordance with the provisions of the Basic 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.
Unfortunately it is in the nature of things that these explanations sound very technical, but we have tried to describe the most important things as simple and clear as possible.
Information about us as responsible persons
Responsible provider of this website in the sense of data protection law is:
Bobby Rubenstein
Grazer Strasse 32
8045 Graz
Austria
E-Mail: [email protected]
Automatic data storage
Nowadays, when you visit websites, certain information is automatically created and stored, as is the case on this website.
When you visit our website as you are doing right now, our web server (the computer on which this website is stored) automatically stores data such as
- the address (URL) of the accessed web page
- Browser and browser version
- the operating system used
- the address (URL) of the previously visited page (referrer URL)
- the host name and the IP address of the device from which the access is made
- date and time
in files (web server log files).
Usually web server log files are stored for two weeks and then automatically deleted. We do not pass on this data, but cannot exclude the possibility that this data may be viewed in the event of illegal behaviour.
cookies
Our website uses HTTP cookies to store user-specific data.
In the following we explain what cookies are and why they are used so that you can better understand the following privacy policy.
What exactly are cookies?
Cookie privacy settingsWhenever you surf the Internet, you use a browser. Some well-known browsers include Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Edge. Most web pages store small text files in your browser. These files are called cookies.
One of them is not to be dismissed: Cookies are really useful little helpers. Almost all websites use cookies. To be more precise, they are HTTP cookies, as there are also other cookies for other applications. HTTP cookies are small files that are stored on your computer by our website. These cookie files are automatically stored in the cookie folder, quasi 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 visit our site again, your browser transmits the “user-related” information back to our site. Thanks to the cookies, our website knows who you are and offers you the settings you are used to. 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 sites (e.g. Google Analytics). Each cookie is evaluated individually, as each cookie stores different data. The expiration time of a cookie also varies from a few minutes to a few years. Cookies are not software programs and do not contain viruses, trojans or other “malware”. Cookies also cannot access information on your PC.
For example, cookie data may look like this:
name: _ga
value: GA1.2.1326744211.152111232262-9
Use: Differentiation of the website visitors
expiry date: after 2 years
A browser should be able to support these minimum sizes:
- At least 4096 bytes per cookie
- At least 50 cookies per domain
- At least 3000 cookies in total
What types of cookies are there?
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.
You can distinguish between 4 types of cookies:
essential cookies
These cookies are necessary to ensure basic functions of the website. For example, these cookies are needed when a user places a product in the shopping cart, then continues surfing on other pages and only goes to checkout later. These cookies do not delete the shopping cart, even if the user closes his browser window.
Purposeful cookies
These cookies collect information about user behavior and whether the user receives any error messages. In addition, these cookies also measure the loading time and the behaviour of the website with different browsers.
Target-oriented cookies
These cookies ensure a better user-friendliness. 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 practical, but also very annoying.
Usually the first time you visit a website you will be asked which of these types of cookies you would like 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 is up to you. Regardless of which service or website the cookies come from, you always have the option of deleting, deactivating or only partially allowing cookies. For example, you can block third-party cookies, but allow all other cookies.
If you want to find out which cookies are stored in your browser, if you want to change or delete cookie settings, you can find this in your browser settings:
Chrome: Delete, activate 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 wish to receive cookies, 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 want to allow it or not. The procedure varies from browser to browser. The best way to find the instructions is to search Google using the keyword “Delete Chrome cookies” or “Disable Chrome cookies” in the case of a Chrome browser.
What about my privacy?
The so-called “cookie guidelines” have been in place since 2009. These state that the storage of cookies requires the consent of the person you are visiting. Within the EU countries, however, there are still very different reactions to these guidelines. In Austria, however, this directive has been implemented in § 96 (3) of the Telecommunications Act (TKG).
If you want to know more about cookies and are not afraid of technical documentation, we recommend https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6265, the Request for Comments of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) called “HTTP State Management Mechanism”.
storage of personal data
Personal information that you submit to us electronically on this website, such as your name, email address, postal address or other personal information when submitting a form or comments on the blog, together with the time and IP address, will only be used by us for the purpose stated in each case, will be kept securely stored and will not be disclosed to third parties.
Thus, we will only use your personal data for communication with those visitors who expressly request contact and for processing the services and products offered on this website. We will not pass on your personal data without your consent, but we cannot exclude the possibility that this data may be viewed in the event of unlawful behaviour.
If you send us personal data by e-mail – thus off 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.
Rights according to the basic data protection regulation
In accordance with the provisions of the DSGVO and the Austrian Data Protection Act (DSG) you are basically entitled to the following rights:
- right of rectification (Article 16 DSGVO)
- Right of cancellation (“right to be forgotten”) (Article 17 DSGVO)
- right to restrict processing (Article 18 DSGVO)
- right of notification – notification obligation in connection with the correction or deletion of personal data or the restriction of processing (Article 19 DPA)
- right to data transferability (Article 20 DSGVO)
- right of objection (Article 21 DSGVO)
- right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing – including profiling (Article 22 DPA)
If you believe that the processing of your data violates data protection law or your data protection rights have otherwise been violated in any way, you can complain to the supervisory authority, which in Austria is the data protection authority whose website you can find at https://www.dsb.gv.at/.
Evaluation of visitor behaviour
In the following data protection declaration 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 cannot deduce your identity from your behaviour on this website.
You can find out more about how to object to this evaluation of visit data in the following data protection declaration.
TLS encryption with https
We use https to transmit data tap-proof on the Internet (data protection through technology design Article 25 paragraph 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 data transmission security by the small lock symbol in the upper left corner of the browser and the use of the https scheme (instead of http) as part of our Internet address.
Google Fonts Privacy Policy
On our website we use Google Fonts. These are the “Google Fonts” of the company Google Inc. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA).
To use Google fonts, you do not need to log in or set a password. 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 don’t need to worry about your Google Account information being submitted to Google while using Google Fonts. Google tracks the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and the fonts used and stores this information securely. We’ll be taking a closer look at what exactly this data storage looks like.
What are Google Fonts?
Google Fonts (formerly Google Web Fonts) is a directory of over 800 fonts that make the Google LLC available to your 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?
With Google Fonts, we can use fonts on our own website, and don’t have to upload them to our own server. Google Fonts is an important component to keep the quality of our website high. All Google fonts are automatically optimized for the web and this saves data volume and is a great advantage especially for mobile devices. 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 visually distort some 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 Google Fonts to make our entire online service as beautiful and consistent as possible.
Which data is stored by Google?
When you visit our website, the fonts are downloaded via a Google server. This external call transfers data to the Google servers. In this way Google also recognises that you or your IP address is visiting our website. The Google Fonts API was developed to reduce the use, storage and collection of end user data to what is necessary for the proper provision of fonts. By the way, API stands for “Application Programming Interface” and serves, among other things, as a data transmitter in the software sector.
Google Fonts stores CSS and font requests securely at Google and is therefore protected. The usage figures collected enable Google to determine how well the individual fonts are received. Google publishes the results on internal analysis pages, such as Google Analytics. Google also uses data from its own web crawler to determine which websites use Google fonts. This data is published in Google Fonts’ BigQuery database. Entrepreneurs and developers use the Google BigQuery web service to examine and move large amounts of data.
However, it should be noted that each Google Font request also automatically sends 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 is not clearly ascertainable 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 your servers, which are mainly located outside the EU. This allows us to use the fonts using a Google style sheet. A stylesheet is a style template that allows you to easily and quickly change, for example, the design or font of a web page.
The font files are stored at Google for one year. Google’s goal is to improve the loading time of web pages. If millions of web pages link to the same fonts, they are cached after the first visit and reappear immediately 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 a day or a year cannot simply be deleted. The data is automatically transmitted to Google when the page is viewed. To delete this data prematurely, you must contact Google support at https://support.google.com/?hl=en&tid=111232262. In this case you only prevent data storage if you do not visit our site.
Unlike other web fonts, Google allows us unlimited access to all fonts. So we have unlimited access to a sea of fonts to get the most out of our website. You can find more about Google Fonts and other questions on https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq?tid=111232262. There Google deals with data protection issues, but really detailed information about data storage is not included. It is relatively difficult to get really detailed information from Google about stored data.
You can also find out what data is generally collected by Google and what this data is used for at https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/.
Google Analytics Privacy Policy
On our website we use the analysis tracking tool Google Analytics (GA) from the American company Google LLC (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA). Google Analytics collects data about your actions on our website. For example, when you click on a link, that action is stored in a cookie and sent to Google Analytics. The reports we receive from Google Analytics enable us to better tailor our website and services to your needs. In the following we will go into more detail about the tracking tool and inform you in particular about what data is stored and how you can prevent this.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a tracking tool that is used to analyze the traffic on our website. To make Google Analytics work, a tracking code is built into the code of our website. When you visit our website, this code records various actions that you perform on our website. As soon as 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 behaviour. These reports may include the following:
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- Target group reports: Through target group reports we get to know our users better and know more precisely who is interested in our service.
- Advertisement reports: Ad reports make it easier for us to analyse and improve our online advertising.
Advertisement reports: Ad reports make it easier for us to analyse and improve our online advertising.
Advertisement reports: Ad reports make it easier for us to analyse and improve our online advertising.
Advertisement reports: Ad reports make it easier for us to analyse and improve our online advertising.
Advertisement reports: Ad reports make it easier for us to analyse and improve our online advertising.
Advertisement reports: Ad reports make it easier for us to analyse and improve our online advertising.
Advertisement reports: Ad reports
- Acquisition reports: Acquisition reports give us helpful information on how we can get more people interested in our service.
- Behavioral Reports: Here we learn how you interact with our website. We can track which path you take on our site and which links you click on.
- Conversion reports: Conversion is the name given to a process in which you perform a desired action based on a marketing message. For example, when you go from being a mere website visitor to a buyer or newsletter subscriber. We use these reports to learn more about how our marketing activities are received by you. This is how we want to increase our conversion rate.
- Real-time reports: Here we always find out 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 offer you the best possible service. The statistics and data from Google Analytics help us to achieve this goal.
The statistically evaluated data give us a clear picture of the strengths and weaknesses of our website. On the one hand, we can optimise our site so that it is easier for interested people to find it on Google. On the other hand, the data helps us to better understand you as a visitor. We therefore know exactly what we need to improve on our website in order to offer you the best possible service. The data also helps us to carry out our advertising and marketing measures more individually and cost-effectively. After all, it only makes sense to show our products and services to people who are interested.
Which data is stored by Google Analytics?
Google Analytics uses a tracking code to create a random, unique ID associated with your browser cookie. This allows Google Analytics to recognize 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 the only way to evaluate pseudonymous user profiles.
Through identifiers such as cookies and app instance IDs, your interactions on our website are measured. Interactions are all kinds of actions you perform on our website. If you also use other Google systems (such as a Google account), data generated by Google Analytics can be linked to third-party cookies. Google does not share any Google Analytics data unless we, as the website operator, authorise it. Exceptions may be made if required by law.
The following cookies are used by Google Analytics:
name: _ga
value:2.1326744211.152111232262-5
Use: By default, analytics.js uses the _ga cookie to store the user ID. Basically, it is used to differentiate between website visitors.
expiration date: after 2 years
name: _gid
value:2.1687193234.152111232262-1
Purpose: The cookie is also used to differentiate between website visitors
expiration date: after 24 hours
Name: _gat_gtag_UA_ Value: 1
Use: Used to lower the request rate. When Google Analytics is provided through the Google Tag Manager, this cookie is named _dc_gtm_ .
expiration date: after 1 minute
name: AMP_TOKEN
value: no information
Use: The cookie has a token with which a User ID can be retrieved from the AMP Client ID Service. Other possible values indicate a logoff, a request or an error.
expiration date: after 30 seconds up to one year
name: __utma
value:1564498958.1564498958.1564498958.1
Use: With this cookie you can track your behavior on the site and measure its performance. The cookie is updated each time information is sent to Google Analytics.
expiration date: after 2 years
name: __utmt
value: 1
Use: The cookie is used like _gat_gtag_UA_ to throttle the request rate.
expiration date: after 10 minutes
name: __utmb
value:3.10.1564498958
Use: This cookie is used to determine new sessions. It is updated each time new data or information is sent to Google Analytics.
expiration date: after 30 minutes
name: __utmc
value: 167421564
Use: 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.
expiration date: After closing the browser
name: __utmz
value: m|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/
Purpose: The cookie is used to identify the source of the traffic on our website. This means that the cookie stores where you came to our website from. This may have been another site or an advertising campaign.
expiration date: after 6 months
name: __utmv
value: no specification
Use: The cookie is used to store user-defined user data. It is always updated when information is sent to Google Analytics.
expiration date: after 2 years
Note: This enumeration cannot claim to be complete, as Google constantly changes the choice of its cookies.
Here we show you an overview of the most important data collected with Google Analytics:
Heatmaps: Google creates so-called heat maps. Using heatmaps you can see exactly those areas that you click on. This way we get information where you are “on the road” on our site.
Session duration: Google defines session duration as the time you spend on our site without leaving the site. If you’ve been inactive for 20 minutes, the session will end automatically.
Bounce rate: We talk about a bounce if you only view 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 country and your approximate location can be determined via the IP address. This process is also called IP-location determination.
Technical Information: Technical information includes your browser type, your Internet provider or your screen resolution.
Source of origin: Google Analytics or we are of course also interested in which website or which advertisement brought you to our site.
Further data are contact details, any ratings, playing media (e.g. when you play a video on our site), sharing content via social media or adding to your favourites. This list is not intended to be exhaustive and serves only as a general guide to data storage by Google Analytics.
How long and where is the data stored?
Google has distributed your servers around the world. Most servers are located in America and therefore your data is usually stored on American servers. Here you can read exactly where the Google data centers are located: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=en
Your data is distributed on different physical media. This has the advantage that the data can be retrieved more quickly and is better protected against manipulation. In every Google data centre there are appropriate emergency programs for your data. For example, if Google’s hardware fails or natural disasters paralyse servers, the risk of a service interruption at Google remains low.
Google Analytics has a standard retention period of 26 months for your user data. Then your user data will be deleted. However, we have the option of choosing the retention period for user data ourselves. We have five options for this:
- Deletion after 14 months
- Deletion after 26 months
- Deletion after 38 months
- Deletion after 50 months
- No automatic deletion
When the specified period has expired, the data is deleted once a month. This retention period applies to your data linked to cookies, user recognition and advertising IDs (e.g. cookies from the DoubleClick domain). Reporting results are based on aggregated data and are stored independently of user data. Aggregated data is a fusion of individual data into a larger entity.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
Under European Union data protection law, you have the right to access, update, delete or restrict your data. You can use the browser add-on to disable Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, dc.js) to prevent Google Analytics from using your information. You can download and install the browser add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en. Please note that this add-on only disables data collection by Google Analytics.
If you basically want to deactivate, delete or manage cookies (independent of Google Analytics), there are separate instructions for each browser:
Chrome: Delete, activate 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=111232262. We hope we could give you the most important information about the data processing of Google Analytics. If you want to learn more about the tracking service, we recommend these two links: https://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html and https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en.
Google Analytics IP Anonymization
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We have implemented the IP address anonymisation of Google Analytics on this website. This function was developed by Google so that this website can comply with the applicable data protection regulations and recommendations of local data protection authorities if they prohibit the storage of the complete 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 the data is saved or processed.
More information on IP anonymisation can be found at https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2763052?hl=en.
Google Analytics Reports on demographic characteristics and interests
.
We have enabled the advertising reporting features in Google Analytics. The demographic and interest reports include information about age, gender and interests. This allows us to get a better picture of our users without having to associate this data with individual people. You can learn more about the advertising features at https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3450482?hl=en_AT&utm_id=ad.
You can stop using the activities and information of your Google Account under “Advertising Settings” on https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated by checking the appropriate box.
Google Analytics Add-on for data processing
We have concluded a direct customer agreement with Google for the use of Google Analytics by accepting the “data processing addendum” in Google Analytics.
You can find out more about the data processing addendum for Google Analytics here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3379636?hl=en&utm_id=ad
Google Analytics Google Signals Privacy Policy
We have activated the Google signals in Google Analytics. This updates existing Google Analytics features (advertising reports, remarketing, cross-device reports, and reports on interests and demographics) to provide aggregated and anonymous information about you, if you have allowed personalized ads in your Google Account.
What’s special about this is that it is cross-device tracking. This means that your data can be analyzed across devices. By enabling Google signals, data is collected and linked to your Google Account. Google can thus recognize, for example, when you view a product on our website via a smartphone and only later purchase the product via a laptop. By activating 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.
In Google Analytics, the Google signals also collect additional visitor data such as location, search history, YouTube history and data about your actions on our website. This allows Google to provide us with better advertising reports and more useful information about your interests and demographics. These include your age, what language you speak, where you live, or what gender you are. In addition, social criteria such as your occupation, marital status and income are also collected. All these characteristics help Google Analytics to define groups of people or target groups.
The reports also help us to better assess your behaviour, wishes and interests. This enables us to optimize and adapt our services and products for you. These data expire by default after 26 months. Please note that this data is only collected if you have allowed personalised advertising in your Google Account. It is always aggregated and anonymous data and never data about individual people. You can manage or delete this data in your Google Account.
Facebook-Pixel Privacy Policy
We use the Facebook pixel of Facebook on our website. We have implemented a code for this on our website. The Facebook pixel is an excerpt from JavaScript code that loads a collection of functions that Facebook can use to track your user actions, provided you came to our website via Facebook ads. For example, when you purchase a product on our website, the Facebook pixel is triggered and stores your actions on our website in one or more cookies. These cookies enable Facebook to compare your user data (customer data such as IP address, user ID) with the data of your Facebook account. Then Facebook deletes this data again. The collected data is anonymous and not visible to us and can only be used for advertising purposes. If you yourself are a Facebook user and are logged in, your visit to our website is automatically assigned to your Facebook user account.
We only want to show our services or products to people who are really interested in them. With the help of Facebook pixels, our advertising measures can be better tailored to your wishes and interests. This way, Facebook users (if they have allowed personalized advertising) get to see suitable advertisements. Furthermore, Facebook uses the collected data for analysis purposes and its own advertisements.
In the following, we show you those cookies that were set by integrating Facebook pixels on a test page. Please note that these are only sample cookies. Different cookies are set depending on the interaction on our website.
name: _fbp
value: fb.1.1568287647279.257405483-6111232262-7
Use: This cookie uses Facebook to display advertising products.
expiration date: after 3 months
name: fr
value: 0aPf312HOS5Pboo2r..Bdeiuf…1.0.Bdeiuf.
Use: This cookie is used to make Facebook pixels work properly.
expiration date: after 3 months
Name: comment_author_50ae8267e2bdf1253ec1a5769f48e062111232262-3
value: name of the author
Use: This cookie stores the text and the name of a user who leaves a comment, for example.
expiration date: after 12 months
Name: comment_author_url_50ae8267e2bdf1253ec1a5769f48e062
value: https%3A%2F%2Fww.test page…%2F (URL of the author)
Use: This cookie stores the URL of the website that the user enters in a text field on our website.
expiration date: after 12 months
Name: comment_author_email_50ae8267e2bdf1253ec1a5769f48e062
value: e-mail address of the author
Purpose: This cookie stores the user’s e-mail address, if the user has provided it on the website.
expiry date: after 12 months
Note: The cookies mentioned above refer to individual user behaviour. Especially when using cookies, changes in Facebook can never be excluded.
If you are logged into Facebook, you can change your settings for advertisements yourself under https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_settings_screen. If you are not a Facebook user, you can basically manage your usage-based online advertising on http://www.youronlinechoices.com/uk/your-ad-choices. There you have the possibility to deactivate or activate providers.
If you would like to learn more about Facebook’s privacy policy, we recommend that you review the company’s own data policies at https://www.facebook.com/policy.php.
Facebook Automatic extended reconciliation Privacy Policy >/h2>.
We have also enabled Automatic Advanced Matching as part of the Facebook pixel feature. This pixel feature allows us to send hashed emails, name, gender, city, state, zip code and date of birth or phone number as additional information to Facebook, if you have provided us with this information. This activation enables us to tailor advertising campaigns on Facebook even more precisely to people who are interested in our services or products.
Google Tag Manager Privacy Policy
For our website we use the Google Tag Manager of the company Google Inc. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA). This Tag Manager is one of many helpful marketing products from Google. The Google Tag Manager allows us to centrally install and manage code sections of various tracking tools that we use on our website.
In this privacy statement, we would like to explain to you in more detail what the Google Tag Manager does, why we use it and how we process data.
What is the Google Tag Manager?
The Google Tag Manager is an organization tool that allows us to integrate and manage website tags centrally and through a single 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 site. The tags often come from Google internal products such as Google Ads or Google Analytics, but tags from other companies can also be integrated and managed via the manager. Such tags perform different tasks. They can collect browser data, feed marketing tools with data, integrate buttons, set cookies and also track users across multiple websites.
Why do we use the Google Tag Manager for our website?
As they say: Organization is half the battle! And that of course also applies to the maintenance of our website. To make our website as good as possible for you and all people interested in our products and services, we need various tracking tools such as Google Analytics. The data collected by these tools show us what interests you most, where we can improve our services and to which people we should still show our offers. And for this tracking to work, we need to include appropriate JavaScript codes in our website. Basically we could integrate each code section of the individual tracking tools separately into our source code. However, this requires a relatively large amount of time and it’s easy to lose track. Therefore we use the Google Tag Manager. We can easily integrate the necessary scripts and manage them from one place. In addition, the Google Tag Manager offers an easy to use interface and no programming skills are required. This is how we manage to keep order in our tag jungle.
Which data is stored by Google Tag Manager?
The Tag Manager itself is a domain that does not set cookies or store data. It acts as a mere “administrator” of the implemented tags. The data captures the individual tags of the different web analysis tools. In the Google Tag Manager, the data is virtually routed to the individual tracking tools and not stored.
However, the situation is completely different with the tags of the various web analysis tools, such as Google Analytics, which are integrated. Depending on the analysis tool, different data about your web behaviour is usually collected, stored and processed with the help of cookies. For this purpose, please read our data protection texts on the individual analysis and tracking tools that we use on our website.
In the account settings of the Tag Manager we have allowed Google to receive anonymized data from us. However, this only concerns the use and usage of our Tag Manager and not your data, which is stored via the code sections. We allow Google and others to receive selected data in anonymized form. We therefore agree to the anonymous transfer of our website data. We were not able to find out exactly which summarized and anonymous data is forwarded – despite long research. In any case, Google will delete all information that could identify our website. Google combines this data with hundreds of other anonymous website data and creates user trends as part of benchmarking measures. Benchmarking involves comparing our own results with those of our competitors. Based on the collected information, processes can be optimized.
How long and where is the data stored?
When Google stores data, this data is stored on Google’s own servers. These servers are spread all over the world. Most of them are located in America. Under https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=en you can find out exactly where the Google servers are located.
How long the individual tracking tools store data about you can be seen in our individual data protection 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 of different tracking websites. In our privacy policy for each tracking tool, 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. You can find more information about this at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt000000001L5AAI&tid=111232262. If you want to learn more about the Google Tag Manager, we recommend the FAQs at https://support.google.com/tagmanager/?hl=en#topic=3441530.
Newsletter Privacy Policy
When you subscribe to our newsletter you provide the above mentioned personal data and give us the right to contact you by e-mail. We use the data stored during the registration for the newsletter exclusively for our newsletter and do not pass them on.
If you wish to unsubscribe from the newsletter – you will find the link for this at the bottom of every newsletter – we will delete all data that was saved when you registered for the newsletter.
Google AdSense Privacy Policy
We use Google AdSense on this website. This is an advertising program of the company Google Inc. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA). With Google AdSense, we can display ads on this website that match our theme. In this way we can offer you ads that ideally represent a real added value for you. In the course of this privacy policy about Google AdSense we explain to you why we use Google AdSense on our website, which data are processed and stored by you and how you can prevent this data storage.
What is Google AdSense?
The advertising program Google AdSense has been around since 2003, and unlike Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords), you cannot place your own ads here. Over Google AdSense advertisements on web pages, as for example on ours, are played out. 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 offer you ads that interest you and provide you with added value. Google checks which ads are suitable for our website and 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. With our website we only offer the advertising space. The selection of the displayed advertisements is made by Google. Since August 2013 the ads are also adapted to the respective user interface. This means that no matter whether you visit our website from your smartphone, PC or laptop, the ads will adapt to your device.
Why do we use Google AdSense on our website?
Running a high quality website requires a lot of dedication and effort. Basically we are never finished 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 an economic success with this work. Therefore we have decided to use advertisements as a source of income. The most important thing for us, however, is not to disturb your visit to our website with these ads. With the help of Google AdSense you will only be offered advertising that fits our topics and your interests.
Similar to the Google indexing for a website, a bot examines the corresponding content and offers of our website. Then the advertisements are adjusted in 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 will also use your data to offer advertising tailored to your needs. This way you receive advertising that ideally offers you a real added value and we have a higher chance to earn a little bit more.
Which data is stored by Google AdSense?
In order for Google AdSense to display a tailor-made advertisement that is adapted to you, cookies are used among other things. Cookies are small text files that store certain information on your computer.
In AdSense, cookies are used to enable better advertising. The cookies do not contain any personally identifiable information. However, please note that Google considers information such as “pseudonymous cookie IDs” (name or other identifier is replaced by a pseudonym) or IP addresses to be non-personally identifiable information. Under the DSGVO, however, this data may be considered personal data. Google AdSense sends a cookie to the browser after each impression (this is always the case when you see an ad), each click and any other activity that leads to a call to the Google AdSense servers. If the browser accepts the cookie, it is stored there.
Third-party providers may place and read cookies in your browser or use web beacons to store data that they obtain from the ad serving on the website. Web beacons are small graphics that perform log file analysis and record the log file. This analysis enables a statistical evaluation for online marketing.
Google can collect certain information about your user behaviour on our website via these cookies. This includes:
- Information on how to handle an ad (clicks, impressions, mouse movements)
- Information whether an ad has already appeared in your browser at an earlier time. This data helps to prevent you from seeing an ad more often.
In doing so, Google analyses and evaluates the data on the displayed advertising media and your IP address. Google uses the data primarily to measure the effectiveness of an advertisement and to improve the advertising offer. This data is not linked to personal data that Google may have about you through other Google services.
In the following we introduce you to cookies that Google AdSense uses for tracking purposes. Here we refer to a test website that has exclusively installed Google AdSense:
name: uid
value: 891269189111232262-8
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
Use: 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
value: 8912691894970695056,0,0,0
Purpose: This cookie is stored under the domain track.adform.net, stands for Client ID and is used to improve the advertising for you. It can deliver more relevant advertising to the visitor and helps improve campaign performance reports.
expiration date: after 2 months
name: IDE
value: zOtj4TWxwbFDjaATZ2TzNaQmxrU111232262-1
Purpose: The cookie is stored under the domain doubkeklick.net. It is used to register your actions after the ad or after 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: no specification
Purpose: With the help of the “test_cookies” you can check whether your browser supports cookies at all. The cookie is stored under the domain doubleklick.net.
expiration date: after 1 month
name: CT592996
value:733366
Purpose: Stored under the domain adform.net. The cookie is set when you click on an advertisement. We have not been able to obtain more detailed information about the use of this cookie.
expiration date: after one hour
Note: This enumeration cannot claim to be complete, as experience has shown that Google always changes the choice of its cookies.
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 the interactions on our website. According to Google, the company collects and stores the information provided in a secure manner on Google’s own servers in the USA.
If you do not have a Google account or are not logged in, Google usually stores the collected data with a unique identifier (ID) 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 information.
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 Google stores over a longer period of time. This is the case if Google has to store certain data for an indefinite, longer period of time for economic or legal reasons.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
You always have the possibility to delete or deactivate cookies that are on your computer. How exactly this works depends on your browser.
Here you will find instructions on how to manage cookies in your browser:
Chrome: Delete, activate 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 wish to receive cookies, 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 want to allow it or not. Downloading and installing this browser plug-in on https://support.google.com/ads/answer/7395996 will also disable all “advertising cookies”. Remember that by disabling these cookies, you are not preventing advertisements, only personalized advertising.
If you have a Google Account, you can disable personalised advertising on the website https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated. You will still see ads here, but they will no longer be adapted to your interests. However, the ads will still be displayed based on a few factors, such as your location, browser type and the search terms used.
You can find out which data Google basically collects and for what purpose they use this data on https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-US.
Amazon Partner Program Privacy Policy
We are participants in the Amazon affiliate program which allows the placement of Amazon ads and affiliate links on websites. Through this placement of Amazon advertisements an advertising cost reimbursement is achieved.
Amazon uses cookies to trace the origin of orders.
The responsible parties within the meaning of the data protection laws are Amazon Europe Core S.à.r.l., Amazon EU S.à.r.l., Amazon Services Europe S.à.r.l. and Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., all four of which are based at 5, Rue Plaetis, L-2338 Luxembourg, and Amazon Instant Video Germany GmbH, Domagkstr. 28, 80807 Munich. Amazon Deutschland Services GmbH, Marcel-Breuer-Str. 12, 80807 Munich, acts as data processor on their behalf.
The privacy policy, what information Amazon collects and how it uses it can be found at https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=468496.
Google Ads (Google AdWords) Conversion-Tracking Privacy Policy
We use Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) as an online marketing measure to advertise our products and services. In this way we want to make more people aware of the high quality of our offers on the Internet. As part of our advertising activities through Google Ads, we use conversion tracking on our website from Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA (“Google”). This free tracking tool allows us to better tailor our advertising offerings to your interests and needs. In the following articles, we will discuss in more detail why we use conversion tracking, what data is stored and how you can prevent this data storage.
What is Google Ads conversion tracking?
Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is the proprietary online advertising system of Google LLC. We are convinced of the quality of our offer and want as many people as possible to get to know our website. In the online area Google Ads offers the best platform for this. Of course, we also want to get an exact overview of the cost-benefit factor of our advertising campaigns. Therefore we use the conversion tracking tool of Google Ads.
But what is a conversion actually? A conversion occurs when you go from being a purely interested website visitor to an acting visitor. This happens whenever you click on our ad and then perform another action, such as visiting our website. With Google’s conversion tracking tool, we record what happens after a user clicks on our Google Ads ad. For example, we can see if products are purchased, services are used or if users have signed up for our newsletter.
Why do we use Google Ads conversion tracking on our website?
We use Google Ads to draw attention to our offer on other websites as well. The aim is to ensure that our advertising campaigns really only reach those people who are interested in our offers. With the conversion tracking tool we see which keywords, ads, ad groups and campaigns lead to the desired customer actions. We see how many customers interact with our ads on a device and then perform a conversion. With this data we can calculate our cost-benefit factor, measure the success of individual advertising measures and consequently optimize our online marketing measures. Furthermore, we can use the data obtained to make our website more interesting for you and adapt our advertising offer even more individually to your needs.
Which data is stored with Google Ads Conversion Tracking?
We have included a conversion tracking tag or code snippet on our website to better analyze certain user actions. When you now click on one of our Google Ads ads, the “conversion” cookie from a Google domain is stored on your computer (usually in the browser) or mobile device. Cookies are small text files that store information on your computer.
Here are the data of the most important cookies for Google’s conversion tracking:
name: conversion
value: EhMI_aySuoyv4gIVled3Ch0llweVGAEgt-mr6aXd7dYlSAGQ111232262-3
Use: This cookie stores every conversion you make on our site after you have come to us via a Google Ads.
expiration date: after 3 months
name: _gac
value: 1.1558695989.EAIaIQobChMIiOmEgYO04gIVj5AYCh2CBAPrEAAYASAAEgIYQfD_BwE
Use: This is a classic Google Analytics cookie and is used to record various actions on our website.
expiration date: after 3 months
Note: The cookie _gac only appears in connection with Google Analytics. The above list does not claim to be complete, as Google Analytics is always using other cookies for analytical evaluation.
As soon as you complete an action on our website, Google recognizes the cookie and saves your action as a so-called conversion. As long as you are surfing on our website and the cookie has not expired, we and Google recognize that you have found us through our Google Ads display. The cookie is read and sent back to Google Ads with the conversion data. It is also possible that other cookies are used to measure conversions. The conversion tracking of Google Ads can be further refined and improved using Google Analytics. For ads that Google displays in multiple locations on the web, our domain may set cookies named “__gads” or “_gac”. Since September 2017, various campaign information from analytics.js has been stored with the _gac cookie. The cookie saves this data as soon as you visit one of our pages for which Google Ads has set up automatic tagging. In contrast to cookies that are set for Google domains, Google can only read these conversion cookies if you are on our website. We do not collect or receive any personal data. We receive a report with statistical evaluations from Google. For example, we find out the total number of users who clicked on our advertisement and we see which advertising measures were well received.
How long and where is the data stored?
At this point we would like to point out that we have no influence on how Google uses the data collected. According to Google, the data is encrypted and stored on secure servers. In most cases, conversion cookies expire after 30 days and do not transmit any personal data. The cookies named “Conversion” and “_gac” (which is used in connection with Google Analytics) have an expiration date of 3 months.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
You have the option not to participate in Google Ads conversion tracking. If you disable the Google Conversion Tracking cookie through your browser, you’re blocking conversion tracking. In this case, you will not be included in the tracking tool’s statistics. You can change the cookie settings in your browser at any time. Each browser works slightly differently. Here you will find instructions on how to manage cookies in your browser:
Chrome: Delete, activate 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 wish to receive cookies, 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 want to allow it or not. Downloading and installing this browser plug-in on https://support.google.com/ads/answer/7395996 will also disable all “advertising cookies”. Remember that by disabling these cookies, you are not preventing advertisements, only personalized advertising.
Due to the certification for the American-European data protection agreement “Privacy Shield”, the American company Google LLC must comply with the data protection laws applicable in the EU. If you would like more information about Google’s privacy practices, we recommend Google’s general privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en.
Embedded Social Media Elements Privacy Policy
We integrate elements of social media services on our website to display pictures, videos and text.
When you visit pages that display these elements, data is transferred from your browser to the respective social media service and stored there. We have no 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=en
- Facebook data policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy
- Twitter Privacy Policy: https://twitter.com/en/privacy
Facebook privacy policy
We use selected Facebook 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 These tools enable us to provide you and people interested in our products and services with the best possible offer. Below 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. But since the term is hardly known, we have decided to call them simply Facebook Tools. Among them you will find, among others:
- Facebook pixels
- social plug-ins (such as the “Like” or “Share” button)
- Facebook Login
- Account Kit
- APIs (programming interface)
- SDKs (collection of programming tools)
- platform integrations
- Plugins
- Codes</li
- Specifications
- Documentations
- technologies and services
Through these tools, Facebook extends services and has the ability to receive information about user activities 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 exactly these people. However, in order to be able to show users suitable advertisements, Facebook needs information about people’s wishes and needs. For example, information about user behaviour (and contact details) is made available to the company on our website. In this way, Facebook collects better user data and can show interested people the appropriate advertising about our products or services. The tools thus enable tailor-made advertising campaigns on Facebook.
Facebook calls data about your behavior on our website “event data”. This data 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, analyses give us a better insight into how you use our services, website or products. This allows us to use some of these tools to optimize your user experience on our website. For example, you can use the social plug-ins to share content on our site directly on Facebook.
Which 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, telephone number and IP address can be sent.
Facebook uses this information to match the data with its own data it has about you (if you are a Facebook member). Before customer data is sent to Facebook, a so-called “hashing” process 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 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 information” may also be linked to contact information. This allows Facebook to provide better personalized advertising. After the matching process mentioned above, Facebook will delete the contact information.
In order to be able to deliver advertisements in an optimized way, Facebook only uses the event data if it has been combined with other data (which was collected by Facebook in another way). 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 that are used to store data or information in browsers. Depending on the tools used and whether you are a Facebook member, different numbers of cookies are created in your browser. In the descriptions of the individual Facebook tools, we will go into more detail about individual Facebook cookies. You can also find general information about the use of Facebook cookies on https://www.facebook.com/policies/cookies.
How long and where is the data stored?
.
In principle, 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. However, customer data is deleted within 48 hours after it has been compared with your own user data.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
In accordance with the Data Protection Basic Regulation, you have the right to information, correction, transferability and deletion of your data.
A complete deletion of the data will only take place if you completely delete your Facebook account. And this is how deleting your Facebook account works:
1) Click on the right side of Facebook on Settings.
2) Then click on “Your Facebook information” in the left column.
3) Now click “Deactivation and Deletion”.
4) Now select “Delete account” and then click on “Next and Delete account
5) Now enter your password, click on “Next” and then on “Delete account
The data that Facebook receives via our site is stored using cookies (e.g. social plugins). You can deactivate, delete or manage individual or all cookies in your browser. Depending on which browser you use, this works in different ways. The following instructions show how to manage cookies in your browser:
Chrome: Delete, activate 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 wish to receive cookies, 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 want to allow it or not.
Facebook 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 on https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000GnywAAC. We hope we have provided you with the most important information about the use and data processing by the Facebook tools. If you want to learn more about how Facebook uses your data, we recommend that you read the data policy on https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update.
Facebook Login Privacy Policy
We have integrated the practical Facebook login on our site. So you can easily log in 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 is done via your Facebook user data. Through this login procedure, data about you or your user behavior is stored and transmitted to Facebook.
Facebook uses various cookies to store the data. In the following 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 at its best.
expiration date: after 3 months
name: datr
value: 4Jh7XUA2111232262SEmPsSfzCOO4JFFl
Use: 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
Use: This session cookie sets Facebook for tracking purposes, even if you do not 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 enumeration is not possible because Facebook has a large number of cookies and uses them variably.
On the one hand, the Facebook login offers you a quick and easy registration process, on the other hand, it gives us the opportunity to share data with Facebook. This enables us to better adapt our offer and our promotions to your interests and needs. Data that we receive from Facebook in this way are public data such as
- your Facebook name
- your profile picture
- a stored e-mail address
- friend lists
- buttons information (e.g. “Like” button)
- date of birth
- language
- residence
In return, we provide Facebook with information about your activities on our website. This includes information about the end device you use, which sub-pages you visit on our website or which products you have purchased from us.
By using Facebook Login you agree to the data processing. You can revoke this agreement at any time. If you would like more information about data processing by Facebook, we recommend that you read the Facebook data protection declaration at https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy.
If you are logged in to Facebook, you can change your settings for ads yourself at https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_settings_screen.
Facebook Social Plug-ins Privacy Policy
So-called social plug-ins of the company Facebook Inc. are built into 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 plugin 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 familiar “Like” and “Share” buttons.
The following social plug-ins are offered by Facebook:
- “Save”-Button
- “Like” button, Share, Send and Quote
- Pages plug-in
- comments
- Messenger plug-in
- Embedded contributions and video players
- Group plug-in
Go to https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins for more information on how to use the individual plug-ins. 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 use them to optimize our ads.
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 received is deleted or anonymized within 90 days. According to Facebook, this data includes your IP address, which website you have visited, the date, time and other information concerning your browser.
In order to prevent Facebook from collecting a lot of data during your visit to our website and linking it to Facebook data, you must log out (log off) from Facebook during your visit to the website.
If you are not logged in to 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 can be transmitted to Facebook. We would like to point out that we do not know the exact content of the data. However, according to our current state of knowledge, we try to inform you as well as possible about data processing. You can also read how Facebook uses the data in the company’s data policy at https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update.
The following cookies are at least set in your browser when you visit a website with social plug-ins from Facebook:
name: dpr
value: no specification
Use: This cookie is used to make the social plug-ins on our website work.
expiration date: after session end
name: fr
value: 0jieyh4111232262c2GnlufEJ9..Bde09j…1.0.Bde09j
Use: The cookie is also required 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
If you are logged into Facebook, you can change your settings for ads yourself at https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_settings_screen. If you are not a Facebook user, you can basically manage your usage-based online advertising on http://www.youronlinechoices.com/uk/your-ad-choices. There you have the possibility to deactivate or activate providers.
If you would like to learn more about Facebook’s privacy policy, we recommend that you review the company’s own data policy at https://www.facebook.com/policy.php.
Instagram Privacy Policy
We have implemented features from Instagram on our website. Instagram is a social media platform of the company Instagram LLC, 1601 Willow Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025, USA. Instagram is a subsidiary of Facebook Inc. since 2012 and is part of the Facebook products. The embedding of 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 visit web pages on our site that have an Instagram feature embedded, data is transmitted to Instagram, stored and processed. Instagram uses the same systems and technologies as Facebook. Your data is therefore processed across all Facebook companies.
In the following, we would like to give you a more detailed insight into why Instagram collects data, what data is involved, and how you can largely control the data processing. Because Instagram is part of 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.
What is Instagram?
Instagram is one of the most popular social media networks worldwide. Instagram combines the advantages of a blog with the benefits of audiovisual platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo. On “Insta” (as many of the users casually call the platform) you can upload photos and short videos, edit them with various filters and also distribute them in 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 reacted 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. With the embedded Instagram functions 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 be used for personalized advertising on Facebook. This way, our ads are only shown to people who are really interested in our products or services.
Instagram also uses the collected data for measurement and analysis purposes. We get summarized statistics and thus get more insight about your wishes and interests. It is important to note that these reports do not personally identify you.
What data is stored by Instagram?
If you come across one of our sites that has Instagram features (such as Instagram images or plug-ins) built in, your browser will automatically connect to Instagram’s servers. Data is sent to Instagram, stored and processed. Whether you have an Instagram account or not. This includes information about our website, your computer, purchases made, advertisements you see and how you use our services. We also record the date and time of your interaction with Instagram. If you have an Instagram account or are logged in, Instagram stores significantly more information about you.
Facebook distinguishes between customer data and event data. We assume that this is the case with Instagram. Customer data includes, for example, name, address, phone number and IP address. This customer data will not be submitted to Instagram until you have been “hashed”. Hashing means that a record is converted into a string of characters. This allows you to encrypt the contact information. In addition, the “event data” mentioned above is also transmitted. By “event data” Facebook – and consequently Instagram – understands data about your user behavior. It can also happen that contact data is combined with event data. The contact information collected will be matched against the information Instagram already has about you.
Via small text files (cookies), which are usually set in your browser, the collected data is transmitted to Facebook. Depending on the Instagram features used and whether you have an Instagram account yourself, different amounts of data are stored.
We assume that data processing at Instagram works the same way as on Facebook. This means: if you have an Instagram account or have visited www.instagram.com, Instagram has at least one cookie set. If this is the case, your browser uses the cookie to send information to Instagram whenever you come in contact with an Instagram function. After 90 days (after matching) at the latest, this data is deleted or anonymized. Although we have worked extensively with Instagram’s data processing, we cannot say exactly what data Instagram collects and stores.
In the following we show you cookies that are set in your browser at least when you click on an Instagram function (such as a 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 will be set in your browser.
These cookies were used in our test:
name: csrftoken
value: “”
Use: This cookie is most likely set for security reasons to prevent fake requests. However, we could not find out more about it.
expiration date: after one year
Name: mid
value: “”
Use: Instagram uses this cookie to optimize its own services and offerings inside and outside of Instagram. The cookie specifies a unique User ID.
expiration date: at the end of the session
name: fbsr_111232262124024
value: no information
Purpose: This cookie stores the log-in request for users of the Instagram app.
expiration date: after end of session
name: rur
Value: ATN
Use: This is an Instagram cookie that provides functionality on Instagram.
expiration date: after end of session
name: urlgen
Value: “{\”194.96.75.33\”: 1901}:1iEtYv:Y833k2_UjKvXgYe111232262″
Purpose: This cookie is used for marketing purposes by Instagram.
expiration date: after end of session
Note: We cannot claim completeness here. Which cookies are set in each individual case depends on the embedded functions 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. Data processing is done in accordance with Instagram’s own data policy. For security reasons, among others, your data is distributed 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 to information, transferability, correction 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.
Here’s how deleting your Instagram account works:
First open the Instagram app. On your profile page, scroll down and click on “Help”. You will now be taken to the company’s website. On the website, click on “Manage your account” and then click on “Delete your account”.
If you delete your account completely, Instagram will delete posts such as your photos and status updates. Information that other people have shared about you is not part of your account and will not be deleted.
As mentioned above, Instagram stores your information primarily through cookies. You can manage, disable or delete these cookies in your browser. Depending on your browser, the administration will always work slightly differently. Here we show you the instructions of the most important browsers.
Chrome: Delete, activate 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 configure 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 accept 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 correct data transmission between the USA and the European Union. You can learn more about this at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000GnywAAC . We have tried to give you the most important information about data processing by Instagram. At https://help.instagram.com/519522125107875
you can learn more about Instagram’s data policies.
YouTube privacy policy
We have included YouTube videos on our website. So we can present you interesting videos directly on our site. YouTube is a video portal, which is a subsidiary of Google LLC since 2006. The video portal is operated by YouTube, LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066, USA. When you visit a page on our website that has an embedded YouTube video, your browser automatically connects to the servers of YouTube or Google. Various data is transferred (depending on the settings). Google is responsible for the entire data processing and Google’s data protection policy therefore also applies.
In the following we would like to explain to you in more detail which 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 view, rate, comment on and upload videos for free. Over the last few years, YouTube has become one of the most important social media channels worldwide. To enable us to display videos on our website, YouTube provides a code snippet that we have integrated 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 strive to provide you with the best possible user experience on our website. And of course interesting videos should not be missing. With the help of our embedded videos, we provide you with further helpful content in addition to our texts and images. In addition, the embedded videos make our website easier to find on the Google search engine. Even if we place ads via Google Ads, Google can – thanks to the data collected – really only show these ads to people who are interested in our offers.
What data is stored by YouTube?
When you visit one of our sites that has a YouTube video embedded, YouTube at least sets a cookie that stores your IP address and our URL. If you are logged in to your YouTube account, YouTube can associate your interactions on our site with your profile, usually using cookies. This includes information such as session duration, bounce rate, approximate location, technical information such as browser type, screen resolution, or your Internet service provider. Other information may include contact information, any ratings, sharing content through social media, or adding to your favorites on YouTube.
If you’re not signed in to a Google Account or a YouTube account, Google stores data with a unique identifier associated with your device, browser, or app. For example, your preferred language setting is preserved. But much 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 registered account. The list cannot claim to be complete, because the user data always depends on the interactions on YouTube.
name: YSC
value: b9-CV6ojI5Y111232262-1
Use: This cookie registers a unique ID to store statistics of the video viewed.
expiration date: after session end
name: PREF
value: f1=50000000
Use: 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
Use: This cookie registers your unique ID on mobile devices to track your GPS location.
expiration date: after 30 minutes
name: VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
value: 95Chz8bagyU
Use: This cookie tries to estimate the bandwidth of the user on our websites (with built-in YouTube video).
expiration date: after 8 months
Other cookies that are set when you are logged in with your YouTube account:
name: APISID
value: zILlvClZSkqGsSwI/AU1aZI6HY7111232262-
Purpose: This cookie is used to create a profile of your interests. The data is used for personalized advertisements.
expiry date: after 2 years
name: CONSENT
value: YES+AT.de+20150628-20-0
Use: The cookie stores the status of a user’s consent to use various Google services. CONSENT is also used for security purposes to verify users and protect user data from unauthorized attacks.
Expiry date: after 19 years
Name: HSID
value: AcRwpgUik9Dveht0I
Purpose: This cookie is used to create a profile of your interests. This information helps us to display personalized advertising.
expiration date: after 2 years
name: LOGIN_INFO
value: AFmmF2swRQIhALl6aL…
Purpose: This cookie stores information about your login data.
expiry date: after 2 years
Name: SAPISID
value: 7oaPxoG-pZsJuuF5/AnUdDUIsJ9iJz2vdM
Use: This cookie works by uniquely identifying your browser and device. It is used to create a profile of your interests.
expiration date: after 2 years
Name: SID
value: oQfNKjAsI111232262-
Purpose: This cookie stores your Google Account ID and last sign-in 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 which 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 and processes from you is stored on Google’s servers. Most of these servers are located in America. At https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=en you can see exactly where the Google data centres are located. Your data is distributed on the servers. So the data can be retrieved faster and are better protected against manipulation.
Google stores the collected data for different lengths of time. Some data can be deleted at any time, others are automatically deleted after a limited time and some are stored by Google for a longer 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’re not signed in to a Google Account, you can still delete some data associated with your device, browser, or app.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
Basically, you can manually delete data from your Google Account. With the automatic deletion function of location and activity data introduced in 2019, information is stored for either 3 or 18 months, depending on your decision, and then deleted.
Whether or not you have a Google Account, you can configure your browser to delete or disable Google cookies. This works in different ways depending on the browser you use. The following instructions show you 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 wish to receive cookies, 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 want to allow it or not. Since YouTube is a subsidiary of Google, there is a common privacy policy. If you want to know more about how we handle your data, we recommend you read the privacy policy at https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en.
YouTube Subscribe Button Privacy Policy
We have integrated 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 writing on a red background and the white “Play” symbol to the left. The button can also be shown 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 need to visit the YouTube website. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to access our extensive content. Please note that this allows YouTube to store and process data about you.
If you see a built-in subscription button on our site, YouTube – according to Google – sets at least one cookie. This cookie stores your IP address and our URL. It also allows YouTube to learn information about your browser, your approximate location and your default language. In our test, the following four cookies were set without being logged into YouTube:
name: YSC
value: b9-CV6ojI5111232262Y
Use: This cookie registers a unique ID to store statistics of the video viewed.
expiration date: after session end
name: PREF
value: f1=50000000
Use: 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
Use: This cookie registers your unique ID on mobile devices to track your GPS location.
expiration date: after 30 minutes
Name: VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
value: 11123226295Chz8bagyU
Use: This cookie tries to estimate the bandwidth of the user on our websites (with built-in 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, cookies allow YouTube to store many of your actions/interactions on our site and associate them with your YouTube account. This allows YouTube to obtain information such as how long you have been browsing our site, what type of browser you are using, what screen resolution you prefer, or what actions you perform.
YouTube uses this information to improve its own services and offers, and to provide analysis and statistics for advertisers (who use Google Ads).
Twitter privacy policy
On our website we have integrated functions of Twitter. These are for example embedded tweets, timelines, buttons or hashtags. Twitter is a short message service and social media platform of Twitter Inc, One Cumberland Place, Fenian Street, Dublin 2 D02 AX07, Ireland.
To the best of our knowledge, in the European Economic Area and Switzerland, the mere inclusion of Twitter functionality does not yet transfer any personal data or data relating to your web activities to Twitter. Only when you interact with the Twitter functions, such as clicking a button, can data be sent to Twitter, stored and processed there. We have no influence on and are not responsible for this data processing. Within the scope of this privacy policy, we would like to give you an overview of which data Twitter stores, what Twitter does with this data and how you can protect yourself to a large extent from data transmission.
What is Twitter?
For some, Twitter is a news service, for others it is a social media platform and yet 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 message platform. With Twitter, it is also possible 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 through different channels and communicate with our customers. Twitter in particular has grown dear to our hearts as a useful “little” news service. Again and again we tweet or retweet exciting, funny or interesting content. We are aware that you cannot follow every channel separately. After all, you also have something else to do. That’s why we have also integrated Twitter functions on our website. You can experience our Twitter activity “on site” or come to our Twitter page via a direct link. Through the integration we want to strengthen our service and the user-friendliness on our website.
Which data is stored by Twitter?
On some of our subpages you will find the built-in Twitter functions. When you interact with Twitter content, such as clicking a button, Twitter can collect and store data. Even if you do not have a Twitter account yourself. Twitter calls this data “log data”. This includes demographic data, browser cookie IDs, the ID of your smartphone, hashed email addresses, and information about which pages you visited on Twitter and what actions you performed. Of course, Twitter 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 various 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 enumeration as an example. We can in no way guarantee a claim to completeness here, as the choice of cookies is always changing and depends on your individual actions with the Twitter content.
These cookies were used in our test:
name: personalization_id
value: “v1_cSJIsogU51SeE111232262”
Purpose: This cookie stores information about how you use the website and which advertisements you may have used to get to Twitter.
Expiry date: after 2 years
Name: long
Value: en
Purpose: This cookie stores your preset or preferred language.
Expiration date: after session end
Name: guest_id
value: 111232262v1%3A157132626
Purpose: This cookie is set to identify you as a guest.
Expiry date: after 2 years
Name: fm
value: 0
Purpose: Unfortunately we could not find out the purpose of this cookie.
Expiration date: after session end
Name: external_referer
Value: 1112322622beTA0sf5lkMrlGt
Use: 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 serves various advertising purposes of Twitter.
Expiry date: After one year
Name: ct0
Value: c1179f07163a365d2ed7aad84c99d966
Use: Unfortunately we have not found any information about this cookie.
Expiration date: after 6 hours
Name: _twitter_sess
Value: 53D%253D-dd0248111232262-
Use: This cookie allows you to use functions within the Twitter website.
Expiration date: after session end
Note: Twitter also works with third party providers. That’s why we have 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 behaviour and thus improve your own services and advertising offers, on the other hand the data also serves internal security measures.
How long and where is the data stored?
If Twitter collects data from other websites, it will be deleted, aggregated or otherwise concealed after a maximum of 30 days. The Twitter servers are located at different server centers in the United States. It can therefore be assumed that collected data is collected and stored in America. After our research, we were not able to 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, until you delete the data or until there is a statutory period of deletion.
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 directly with Twitter, Twitter will of course also store data about you.
If you have a Twitter account, you can manage your data by clicking on “More” under the “Profile” button. Then click on “Settings and privacy”. Here you can manage your data individually.
If you do not have a Twitter account, you can go to twitter.com and then click on “Individualization”. Under the point “Individualization and data” you can manage your collected data.
Most of the data is, as mentioned above, stored via cookies and you can manage, deactivate or delete them in your browser. Please note that you can only “edit” the cookies in the browser you have selected. This 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, activate 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 about every single cookie. Then you can always decide individually whether you want to accept a cookie or not.
Twitter also uses the data for personalised advertising inside and outside Twitter. You can turn off personalised advertising in the settings under “Individualisation and data”. If you use Twitter on a browser, you can deactivate personalised advertising under http://optout.aboutads.info/?c=2&lang=EN.
Twitter is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. This framework ensures correct data transmission between the USA and the European Union. You can find out more about this under https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000TORzAAO.
We hope we have given you a basic overview of the data processing by Twitter. 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 policy at https://twitter.com/en/privacy
Pinterest privacy policy
We use buttons and widgets of the social media network Pinterest, the company Pinterest Inc.,808 Brannan Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA on our site.
When you access pages that use such functions, data (IP address, browser data, date and time, cookies) is transmitted to Pinterest, stored and evaluated.
The privacy policy, what information Pinterest collects and how it uses it can be found at https://policy.pinterest.com/en/privacy-policy.
Gravatar Privacy Policy
We use Gravatar from Automattic Inc. on this website (60 29th Street #343, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA) to assign user images (avatar) based on the email address used in posts and comments.
A gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar – a user image available worldwide – which can be assigned to an e-mail address and used in various online services.
Since an image is only displayed when using an email address registered with Gravatar and data is therefore transferred to Gravatar, you can prevent the transfer of your data to Gravatar by commenting or posting comments using an email address not registered with Gravatar.
Automattic is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework which regulates the correct and secure transfer of personal data. More information can be found at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000CbqcAAC .
For more details about Gravatar’s privacy policy and how Gravatar collects information, please visit https://automattic.com/privacy/, general information about Gravatar at http://en.gravatar.com/.
Cloudflare privacy policy
We use on this website Cloudflare of the company Cloudflare, Inc. (101 Townsend St., San Francisco, CA 94107, USA) to make our website faster and more secure. Cloudflare uses cookies and processes user data. Cloudflare, Inc. is an American company that offers a content delivery network and various security services. These services are located between the user and our hosting provider. What this all means exactly, we try to explain in the following.
What is Cloudflare?
A Content Delivery Network (CDN), as provided by Cloudflare, is nothing more than a network of connected servers. Cloudflare has distributed such servers all over the world to bring websites to your screen faster. Simply put, Cloudflare makes copies of our website and places them on their own servers. When you visit our website now, a load balancing system ensures that most of our website is delivered from the server that can display our website the fastest. The distance of the data transfer to your browser is significantly shortened by a CDN. Thus the content of our website is delivered to you by cloudflare not only from our hosting server, but from servers all over the world. The use of Cloudflare is especially helpful for users from abroad, because here the page can be delivered from a server nearby. Besides the fast delivery of websites Cloudflare also offers various security services, such as DDoS protection or the Web Application Firewall.
Why we use Cloudflare on our website?
Of course we want to offer you the best possible service with our website. Cloudflare helps us to make our website faster and more secure. Cloudflare offers us web optimizations as well as security services like DDoS protection and web firewall. This includes a Reverse-Proxy and the content distribution network (CDN). Cloudflare blocks threats and limits abusive bots and crawlers that waste our bandwidth and server resources. By storing our website in local data centers and blocking spam software, Cloudflare allows us to reduce our bandwidth usage by approximately 60%. Delivering content through a local data center and some web optimization work done there reduces the average time a web page loads by about half. Cloudflare also says that by setting “I’m Under Attack Mode”, further attacks can be mitigated by displaying a JavaScript calculation task that must be solved before a user can access a website. Overall, this makes our website much more powerful and less susceptible to spam or other attacks.
Which data is stored by Cloudflare?
Cloudflare generally forwards only those data that are controlled by website operators. The contents are therefore not determined by Cloudflare, but always by the website operator himself. In addition, Cloudflare may collect certain information about the use of our website and process data that is sent by us or for which Cloudflare has received appropriate instructions. In most cases Cloudflare receives data such as IP address, contact and protocol information, security fingerprints and performance data for websites. For example, log data helps Cloudflare identify new threats. In this way, Cloudflare can ensure a high level of security protection for our website. Cloudflare processes this data in the context of the services in compliance with the applicable laws. This includes of course the basic data protection regulation (DSGVO).
For security reasons Cloudflare also uses a cookie. The cookie (__cfduid) is used to identify individual users behind a shared IP address and to apply security settings for each individual user. This cookie is very useful, for example, if you are using our website from a location where there are a number of infected computers. However, if your computer is trustworthy, we can identify this from the cookie. In this way, you can surf through our website without hindrance and without worries, even if there are infected PCs in your environment. It is also important to know that this cookie does not store any personal data. This cookie is absolutely necessary for the Cloudflare security functions and cannot be deactivated.
Cookies from Cloudflare
name: __cfduid
value: d798bf7df9c1ad5b7583eda5cc5e78111232262-3
Purpose: Security settings for each individual visitor
expiry date: after one year
Cloudflare also works together with third party providers. These may process personal data only under instruction of Cloudflare and in accordance with the privacy policy and other confidentiality and security measures. Cloudflare will not pass on any personal data without our explicit consent.
How long and where is the data stored?
Cloudflare stores your information mainly in the USA and the European Economic Area. Cloudflare can transfer and access the above described information from all over the world. In general, Cloudflare stores user-level data for domains in the Free, Pro and Business versions for less than 24 hours. For enterprise domains that have cloudflare logs (formerly Enterprise LogShare or ELS) enabled, data can be stored for up to 7 days. However, if IP addresses trigger security alerts during cloudflare, exceptions to the above retention period may occur.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
Cloudflare keeps data logs only as long as necessary and in most cases these data are deleted within 24 hours. Cloudflare also does not store any personal data, such as your IP address. However, there is information that Cloudflare stores indefinitely as part of its permanent logs to improve the overall performance of Cloudflare Resolver and to identify any security risks. To find out exactly which permanent logs are stored, see https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/commitment-to-privacy/privacy-policy/privacy-policy/. All data that Cloudflare collects (temporary or permanent) will be cleaned from all personal data. All permanent logs are also anonymized by Cloudflare.
Cloudflare goes into your privacy policy that they are not responsible for the content they receive. For example, if you ask Cloudflare whether they can update or delete your content, Cloudflare always refers to us as the website operator. You can also completely prevent the entire collection and processing of your data by Cloudflare by deactivating the execution of script code in your browser or by including a script blocker in your browser.
Cloudflare is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which regulates the correct and secure data transfer of personal data. You can find more information on https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000GnZKAA0.
More information on data protection at Cloudflare can be found at https://www.cloudflare.com/en-us/privacypolicy/.
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 from Google Inc. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA). 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 check it. With Google’s reCAPTCHA we usually do not have to bother you with such puzzles. In most cases it is sufficient to simply check the box to confirm that you are not a bot. With the new Invisible reCAPTCHA version you don’t even have to check the box. How exactly this works and especially which data is used for this purpose, 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. This service is most often used when you fill out forms on the Internet. A captcha service is a kind of automatic turing test, which is supposed to ensure that an action on the internet is done by a human and not by a bot. In the classic Turing test (named after the computer scientist Alan Turing), a human makes the distinction between bot and human. With Captchas this is also done by the computer or a software program. Classical captchas work with small tasks, which are easy to solve for humans, but have considerable 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 have to tick the text field “I am not a robot” or with Invisible reCAPTCHA even this is no longer necessary. With reCAPTCHA, a JavaScript element is embedded 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 the probability that you are a human being even before you enter the captcha. 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 to our side. Bots or spam software of various kinds can safely stay at home. That is why we do everything we can to protect ourselves and offer the best possible user-friendliness for you. For this reason we use Google reCAPTCHA from the company Google. So we can be quite sure that we remain a “bot-free” website. Through the use of reCAPTCHA, data is transmitted to Google to determine whether you are really a human being. reCAPTCHA therefore serves the security of our website and, as a consequence, 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.
Which data is stored by reCAPTCHA?
reCAPTCHA collects personal data from users to determine whether the actions on our website are actually performed by humans. This means that the IP address and other data that Google requires for the reCAPTCHA service can be sent to Google. IP addresses are almost always truncated within the member states of the EU or other signatory states to the Agreement on the European Economic Area before the data lands on a server in the USA. The IP address is not combined with any other data held by Google unless you are signed in to 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 sets an additional cookie in your browser and takes 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 which, to our knowledge, are processed by Google.
- Referrer URL (the address of the page the visitor comes from)
- IP address (e.g. 256.123.123.1)
- Information about the operating system (the software that enables your computer to operate. 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 is 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 consists of)
It is indisputable that Google uses and analyses this data even before you click on 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, you will not learn from Google in detail.
The following cookies are used by reCAPTCHA: Here we refer to the reCAPTCHA demo version of Google at https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/demo. All 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-111232262-8
Purpose: This cookie is set by DoubleClick (also owns Google) to register and report the actions of a user on the website in dealing with advertisements. In this way the advertising effectiveness can be measured and appropriate optimisation 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
Use: This cookie collects statistics on website usage and measures conversions. A conversion occurs, for example, when a user becomes a buyer. The cookie is also used to show users relevant advertisements. 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
value: U7j1v3dZa1112322620xgZFmiqWppRWKOr
Purpose: We could not find out much information about this cookie. Google’s privacy policy mentions the cookie in connection with “advertising cookies” such as “DSID”, “FLC”, “AID”, “TAID”. ANID is stored at domain google.com.
expiration date: after 9 months
name: CONSENT
Value: YES+AT.de+20150628-20-0
Use: The cookie stores the status of a user’s consent to use various Google services. CONSENT is also used for security purposes, to verify users, to prevent fraudulent use of login information, and to protect user data from unauthorized attacks.
expiration date: after 19 years
name: NID
value: 0WmuWqy111232262zILzqV_nmt3sDXwPeM5Q
Use: NID is used by Google to match ads to your Google search. Google uses the cookie to “remember” your most commonly entered search queries or your previous interaction with ads. So you can always get customized ads. The cookie contains a unique ID in order to collect user preferences for advertising purposes.
expiration date: after 6 months
name: DV
value: gEAABBCjJJMXcI0dSAAAANbqc111232262-4
Use: As soon as you have checked the “I am not a robot” checkbox, this cookie will be set. The cookie is used by Google Analytics for personalized advertising. DV collects information in anonymous form and is also used to make user distinctions.
expiration date: after 10 minutes
Note: This enumeration cannot claim to be complete, as Google, from experience, changes the choice of their cookies again and again.
How long and where is the data stored?
By inserting reCAPTCHA, data from you is transferred to the Google server. Where exactly this data is stored is not clearly shown by Google, even after repeated requests. 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 in to your Google account while using the reCAPTCHA plug-in, the data will be merged. The differing data protection regulations of Google apply.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
If you do not want Google to receive information about you and your behavior, you must completely log out of Google and delete all Google cookies before you visit our website or use the reCAPTCHA software. In principle, the data is automatically transmitted to Google as soon as you visit our website. To delete this data again, you must contact Google support at https://support.google.com/?hl=en&tid=111232262.
Thus, when you use our website, you agree that Google LLC and its agents may automatically collect, process and use data.
You can find out more about reCAPTCHA on Google’s web developer page at https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/. Although Google goes into more detail about the technical development of the reCAPTCHA here, you will search in vain for precise information about data storage and topics relevant to data protection. A good overview of the basic use of data at Google can be found in the company’s own privacy policy at https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-US.
Source: Created with the data protection generator from Content Marketing Agency AdSimple.at in cooperation with wallentin.cc