Data Privacy Policy

Cookies

Our website makes use of so-called cookies in order to recognize repeat use of our website by the same user/internet connection subscriber. Cookies are small text files that your internet browser downloads and stores on your computer. They are used to improve our website and services. In most cases these are so-called “session cookies” that are deleted once you leave our website.

To an extent, however, these cookies also pass along information used to automatically recognize you. Recognition occurs through an IP address saved to the cookies. The information thereby obtained is used to improve our services and to expedite your access to the website.

You can prevent cookies from being installed by adjusting the settings on your browser software accordingly. You should be aware, however, that by doing so you may not be able to make full use of all the functions of our website.

Adjust cookies and privacy settings.

Server Data

For technical reasons, data such as the following, which your internet browser transmits to us or to our web space provider (so called server log files), is collected:

• type and version of the browser you use
• operating system
• websites that linked you to our site (referrer URL)
• websites that you visit
• date and time of your visit
• your Internet Protocol (IP) address.

This anonymous data is stored separately from any personal information you may have provided, thereby making it impossible to connect it to any particular person. The data is used for statistical purposes in order to improve our website and services.

Purpose of Registering

We offer you the opportunity to sign up for our website. The information entered when signing up, as shown in the registration form

E-Mail, Username, address, Name, birthdate

is collected and stored solely for use by our website. When signing up for our website, we also store your IP address and the date and time you registered. This serves to protect us in the event a third party improperly and without your knowledge makes use of your data to sign up for our site. None of this information is transferred to third parties. Nor is any of this information matched to any information that may be collected by other components of our website. Registered users also have the option of changing or deleting the data provided during registration at any time. Of course, we will also provide you with information about the personal data we have stored about you at any time. To prevent fraud, user data is stored for at least 30 days and is not automatically deleted. After 30 days without any outstanding invoices or active products, the user has the option of deleting the account and all associated data via the web interface. For verification reasons, the deletion must be confirmed directly by the user in the web interface by entering the password. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Newsletter

Our website offers you the opportunity to subscribe to our newsletter. The newsletter provides you periodically with information about our services. To receive our newsletter, we require a valid email address. We will review the email address you provide for the purpose of determining whether you are in fact the owner of the email address provided or whether the actual owner of said address is authorized to receive the newsletter. When subscribing to our newsletter, we will store your IP address as well as the date and time you subscribed. This serves to protect us in the event a third party improperly and without your knowledge makes use of your email address to subscribe to our newsletter. We will not collect any other data. The data thereby collected is used solely for the purpose of receiving our newsletter. No data is transferred to third parties. Nor is any of this information matched to any information that other components of our website may collect. You may cancel your subscription to the newsletter at any time. You will find additional details in the email confirming your subscription as well as in each newsletter.

Contacting Us

On our website we offer you the opportunity to contact us, either by email and/or by using a contact form. In such event, information provided by the user is stored for the purpose of facilitating communications with the user. No data is transferred to third parties. Nor is any of this information matched to any information that may be collected by other components of our website.

Posting Comments

On our website we offer you the opportunity to post comments about individual articles. For this purpose, the IP address of the user/internet connection subscriber is stored. This information is stored for our security in the event the author through his/her comments infringes against third party rights and/or unlawful content is entered. Consequently, we have a direct interest in the author’s stored data, particularly since we may be potentially liable for such violations. No data is transferred to third parties. Nor is any of this information matched to any information that may be collected by other components of our website.

Use of Google Analytics with anonymization

Our website uses Google Analytics, a web analysis service from Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 USA, hereinafter referred to as “Google“. Google Analytics employs so-called “cookies“, text files that are stored to your computer in order to facilitate an analysis of your use of the site. The information generated by these cookies, such as time, place and frequency of your visits to our site, including your IP address, is transmitted to Google’s location in the US and stored there. In using Google Analytics our website employs the extension, “_gat._anonymizeIp”. In doing so, Google abbreviates and thereby anonymizes your IP address before transferring it from member states of the European Union or signatory states to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Google uses this information to analyze your use of our site, to compile reports for us on internet activity and to provide other services relating to website and internet use. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law or where such third parties process this data on Google’s behalf.  Google states that it will in never associate your IP address with other data held by Google. You can prevent cookies from being installed by adjusting the settings on your browser software accordingly. You should be aware, however, that by doing so you may not be able to make full use of all the functions of our website. Furthermore, Google offers a deactivation add-on for most current browsers that provides you with more control over what data Google can collect on websites you access. The add-on tells the JavaScript (ga.js) used by Google Analytics not to transmit any information about website visits to Google Analytics. However, the browser deactivation add-on offered by Google Analytics does not prevent information from being transmitted to us or to other web analysis services we may engage. You can find additional information on how to install the browser add-on at the following link:

https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=de

Use of Facebook components

Our website employs components provided by facebook.com. Facebook is a service of Facebook Inc., 1601 S. California Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA.

Each time our website receives an access request equipped with a Facebook component, the component prompts your browser to download an image of this Facebook component. Through this process, Facebook is informed precisely which page of our website is being visited. 

When you access our site while logged into Facebook, Facebook uses information gathered by this component to identify the precise page you are viewing and associates this information to your personal account on Facebook. Whenever you click on the “Like“ button, for example, or enter a comment, this information is transmitted to your personal account on Facebook and stored there. In addition, Facebook is informed of your visit to our website. This occurs regardless of whether you click on a component or not.

If you wish to prevent the transfer to and storage of data by Facebook about you and your interaction with our website, you must first log out of Facebook before visiting our website. The data protection policies of Facebook provide additional information, in particular about the collection and use of data by Facebook, your rights in this regard as well as the options available to you for protecting your privacy: https://de-de.facebook.com/about/privacy/

In addition, tools are freely available on the market that can be used to block Facebook social plug-ins with add-ons from being added to all commonly used browsers: http://webgraph.com/resources/facebookblocker/
You can find an overview of Facebook plugins at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/

Use of Twitter recommendation components

Our website employs components provided by Twitter. Twitter is a service of Twitter Inc., 795 Folsom St., Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA.

Each time our website receives an access request equipped with a Twitter component, the component prompts your browser to download an image of this component from Twitter. Through this process, Twitter is informed precisely which page of our website is being visited. We have no control over the data that Twitter collects in the process, or over the extent of the data that Twitter collects. To the best of our knowledge, Twitter collects the URL of each website accessed as well as the IP address of the user, but does so solely for the purpose of displaying Twitter components. Additional information may be obtained from the Twitter data privacy policy, at: http://twitter.com/privacy.

You may change your data privacy settings in your account settings, at http://twitter.com/account/settings.

Use of YouTube components with enhanced data protection mode

On our website we use components (videos) of YouTube, LLC 901 Cherry Ave., 94066 San Bruno, CA, USA, a company belonging to Google Inc., Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.

To this end, we use the “ – enhanced data protection mode – ” option provided by YouTube.

When you display a page that has an embedded video, a connection will be made to the YouTube server and the content will appear on the website via a communication to your browser.

According to the information provided by YouTube, in “ – enhanced data protection mode -”, data is only transferred to the YouTube server, in particular which of our websites you have visited, if you watch the video. If you are logged onto YouTube at the same time, this information will be matched to your YouTube member account. You can prevent this from happening by logging out of your member account before visiting our website.

Further information about data protection by YouTube is provided by Google under the following link:

https://www.google.de/intl/de/policies/privacy/

Usage of LiveZilla

On our site, we use components of LiveZilla GmbH, Byk-Gulden-Straße 22, 78224 Singen. These components collect and store data from every single visit to the site for the purposes of web analysis and the operation of a live chat system. This data can then be used to generate pseudonymised user profiles via the deployment of cookies. These user profiles can assist with the analysis of visitor behaviour and of the operation of the live chat system and may be evaluated in order to improve our Internet provision and to enable us to design our site in a way that meets user needs. Cookies are small text files which are stored locally in the cache of the Internet browser of the site visitor to enable recognition of the Internet browser used. Data collected in this manner is not used to identify visitors to the website personally without their explicit consent. Data is also not collated with personal information or with information regarding the bearer of the pseudonym. 

Although you may block the installation of cookies by using the relevant settings in your browser software or delete cookies which are already stored, we wish to point out that you may not be able to take advantage of the full range of all functions available on our website if you do so.

The use of Google Remarketing

On our website, we promote the service Google Remarketing belonging to the company Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 USA, hereinafter “Google”. Advertisements may appear for users who have already visited our website in the past with Google Remarketing. Within the Google network, advertisements adapted to your interests can hereby be displayed on our site. Google Remarketing uses cookies for this evaluation. Cookies are small text files stored on your computer which allow the use of the website to be analyzed. This makes it possible to recognize our visitors if these sites are accessed within the advertising network of Google. In this way, advertisements can be presented within the advertising network of Google based on content which has previously been accessed on websites within the Google advertising network by visitors who are also using the Google Remarketing feature. Google does not itself collect any personal data. You can disable this feature by making the appropriate settings under http://www.google.com/settings/ads. 

The use of Instagram

We promote the service Instagram on our website. Instagram is a service of Instagram Inc. By means of the integrated “Insta” button on our page, Instagram receives the information that you have accessed the corresponding page of our website. If you are logged into Instagram, Instagram may assign the visit to our site to your Instagram account and link the data by this means. The data transmitted by clicking the “Insta” button is stored by Instagram. You can find more information regarding the purpose and scope of data collection, its processing and use, as well as your related rights and settings options for protecting your privacy in the Instagram data protection notice under https://help.instagram.com/155833707900388.

To prevent your visit to our site from being accessed by your Instagram account, you must log out of your Instagram account before visiting our site. 

Use of Google-Adwords

For purposes of promotion, our website also employs the Google ad tool “Google-Adwords”. As part of this, our website employs the analysis service “Conversion-Tracking” from Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 USA, hereinafter referred to as “Google“. If you access our site by way of a Google ad, a cookie is placed on your computer. Cookies are small text files that your internet browser downloads and stores to your computer. These so-called “conversion cookies” cease to be active after 30 days and are not used to identify you personally. If you visit certain pages of our website while the cookie is still active, we and Google know that you, as user, have clicked on ads placed on Google and were redirected to our site. Google uses the information obtained through “conversion cookies” to compile statistics for our website. These statistics tell us the total number of users who have clicked on our ad as well as which pages of our site were then accessed by each user. However, neither we nor other advertisers who use “Google-Adwords” receive any kind of information that can be used to personally identify users. You can prevent the installation of “conversion cookies” by making the appropriate change to your browser settings, for example by setting your browser so that the automatic placement of cookies is deactivated or by blocking cookies from the domain “googleadservices.com“.

You can obtain the relevant data privacy policy from Google at the following link:

https://services.google.com/sitestats/de.html

Use of affilinet tracking cookies

Our website employs affilinet tracking cookies in order to correctly record sales and/or leads. Cookies are small text files that are saved to your computer when you visit a website. These affilinet tracking cookies do not store personal data of any kind. Instead, it only collects the identification number of the intermediary partner as well as the reference number of the advertising material that was clicked on by the visitor to the website. This information is required in order to process the payment transaction between the website operator and the advertiser. The partner identification number serves to designate the intermediary partner to which a commission is to be paid once a transaction has been concluded. You can prevent cookies from being installed by adjusting the settings on your browser software accordingly. You should be aware, however, that by doing so you may not be able to make full use of all the functions of our website. 

Use of Hotjar

We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behavior and their devices (in particular device’s IP address (captured and stored only in anonymized form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), preferred language used to display our website). Hotjar stores this information in a pseudonymized user profile. Neither Hotjar nor we will ever use this information to identify individual users or to match it with further data on an individual user. For further details, please see Hotjar’s privacy policy by clicking on this link. You can opt-out to the creation of a user profile, Hotjar’s storing of data about your usage of our site and Hotjar’s use of tracking cookies on other websites by following this opt-out link.

Publication of vacancy announcements / job applications

We electronically collect and process your application data for the purpose of completing the application process. If your application results in the conclusion of an employment contract, the data collected from you may be stored in your personnel file for purposes of normal organizational and administrative processes in compliance with appropriate legal requirements.

Upon rejection of your application, data you have provided is automatically deleted two months after notification of rejection. This does not apply in such instances where, due to legal requirements (such as the burden of proof obligation stipulated in the Equal Treatment Act) a longer storage period is necessitated or when you expressly agreed to have your data stored for a longer period in our database of prospective applicants.

Information/Cancellation/Deletion

On the basis of the Federal Data Protection Act, you may contact us at no cost if you have questions relating to the collection, processing or use of your personal information, if you wish to request the correction, blocking or deletion of the same, or if you wish to cancel explicitly granted consent. Please note that you have the right to have incorrect data corrected or to have personal data deleted, where such claim is not barred by any legal obligation to retain this data.

Data Privacy Policy Statement provided by the Law Offices of Weiß & Partner

Please send any question regarding our privacy policy: ZAP-Hosting GmbH, Datenschutzbeauftragter, Hafenweg 8, 48155 Münster, Germany