Privacy Policy

We have written this privacy policy (version 16.04.2021-111721487) to provide you with information in accordance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 as well as to explain what information we collect, how we use data and what choices you have as a visitor to this website.

Privacy policies usually sound very technical. However, this version should describe the most important things as simply and clearly as possible. Moreover, technical terms are explained in a reader-friendly manner whenever possible. We would also like to convey that we only collect and use information via this website if there is a corresponding legal basis for it. This is certainly not possible if you give very brief technical explanations, as are often standard on the Internet when it comes to data protection. We hope you find the following explanations interesting and informative. Maybe you will also find some information that you did not know yet.
Should you still have questions, we kindly ask you to follow the existing links to see further information on third-party websites, or to simply write us an email. You can find our contact information in our website’s imprint.

Automatic Data Retention

Every time you visit a website nowadays, certain information is automatically created and stored, just as it happens on this website. This data should be collected as sparingly as possible, and only with good reason. By website, we mean the entirety of all websites on your domain, i.e. everything from the homepage to the very last subpage (like this one here). By domain we mean example.uk or examplepage.com.

Even while you are currently visiting our website, our web server – this is the computer this website is stored on, usually automatically retains data such as the below – for reasons such as operational security or for creating access statistics etc.

the full address (URL) of the accessed website (e. g. https://www.examplepage.uk/examplesubpage.html/)
browser and browser version (e.g. Chrome 87)
the operating system used (e.g. Windows 10)
the address (URL) of the previously visited site (referrer URL) (z. B. https://www.examplepage.uk/icamefromhere.html/)
the host name and the IP-address of the device the website is accessed from (e.g. COMPUTERNAME and 194.23.43.121)
date and time
in so-called web server log files.

Generally, these files are stored for two weeks and are then automatically deleted. We do not pass these data to others, but we cannot exclude the possibility that this data may be looked at by the authorities in case of illegal conduct.

In short: your visit is logged by our provider (company that runs our website on servers), but we do not pass on your data!

Contact details of the responsible person

If you have any questions regarding data protection, you will find the contact details of the responsible person or office below:

Johannes Bischof
Oberlech 703
6764 Lech am Arlberg
Austria

Authorized to represent: Johannes Bischof
E-Mail: info@schneegloeckle.at
Phone: +43 5583 3144
Imprint: https://www.schneegloeckle-lech.at/en/impressum

Automatic Data Retention

the full address (URL) of the accessed website (e. g. https://www.examplepage.uk/examplesubpage.html/)
browser and browser version (e.g. Chrome 87)
the operating system used (e.g. Windows 10)
the address (URL) of the previously visited site (referrer URL) (z. B. https://www.examplepage.uk/icamefromhere.html/)
the host name and the IP-address of the device the website is accessed from (e.g. COMPUTERNAME and 194.23.43.121)
date and time
in so-called web server log files.

In short: your visit is logged by our provider (company that runs our website on servers), but we do not pass on your data!

Cookies

Our website uses HTTP-cookies to store user-specific data.
For your better understanding of the following Privacy Policy statement, we will explain to you below what cookies are and why they are in use.

What exactly are cookies?

Every time you surf the internet, you use a browser. Common browsers are for example Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge. Most websites store small text-files in your browser. These files are called cookies.

What should not be dismissed, is that cookies are very useful little helpers. Nearly all websites use cookies. More accurately speaking these are HTTP-cookies, since there are also different cookies for other uses. http-cookies are small files which our website stores on your computer. These cookie files are automatically put into the cookie-folder, which is like the “brain” of your browser. A cookie consists of a name and a value. Moreover, to define a cookie, one or multiple attributes must be specified.

Cookies save certain parts of your user data, such as e.g. language or personal page settings. When you re-open our website, your browser submits these “user specific” information back to our site. Thanks to cookies, our website knows who you are and offers you the settings you are familiar to. In some browsers every cookie has its own file, in others such as Firefox, all cookies are stored in one single file.

There are both first-party cookies and third-party cookies. First-party cookies are created directly by our site, while third-party cookies are created by partner-websites (e.g. Google Analytics). Every cookie is individual, since every cookie stores different data. The expiration time of a cookie also varies – it can be a few minutes, or up to a few years. Cookies are no software-programs and contain no computer viruses, trojans or any other malware. Cookies also cannot access your PC’s information.

This is an example of how cookie-files can look:

name: _ga
value: GA1.2.1326744211.152111721487-9
purpose: differentiation between website visitors
expiration date: after 2 years

A browser should support these minimum sizes:

at least 4096 bytes per cookie
at least 50 cookies per domain
at least 3000 cookies in total

Which types of cookies are there?

What exact cookies we use, depends on the used services. We will explain this in the following sections of the Privacy Policy statement. Firstly, we will briefly focus on the different types of HTTP-cookies.

There are 4 different types of cookies:

Essential Cookies
These cookies are necessary to ensure the basic function of a website. They are needed when a user for example puts a product into their shopping cart, then continues surfing on different websites and comes back later in order to proceed to the checkout. Even when the user closed their window priorly, these cookies ensure that the shopping cart does not get deleted.

Purposive Cookies
These cookies collect info about the user behaviour and record if the user potentially receives any error messages. Furthermore, these cookies record the website’s loading time as well as its behaviour within different browsers.

Target-orientated Cookies
These cookies care for an improved user-friendliness. Thus, information such as previously entered locations, fonts or data in forms stay saved.

Advertising Cookies
These cookies are also known as targeting-Cookies. They serve the purpose of delivering individually adapted advertisements to the user. This can be very practical, but also rather annoying.

Upon your first visit to a website you are usually asked which of these cookie-types you want to accept. Furthermore, this decision will of course also be saved in a cookie.

How can I delete cookies?

You yourself take the decision if and how you want to use cookies. Thus, no matter what service or website cookies are from, you always have the option to delete, deactivate or only partially allow them. Therefore, you can for example block cookies of third parties but allow any other cookies.

If you want change or delete cookie-settings and would like to determine which cookies have been saved to your browser, you can find this info in your browser-settings:

Chrome: Clear, enable and manage cookies in Chrome

Safari: Manage cookies and website data in Safari

Firefox: Clear cookies and site data in Firefox

Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies

Microsoft Edge: Delete cookies in Microsoft Edge

If you generally do not want to allow any cookies at all, you can set up your browser in a way, to notify you whenever a potential cookie is about to be set. This gives you the opportunity to manually decide to either permit or deny the placement of every single cookie. The settings for this differ from browser to browser. Therefore, it might be best for you to search for the instructions in Google. If you are using Chrome, you could for example put the search phrase “delete cookies Chrome” or “deactivate cookies Chrome” into Google.

How is my data protected?

There is a “cookie policy” that has been in place since 2009. It states that the storage of cookies requires the user’s consent. However, among the countries of the EU, these guidelines are often met with mixed reactions. In Austria the guidelines have been implemented in § 96 section 3 of the Telecommunications Act (TKG).

If you want to learn more about cookies and do not mind 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

Any personal data you electronically submit to us on this website, such as your name, email address, home address or other personal information you provide via the transmission of a form or via any comments to the blog, are solely used for the specified purpose and get stored securely along with the respective submission times and IP-address. These data do not get passed on to third parties.

Therefore, we use personal data for the communication with only those users, who have explicitly requested being contacted, as well as for the execution of the services and products offered on this website. We do not pass your personal data to others without your approval, but we cannot exclude the possibility this data will be looked at in case of illegal conduct.

If you send us personal data via email – and thus not via this website – we cannot guarantee any safe transmission or protection of your data. We recommend you, to never send confidential data via email.

Rights in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation

You are granted the following rights in accordance with the provisions of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and the Austrian Data Protection Act (DSG):

right to rectification (article 16 GDPR)
right to erasure (“right to be forgotten“) (article 17 GDPR)
right to restrict processing (article 18 GDPR)
righ to notification – notification obligation regarding rectification or erasure of personal data or restriction of processing (article 19 GDPR)
right to data portability (article 20 GDPR)
Right to object (article 21 GDPR)
right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing – including profiling – (article 22 GDPR)

If you think that the processing of your data violates the data protection law, or that your data protection rights have been infringed in any other way, you can lodge a complaint with your respective regulatory authority. For Austria this is the data protection authority, whose website you can access at https://www.data-protection-authority.gv.at/.

Evaluation of Visitor Behaviour

In the following Privacy Policy, we will inform you on if and how we evaluate the data of your visit to this website. The evaluation is generally made anonymously, and we cannot link to you personally based on your behaviour on this website.

You can find out more about how to disagree with the evaluation of visitor data, in the Privacy Policy below.

TLS encryption with https

The terms TLS, encryption and https sound very technical, which they are indeed. We use HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) to securely transfer data on the Internet.
This means that the entire transmission of all data from your browser to our web server is secured – nobody can “listen in”.

We have thus introduced an additional layer of security and meet privacy requirements through technology design Article 25 Section 1 GDPR). With the use of TLS (Transport Layer Security), which is an encryption protocol for safe data transfer on the internet, we can ensure the protection of confidential information.
You can recognise the use of this safeguarding tool by the little lock-symbol , which is situated in your browser’s top left corner in the left of the internet address (e.g. examplepage.uk), as well as by the display of the letters https (instead of http) as a part of our web address.
If you want to know more about encryption, we recommend you to do a Google search for “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure wiki” to find good links to further information.

Google Maps Privacy Policy

On our website we use Google Maps of the company Google Inc. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA). With the use of Google Maps, we can show you locations in a better way and can therefore adjust our service to your needs. Due to the utilisation of Google Maps, data gets transferred to Google and is saved on Google’s servers. In the following, we want to explain in detail what Google Maps is, why we use this Google service, what data is stored and how you can prevent this.

What is Google Maps?

Google Maps is an internet maps service of the company Google Inc. With Google Maps you can search for exact locations of cities, sights, accommodations or businesses online via a PC, a tablet or an app. If businesses are represented on Google My Business, the respective location as well as other information about the company are shown there. In order to show route directions, a location’s map sections can be integrated in a website through a HTML-code. Google Maps depicts the earth’s surface as either a road map or as air and satellite images. Due to the street view and high-quality satellite images, it is possible for exact representations to be made.

Why do we use Google Maps on our website?

The efforts we make on this page have the goal of giving you a useful and meaningful experience on our website. Through the integration of Google Maps, we can offer you essential information on various locations. Therefore, you can spot our office address with one glance. Furthermore, the route directions always show you the best and fastest way to us. You can retrieve the route directions for traveling either by car, by public transport, on foot or by bike. The integration of Google Maps is a part of our customer service.

What data is stored by Google Maps?

For Google Maps to offer its full services, the company must collect and store your data. This includes your entered search terms, your IP-address as well as your longitude and latitude coordinates. When you use the route-planner function, the entered start address is stored also. However, this data retention happens on Google Maps‘ websites. We can only inform you about it but cannot influence it in any way. Since we have included Google Maps on our website, Google will set at least one cookie (Name: NID) into your browser. This cookie saves data on your user behaviour. Google primarily uses this data to optimise ist own services and to provide you with individual, personalised advertisements.

The following cookies are set in your browser due to the integration of Google Maps:

Name: NID
Value: 188=h26c1Ktha7fCQTx8rXgLyATyITJ111721487-5
Purpose: Google uses NID in order to adjust advertisments to your Google searches. With the cookie’s help Google “remembers“ your most frequently entered search queries or your previous interaction with ads. That way you always receive customised adertisments. The cookie contains a unique ID, wich Google uses to collect your personal settings for advertising porposes.
Expiration date: after 6 months

Note: We cannot guarantee completeness of the information on saved data. This is, because especially concerning the use of cookies, changes can happen anytime. To identify the cookie NID, a test page was created, to which Google Maps was included.

How long and where is the data saved?

There are Google servers in data centres across the entire planet. However, most servers are in America. For this reason, your data is widely stored in the USA. Here you can read in detail about where the Google servers are located: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=en

Google distributes data to various data carriers. This makes it possible to retrieve the data faster and to better protect it from possible attempted manipulations. Every server has emergency programs. Thus, should for example a problem with Google’s hardware occur or should a natural disaster impact the servers, any data will quite certainly stay protected.

Moreover, Google saves some data for a specified period. With some other data on the other hand, Google only offers the opportunity for deleting it manually. Furthermore, the company anonymises information (e.g. advertising data) in server logs, by deleting a part of the IP-address and cookie information after 9 to 18 months.

How can I delete my data, or prevent data retention?

Due to the automatic delete function for location and activity data, which was introduced in 2019, information that is used for determining your location and web or app activity is saved for either 3 or 18 months, depending on your preferred decision, and is deleted thereafter.
Furthermore, it is possible to delete this data manually from your browser history via your Google account anytime. If you want to prevent the determination of your location altogether, you must pause the category “Web and app activity” in your Google account. Click on “Data and personalisation” and then choose the option “Activity controls”. Here you can switch the activities on or off.

Moreover, in your browser you can deactivate, delete or manage individual cookies. This function can differ a little, depending on what browser you are using. The following instructions will show you how to manage cookies in your browser:

Chrome: Clear, enable and manage cookies in Chrome

Safari: Manage cookies and website data in Safari

Firefox: Clear cookies and site data in Firefox

Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies

Microsoft Edge: Delete cookies in Microsoft Edge

If you generally do not want to permit any cookies, you can set up your browser in a way that ensures you get informed whenever a cookie is about to be placed. That way you can decide to either permit or refuse every single cookie.

Google is an active participant of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which regulates the correct and safe transfer of personal data. You can find more information on this on https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt000000001L5AAI.
If you want to find out more about Google’s data processing, we recommend the company’s internal privacy statement on https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-GB.

Google Fonts Privacy Policy

On our website we use Google Fonts, from the company Google Inc. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA).

To use Google Fonts, you must log in and set up a password. Furthermore, no cookies will be saved in your browser. The data (CSS, Fonts) will be requested via the Google domains fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com. According to Google, all requests for CSS and fonts are fully separated from any other Google services. If you have a Google account, you do not need to worry that your Google account details are transmitted to Google while you use Google Fonts. Google records the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) as well as the utilised fonts and stores these data securely. We will have a detailed look at how exactly the data storage works.

What are Google Fonts?

Google Fonts (previously Google Web Fonts) is a list of over 800 fonts which href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google?tid=111721487”>Google LLC provides its users for free.

Many of these fonts have been published under the SIL Open Font License license, while others have been published under the Apache license. Both are free software licenses.

Why do we use Google Fonts on our website?

With Google Fonts we can use different fonts on our website and do not have to upload them to our own server. Google Fonts is an important element which helps to keep the quality of our website high. All Google fonts are automatically optimised for the web, which saves data volume and is an advantage especially for the use of mobile terminal devices. When you use our website, the low data size provides fast loading times. Moreover, Google Fonts are secure Web Fonts. Various image synthesis systems (rendering) can lead to errors in different browsers, operating systems and mobile terminal devices. These errors could optically distort parts of texts or entire websites. Due to the fast Content Delivery Network (CDN) there are no cross-platform issues with Google Fonts. All common browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera) are supported by Google Fonts, and it reliably operates on most modern mobile operating systems, including Android 2.2+ and iOS 4.2+ (iPhone, iPad, iPod). We also use Google Fonts for presenting our entire online service as pleasantly and as uniformly as possible.

Which data is saved by Google?

Whenever you visit our website, the fonts are reloaded by a Google server. Through this external cue, data gets transferred to Google’s servers. Therefore, this makes Google recognise that you (or your IP-address) is visiting our website. The Google Fonts API was developed to reduce the usage, storage and gathering of end user data to the minimum needed for the proper depiction of fonts. What is more, API stands for „Application Programming Interface“ and works as a software data intermediary.

Google Fonts stores CSS and font requests safely with Google, and therefore it is protected. Using its collected usage figures, Google can determine how popular the individual fonts are. Google publishes the results on internal analysis pages, such as Google Analytics. Moreover, Google also utilises data of ist own web crawler, in order to determine which websites are using Google fonts. This data is published in Google Fonts’ BigQuery database. Enterpreneurs and developers use Google’s webservice BigQuery to be able to inspect and move big volumes of data.

One more thing that should be considered, is that every request for Google Fonts automatically transmits information such as language preferences, IP address, browser version, as well as the browser’s screen resolution and name to Google’s servers. It cannot be clearly identified if this data is saved, as Google has not directly declared it.

How long and where is the data stored?

Google saves requests for CSS assets for one day in a tag on their servers, which are primarily located outside of the EU. This makes it possible for us to use the fonts by means of a Google stylesheet. With the help of a stylesheet, e.g. designs or fonts of a website can get changed swiftly and easily.

Any font related data is stored with Google for one year. This is because Google’s aim is to fundamentally boost websites’ loading times. With millions of websites referring to the same fonts, they are buffered after the first visit and instantly reappear on any other websites that are visited thereafter. Sometimes Google updates font files to either reduce the data sizes, increase the language coverage or to improve the design.

How can I delete my data or prevent it being stored?

The data Google stores for either a day or a year cannot be deleted easily. Upon opening the page this data is automatically transmitted to Google. In order to clear the data ahead of time, you have to contact Google’s support at https://support.google.com/?hl=en-GB&tid=111721487. The only way for you to prevent the retention of your data is by not visiting our website.

Unlike other web fonts, Google offers us unrestricted access to all its fonts. Thus, we have a vast sea of font types at our disposal, which helps us to get the most out of our website. You can find out more answers and information on Google Fonts at https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq?tid=111721487. While Google does address relevant elements on data protection at this link, it does not contain any detailed information on data retention.
It proofs rather difficult to receive any precise information on stored data by Google.

On https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-GB you can read more about what data is generally collected by Google and what this data is used for.

Google Analytics Privacy Policy

We use the tracking and analysis tool Google Analytics (GA) of the US-American company Google LLC (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA). Google Analytics collects data on your actions on our website. Whenever you click a link for example, this action is saved in a cookie and transferred to Google Analytics. With the help of reports which we receive from Google Analytics, we can adapt our website and our services better to your wishes. In the following, we will explain the tracking tool in more detail, and most of all, we will inform you what data is saved and how you can prevent this.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a tracking tool with the purpose of conducting data traffic analysis of our website. For Google Analytics to work, there is a tracking code integrated to our website. Upon your visit to our website, this code records various actions you perform on your website. As soon as you leave our website, this data is sent to the Google Analytics server, where it is stored.

Google processes this data and we then receive reports on your user behaviour. These reports can be one of the following:

Target audience reports: With the help of target audience reports we can get to know our users better and can therefore better understand who is interested in our service.
Advertising reports: Through advertising reports we can analyse our online advertising better and hence improve it.
Acquisition reports: Acquisition reports provide us helpful information on how we can get more people enthusiastic about our service.
Behaviour reports: With these reports, we can find out how you interact with our website. By the means of behaviour reports, we can understand what path you go on our website and what links you click.
Conversion reports: A conversion is the process of leading you to carry out a desired action due to a marketing message. An example of this would be transforming you from a mere website visitor into a buyer or a newsletter subscriber. Hence, with the help of these reports we can see in more detail, if our marketing measures are successful with you. Our aim is to increase our conversion rate.
Real time reports: With the help of these reports we can see in real time, what happens on our website. It makes us for example see, we can see how many users are reading this text right now.

Why do we use Google Analytics on our website?

The objective of our website is clear: We want to offer you the best possible service. Google Analytics’ statistics and data help us with reaching this goal.

Statistically evaluated data give us a clear picture of the strengths and weaknesses of our website. On the one hand, we can optimise our page in a way, that makes it easier to be found by interested people on Google. On the other hand, the data helps us to get a better understanding of you as our visitor. Therefore, we can very accurately find out what we must improve on our website, in order to offer you the best possible service. The analysis of that data also enables us to carry out our advertising and marketing measures in a more individual and more cost-effective way. After all, it only makes sense to show our products and services exclusively to people who are interested in them.

What data gets stored by Google Analytics?

With the aid of a tracking code, Google Analytics creates a random, unique ID which is connected to your browser cookie. That way, Google Analytics recognises you as a new user. The next time you visit our site, you will be recognised as a “recurring” user. All data that is collected gets saved together with this very user ID. Only this is how it is made possible for us to evaluate and analyse pseudonymous user profiles.

Your interactions on our website are measures by tags such as cookies and app instance IDs. Interactions are all kinds of actions that you perform on our website. If you are also using other Google systems (such as a Google Account), data generated by Google Analytics can be linked with third-party cookies. Google does not pass on any Google Analytics data, unless we as the website owners authorise it. In case it is required by law, exceptions can occur.

The following cookies are used by Google Analytics:

Name: _ga
Value:2.1326744211.152111721487-5
Purpose: By deafault, analytics.js uses the cookie _ga, to save the user ID. It generally serves the purpose of differenciating between website visitors.
Expiration date: After 2 years

Name: _gid
Value:2.1687193234.152111721487-1
Purpose: This cookie also serves the purpose of differentiating between website users
Expiration date: After 24 hours

Name: _gat_gtag_UA_
Value: 1
Verwendungszweck: It is used for decreasing the demand rate. If Google Analytics is provided via Google Tag Manager, this cookie gets the name _dc_gtm_ .
Expiration date: After 1 minute

Name: AMP_TOKEN
Value: No information
Purpose: This cookie has a token which is used to retrieve the user ID by the AMP Client ID Service. Other possible values suggest a logoff, a request or an error.
Expiration date: After 30 seconds up to one year

Name: __utma
Value:1564498958.1564498958.1564498958.1
Purpose: With this cookie your behaviour on the website can be tracked and the site performance can be measured. The cookie is updated every time the information is sent to Google Analytics.
Expiration date: After 2 years

Name: __utmt
Value: 1
Purpose: Just like _gat_gtag_UA_ this cookie is used for keeping the requirement rate in check.
Expiration date: Afer 10 minutes

Name: __utmb
Value:3.10.1564498958
Purpose: This cookie is used to determine new sessions. It is updated every time new data or information gets sent to Google Analytics.
Expiration date: After 30 minutes

Name: __utmc
Value: 167421564
Purpose: This cookie is used to determine new sessions for recurring visitors. It is therefore a session cookie, and only stays saved until you close the browser again.
Expiration date: After closing the browser

Name: __utmz
Value: m|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/
Purpose: This cookie is used to identify the source of our website’s visitor number. This means, that the cookie saves information on where you came to our website from. This could be another site or an advertisement.
Expiration date: After 6 months

Name: __utmv
Value: No information
Purpose: The cookie is used to store custom user data. It gets updated whenever information is sent to Google Analytics.
Expiration date: After 2 years

Note: This list is by no means exhaustive, since Google are repeatedly changing the use of their cookies.

Below we will give you an overview of the most important data that can be evaluated by Google Analytics:

Heatmaps: Google creates so-called Heatmaps an. These Heatmaps make it possible to see the exact areas you click on, so we can get information on what routes you make on our website.

Session duration: Google calls the time you spend on our website without leaving it session duration. Whenever you are inactive for 20 minutes, the session ends automatically.

Bounce rate If you only look at one page of our website and then leave our website again, it is called a bounce.

Account creation: If you create an account or make an order on our website, Google Analytics collects this data.

IP-Address: The IP address is only shown in a shortened form, to make it impossible to clearly allocate it.

Location: Your approximate location and the country you are in can be defined by the IP address. This process is called IP location determination.

Technical information: Information about your browser type, your internet provider and your screen resolution are called technical information.

Source: Both, Google Analytics as well as ourselves, are interested what website or what advertisement led you to our site.

Further possibly stored data includes contact data, potential reviews, playing media (e.g. when you play a video on our site), sharing of contents via social media or adding our site to your favourites. This list is not exhaustive and only serves as general guidance on Google Analytics’ data retention.

How long and where is the data saved?

Google has servers across the globe. Most of them are in America and therefore your data is mainly saved on American servers. Here you can read detailed information on where Google’s data centres are located: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=en

Your data is allocated to various physical data mediums. This has the advantage of allowing to retrieve the data faster, and of protecting it better from manipulation. Every Google data centre has respective emergency programs for your data. Hence, in case of a hardware failure at Google or a server error due to natural disasters, the risk for a service interruption stays relatively low.

Google Analytics has a 26 months standardised period of retaining your user data. After this time, your user data is deleted. However, we have the possibility to choose the retention period of user data ourselves. There are the following five options:

Deletion after 14 months
Deletion after 26 months
Deletion after 38 months
Deletion after 50 months
No automatical deletion

As soon as the chosen period is expired, the data is deleted once a month. This retention period applies to any of your data which is linked to cookies, user identification and advertisement IDs (e.g. cookies of the DoubleClick domain). Any report results are based on aggregated information and are stored independently of any user data. Aggregated information is a merge of individual data into a single and bigger unit.

How can I delete my data or prevent data retention?

Under the provisions of the European Union’s data protection law, you have the right to obtain information on your data and to update, delete or restrict it. With the help of a browser add on that can deactivate Google Analytics’ JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, dc.js), you can prevent Google Analytics from using your data. You can download this add on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en-GB. Please consider that this add on can only deactivate any data collection by Google Analytics.

Should you generally want to deactivate, delete or manage all cookies (independently of Google Analytics), you can use one of the guides that are available for any browser:

Chrome: Clear, enable and manage cookies in Chrome

Safari: Manage cookies and website data in Safari

Firefox: Clear cookies and site data in Firefox

Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies

Microsoft Edge: Delete cookies in Microsoft Edge

Google Analytics is an active participant of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which regulates correct and save transfer of personal data.
You can find more information on this at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt000000001L5AAI&tid=111721487. We hope we were able to make you more familiar with the most important information on Google Analytics’ data processing. If you want to learn more about the tracking service, we recommend both of the following links: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/terms/gb/ and https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en.

Facebook Pixel Privacy Policy

We use Facebook’s Facebook pixel on our website. For that, we have implemented a code on our website. The Facebook pixel is a segment of a JavaScript code, which, in case you arrived on our website via Facebook ads, loads an array or functions that enable Facebook to track your user actions. For example, if you buy a product on our website, the Facebook pixel is triggered and then saves your actions on our website in one or more cookies. These cookies enable Facebook to match your user data (customer data such as IP address, user ID) with the data of your Facebook account. After that, Facebook deletes your data again. The collected data is anonymous as well as inaccessible and can only be used for ad placement purposes. If you are a Facebook user and you are logged in, your visit to our website is automatically assigned to your Facebook user account.

We exclusively want to show our products or services to persons, who are interested in them. With the aid of the Facebook pixel, our advertising measures can get better adjusted to your wishes and interests. Therefore, Facebook users get to see suitable advertisement (if they allowed personalised advertisement). Moreover, Facebook uses the collected data for analytical purposes and for its own advertisements.

In the following we will show you the cookies, which were set on a test page through the integration of the Facebook pixel. Please consider that these cookies are only examples. Depending on the interaction that is made on our website, different cookies are set.

Name: _fbp
Value: fb.1.1568287647279.257405483-6111721487-7
Purpose: Dieses Cookie verwendet Facebook, um Werbeprodukte anzuzeigen.
Expiration date: nach 3 Monaten

Name: fr
Value: 0aPf312HOS5Pboo2r..Bdeiuf…1.0.Bdeiuf.
Purpose: Dieses Cookie wird verwendet, damit Facebook-Pixel auch ordentlich funktioniert.
Expiration date: nach 3 Monaten

Name: comment_author_50ae8267e2bdf1253ec1a5769f48e062111721487-3
Value: Name of the author
Purpose: This cookie saves the text and name of a user who e.g. leaves a comment.
Expiration date: after 12 months

Name: comment_author_url_50ae8267e2bdf1253ec1a5769f48e062
Value: https%3A%2F%2Fwww.testseite…%2F (URL of the author)
Purpose: This cookie saved the URL of the website that the user types into a text box on our website.
Expiration date: after 12 months

Name: comment_author_email_50ae8267e2bdf1253ec1a5769f48e062
Value: email address of the author
Purpose: This cookie saves the email address of the user, if they provided it on the website.
Expiration date: after 12 months

Note: The above-mentioned cookies relate to an individual user behaviour. Moreover, especially concerning the usage of cookies, changes at Facebook can never be ruled out.

If you are registered at Facebook, you can change the settings for advertisements yourself at https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_settings_screen. If you are not a Facebook user, you can manage your user based online advertising at https://www.youronlinechoices.com/uk/your-ad-choices. You have the option to activate or deactivate any providers there.

If you want to learn more about Facebook’s data protection, we recommend you the view the company’s in-house data policies at https://www.facebook.com/policy.php.

Privacy Policy for Facebook‘s Automatic Advanced Matching

Along with Facebook’s pixel function, we have also activated the automatic advanced matching. This function allows us to send hashed emails, names, genders, cities, states, postcodes and dates of birth or telephone numbers as additional information to Facebook, provided you have made them available to us. This activation gives us the opportunity, to customise advertising campaigns even better to persons who are interested in our services or products.

Google Tag Manager Privacy Policy

We use Google Tag Manager by the company Google Inc. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA) for our website.
This Tag Manager is one of Google’s many helpful marketing products. With it, we can centrally integrate and manage code sections of various tracking tools, that we use on our website.

In this privacy statement we will explain in more detail, what Google Tag Manager does, why we use it and to what extent your data is processed.

What is Google Tag Manager?

Google Tag Manager is an organising tool with which we can integrate and manage website tags centrally and via a user interface. Tags are little code sections which e.g. track your activities on our website. For this, segments of JavaScript code are integrated to our site’s source text. The tags often come from Google’s intern products, such as Google Ads or Google Analytics, but tags from other companies can also be integrated and managed via the manager. Since the tags have different tasks, they can collect browser data, feed marketing tools with data, embed buttons, set cookies and track users across several websites.

Why do we use Google Tag Manager for our website?

Everybody knows: Being organised is important! Of course, this also applies to maintenance of our website. In order to organise and design our website as well as possible for you and anyone who is interested in our products and services, we rely on various tracking tools, such as Google Analytics.
The collected data shows us what interests you most, which of our services we should improve, and which other persons we should also display our services to. Furthermore, for this tracking to work, we must implement relevant JavaScript Codes to our website. While we could theoretically integrate every code section of every tracking tool separately into our source text, this would take too much time and we would lose overview. This is the reason why we use Google Tag Manager. We can easily integrate the necessary scripts and manage them from one place. Additionally, Google Tag Manager’s user interface is easy to operate, and requires no programming skills. Therefore, we can easily keep order in our jungle of tags.

What data is saved by Google Tag Manager?

Tag Manager itself is a domain that neither uses cookies nor stores data. It merely functions as an “administrator“ of implemented tags. Data is collected by the individual tags of the different web analysis tools. Therefore, in Google Tag Manager the data is sent to the individual tracking tools and does not get saved.

However, with the integrated tags of different web analysis tools such as Google Analytics, this is quite different. Depending on the analysis tool used, various data on your internet behaviour is collected, stored and processed with the help of cookies. Please read our texts on data protection for more information on the articular analysis and tracking tools we use on our website.

We allowed Google via the account settings for the Tag Manager to receive anonymised data from us. However, this exclusively refers to the use of our Tag Manager and not to your data, which are saved via code sections. We allow Google and others, to receive selected data in anonymous form. Therefore, we agree to the anonymised transfer of our website data. However, even after extensive research we could not find out what summarised and anonymous data it is exactly that gets transmitted. What we do know is that Google deleted any info that could identify our website. Google combines the data with hundreds of other anonymous website data and creates user trends as part of benchmarking measures. Benchmarking is a process of comparing a company’s results with the ones of competitors. As a result, processes can be optimised based on the collected information.

How long and where is the data saved?

When Google stores data, this is done on Google’s own servers. These servers are located all over the world, with most of them being in America. At https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=en you can read in detail where Google’s servers are.

In our individual data protection texts on the different tools you can find out how long the respective tracking tools save your data.

How can I delete my data or prevent data retention?

Google Tag Manager itself does not set any cookies but manages different tracking websites’ tags. In our data protection texts on the different tracking tools you can find detailed information on how you can delete or manage your data.

Google actively participates in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which regulates safe transfer of personal data. You can find more information at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt000000001L5AAI&tid=111721487. If you want to learn more about Google Tag Manager, we recommend you to read https://marketingplatform.google.com/intl/en_uk/about/tag-manager/.

Google Site Kit Privacy Policy

We have integrated the WordPress plugin Google Site Kit of the American company Google Inc. to our website. For Europe, Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street Dublin 4, Ireland) is responsible for all Google services. With Google Site Kit, we can quickly and easily view statistics of various Google products such as Google Analytics directly on our WordPress dashboard. The in Google Site Kit integrated tools also collect your personal data. In this privacy policy we will explain why we use Google Site Kit, how long and where your data is stored, and which other privacy policies may be relevant to you in this context.

What is Google Site Kit?

Google Site Kit is a plugin for the WordPress content management system. With this plugin we can view important website analysis statistics directly in our dashboard. These are statistics that are collected by other Google products – primarily by Google Analytics. In addition to Google Analytics, the services Google Search Console, Page Speed Insight, Google AdSense, Google Optimize and Google Tag Manager can also be linked to Google Site Kit.

Why do we use Google Site Kit on our website?

As a service provider, it is our job to offer you the best possible experience on our website. You should feel comfortable on our website. Moreover, you should be able to quickly and easily find exactly what you are looking for. Statistical evaluations help us to get to know you better and to adapt our offer to your wishes and interests. We use various Google tools for these evaluations. Site Kit makes our work a lot easier because we can view and analyse the statistics of Google products on its dashboard. Therefore, we must no longer register for using the respective tools. Site Kit always provides a good overview of the most important analysis data.

What data are stored by Google Site Kit?

If you have consented to the use of tracking tools in the cookie notice (also called script or banner), cookies will be set by Google products such as Google Analytics. Also, on about you, such as your user behavior, will be sent to Google, where it is stored and processed. This also includes personal data such as your IP address.

You can find more detailed information on the individual services in the respective separate sections of this privacy policy. In our privacy policy on Google Analytics for example, you will be able to view information on the exact types of data that are collected. You will also learn how long Google Analytics stores, manages and processes data, what cookies can be used and how you can prevent data retention. We also have respective comprehensive privacy policies for other Google services such as Google Tag Manager or Google AdSense.

In the following, we will show you exemplary Google Analytics cookies that may be set in your browser if you have consented to Google’s data processing. Please note that this list contains only a selection of potential cookies:

Name: _ga
Value:2.1326744211.152111721487-2
Purpose:Usually analytics.js uses the _ga cookie to store the user ID. Therefore, it serves to differentiate between website visitors.
Expiry date: after 2 years

Name: _gid
Value:2.1687193234.152111721487-7
Purpose: This cookie also serves to differentiate between website visitors.
Expiry date: after 24 hours

Name: _gat_gtag_UA_
Value: 1
Purpose: This cookie is used to lower the request rate.
Expiry date: after 1 minute

How long and where are the data stored?

Google stores the collected data on its own servers, which are distributed all around the world. Most servers are in the United States, so your data may likely be stored there. At https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=uk you can see exactly where the company provides servers.

Data that is collected by Google Analytics is stored for a standard period of 26 months. After this time, your user data will be deleted. This retention period applies to any data linked to cookies, user identification and advertising IDs.

How can I delete my data or prevent data retention?

You always reserve the right to either receive information about your data, or to have your data deleted, rectified, or reduced. You can also deactivate, delete, or manage cookies in your browser at any time. In the following we will show you the respective instructions to do this in the most common browsers:

Chrome: Clear, enable and manage cookies in Chrome

Safari: Manage cookies and website data in Safari

Firefox: Clear cookies and site data in Firefox

Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies

Microsoft Edge: Delete cookies in Microsoft Edge

Google is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which regulates correct and secure transfer of personal data. You can find more information on this at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt000000001L5AAI&tid=111721487. For more information on Google’s data processing, we recommend Google’s comprehensive privacy policy at https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-GB.

MailChimp Privacy Policy

Like many other websites, we use the services of the newsletter company MailChimp on our website. The operator of MailChimp is the company The Rocket Science Group, LLC, 675 Ponce de Leon Ave NE, Suite 5000, Atlanta, GA 30308 USA. With the aid of MailChimp we can easily send you interesting news via newsletter. For the use of the service we do not have to install anything but can still access a pool of very efficient features. In the following we will give more details on this email marketing service and will inform you about the most important data protection aspects.

What is MailChimp?

MailChimp is a cloud-based newsletter management service. “Cloud-based“ means that we do not need to install MailChimp on our own computer or server. Instead, we use the service on an external server, or more specifically via an IT infrastructure, which is available via the internet. Using a software this way is also called SaaS (software as a service).

MailChimp allows us to chose from a wide range of different email types. Depending on what goal we want to reach with our newsletter, we can run individual campaigns, regular campaigns, auto responders (automated emails), A/B tests, RSS campaigns (mailings at pre-set times and frequencies) and follow-up campaigns.

Why do we use MailChimp on our website?

The reason we would use any newsletter service is so we can stay in contact with you. We want to keep you on the loop what news or attractive offers we have for you at the time. As we constantly seek out the easiest and best solutions for our marketing measures, we have decided on MailChimp as our newsletter management service. While the software is very easy to use, it offers many helpful features. For example, it allows us to create interesting and attractive newsletters in only a short time. With integrated design templates we can create every newsletter in an individual way. Due to the “responsive design” feature, our contents are also presented in a readable and pleasant way on your smartphone (or any other mobile device).

With tools such as A/B testing or the extensive analysis options, we can swiftly tell how you like our newsletters. This means that we can react if necessary and improve our offer or our services.

Another advantage is MailChimp’s “cloud system”. The data is not stored and processed directly on our server. We can retrieve the datafrom external servers and therefore save our memory space and also decrease maintenance effort.

What data is saved by MailChimp?

Rocket Science Group LLC (MailChimp) operate online platforms which enable us to get in contact with you, provided you subscribed to our newsletter. If you become a subscriber of our newsletter via our website, by email you agree to become a member of a MailChimp email list. Then, MailChimp saves your subscription data and your IP address, so it can verify your entry into the list provider. Moreover, MailChimp stores your email address, your name, your physical address and demographic information, such as language or location.

This information is used to send emails to you and to allow certain other MailChimp functions (e.g. the evaluation of newsletters).

MailChimp also shares information with third parties to improve its services. Moreover, MailChimp shares certain data with advertising partners of third parties to get a better understanding of its clients’ interests, in order to provide relevant contents and target-oriented advertising.

With so-called “web beacons” (small graphics in HTML emails), MailChimp can determine if an email has arrived, has been opened or if links have been clicked. This information is then stored on MailChimp’s servers. That way we receive statistical evaluations and can see how you liked our newsletter. Therefore, we can tailor our offer better to your wishes and improve our service.

Moreover, MailChimp are allowed to use this data for improving their own service. Thus, they can for example technically optimise the distribution or determine the location (or the country) of the recipient.

The following cookies can be set by MailChimp. The list is not exhaustive and is merely an exemplary selection:

Name: AVESTA_ENVIRONMENT
Value: Prod
Purpose: This cookie is necessary to provide the services of Mailchimp. It is always set when a user registers for a newsletter mailing list.
Expiry date: at the end of the session

Name: ak_bmsc
Value: F1766FA98C9BB9DE4A39F70A9E5EEAB55F6517348A7000001111721487-3
Purpose: The cookie is used to differentiate a human from a bot. That way secure reports on the use of a website can be created.
Expiry date: after 2 hours

Name: bm_sv
Value: A5A322305B4401C2451FC22FFF547486~FEsKGvX8eovCwTeFTzb8//I3ak2Au…
Purpose: This cookie comes from MasterPass Digital Wallet (a MasterCard service) and is used to offer a secure and easy virtual payment process to visitors. For this purpose, the user is anonymously identified on the website.
Expiry date: after 2 hours

Name: _abck
Value: 8D545C8CCA4C3A50579014C449B045111721487-9
Purpose: We could not find any further information about the purpose of this cookie.
Expiry date: after one year

For better display it could be that you would sometimes open our newsletter via a specified link. This can be the case if your email program does not work or if the newsletter is not displayed properly. The newsletter will then be shown via a MailChimp website. MailChimp also uses cookies on its websites (small text files which save data on your browser).
Personal data can be processed by MailChimp and their partners (e.g. Google Analytics). MailChimp is responsible for the collection of this data and we have no influence on it. MailChimp’s “Cookie Statement” (at: https://mailchimp.com/legal/cookies/) tells you exactly how and why the company uses cookies.

How long and where is the data saved?

Since MailChimp is an American company, all retained data is stored on American servers.

Generally, the data stays permanently saved on MailChimp’s servers and is deleted only when you request it. You can have your contact information with us deleted. This permanently removes all your personal data for us and anonymises you in MailChimp’s reports. However, you can also request the deletion of your data permanently at MailChimp. Then all your data are removed from there and we receive a notification from MailChimp. After we receive the email we have 30 days to delete your contact from all integrations.

How can I delete my data or prevent data retention?

You can withdraw your approval for the receipt of our newsletters anytime, by clicking the link in the lower area of the received newsletter email. When you click on the unsubscribe link, your data with MailChimp gets deleted.

When you land on a MailChimp website via a link in our newsletter and cookies are consequently set in your browser, you can delete or deactivate these cookies anytime.

Depending on the browser, the deactivation or deletion differs slightly. The following instructions show how to manage cookies in your browser:

Chrome: Clear, enable and manage cookies in Chrome

Safari: Manage cookies and website data in Safari

Firefox: Clear cookies and site data in Firefox

Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies

Microsoft Edge: Delete cookies in Microsoft Edge

If you generally do not want to allow any cookies, you can set up your browser in a way so it would notify you whenever a potential cookie is about to be set. This lets you decide upon the placement of every single cookie.

MailChimp 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 on this at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000TO6hAAG&tid=111721487. You can find more information on MailChimp’s use of cookies at https://mailchimp.com/legal/cookies/, and you can learn more about data protection at MailChimp (Privacy) at https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/.

Facebook Data Policy

We use selected Facebook tools on our website. Facebook is a social media network of the company Facebook Ireland Ltd., 4 Grand Canal Square, Grand Canal Harbour, Dublin 2 Ireland. With the aid of this tool we can provide the best possible offers to you and anyone interested in our products and services. In the following we will give you an overview on the different Facebook tools, as well as on what data is sent to Facebook and how you can delete these data.

What are Facebook tools?

Along with many other products, Facebook also offers so called “Facebook Business Tools”. This is Facebook’s official name for the tools, but it is not very common. Therefore, we decided to merely call them “Facebook tools”. They include the following:

Facebook-Pixel
social plugins (e.g. the “Like” or “Share“ button)
Facebook Login
Account Kit
APIs (application programming interface)
SDKs (Softwart developmept kits)
Plattform-integrations
Plugins
Codes
Specifications
Documentations
Technologies and Services

With these tools Facebook can extend its services and is able to receive information on 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 genuinely interested in them. With the help of advertisements (Facebook Ads) we can reach exactly these people. However, to be able to show suitable adverts to users, Facebook requires additional information on people’s needs and wishes. Therefore, information on the user behaviour (and contact details) on our website, are provided to Facebook. Consequently, Facebook can collect better user data and is able to display suitable adverts for our products or services. Thanks to the tools it is possible to create targeted, customised ad campaigns of Facebook.

Facebook calls data about your behaviour on our website “event data” and uses them for analytics services. That way, Facebook can create “campaign reports” about our ad campaigns’ effectiveness on our behalf. Moreover, by analyses we can get a better insight in how you use our services, our website or our products. Therefore, some of these tools help us optimise your user experience on our website. With the social plugins for instance, you can share our site’s contents directly on Facebook.

What data is saved by the Facebook tools?

With the use of the Facebook tools, personal data (customer data) may be sent to Facebook. Depending on the tools used, customer data such as name, address, telephone number and IP address may be transmitted.

Facebook uses this information to match the data with the data it has on you (if you are a Facebook member). However, before the customer data is transferred to Facebook, a so called “Hashing” takes place. This means, that a data record of any size is transformed into a string of characters, which also has the purpose of encrypting data.

Moreover, not only contact data, but also “event data“ is transferred. These data are the information we receive about you on our website. To give an example, it allows us to see what subpages you visit or what products you buy from us. Facebook does not disclose the obtained information to third parties (such as advertisers), unless the company has an explicit permission or is legally obliged to do so. Also, “event data“ can be linked to contact information, which helps Facebook to offer improved, customised adverts. Finally, after the previously mentioned matching process, Facebook deletes the contact data.

To deliver optimised advertisements, Facebook only uses event data, if they have been combined with other data (that have been collected by Facebook in other ways). Facebook also uses event data for the purposes of security, protection, development and research. Many of these data are transmitted to Facebook via cookies. Cookies are little text files, that are used for storing data or information in browsers. Depending on the tools used, and on whether you are a Facebook member, a different number of cookies are placed in your browser. In the descriptions of the individual Facebook tools we will go into more detail on Facebook cookies. You can also find general information about the use of Facebook cookies at https://www.facebook.com/policies/cookies.

How long and where are the data saved?

Facebook fundamentally stores data, until they are no longer of use for their own services and products. Facebook has servers for storing their data all around the world. However, customer data is cleared within 48 hours after they have been matched with their own user data.

How can I delete my data or prevent data retention?

In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) you have the right of information, rectification, transfer and deletion of your data.

The collected data is only fully deleted, when you delete your entire Facebook account. Deleting your Facebook account works as follows:

1) Click on settings in the top right side in Facebook.

2) Then, click “Your Facebook information“ in the left column.

3) Now click on “Deactivation and deletion”.

4) Choose “Permanently delete account“ and then click on “Continue to account deletion“.

5) Enter your password, click on “continue“ and then on “Delete account“.

The retention of data Facebook receives via our site is done via cookies (e.g. with social plugins), among others. You can deactivate, clear or manage both all and individual cookies in your browser. How this can be done differs depending on the browser you use. The following instructions show, how to manage cookies in your browser:

Chrome: Clear, enable and manage cookies in Chrome

Safari: Manage cookies and website data in Safari

Firefox: Clear cookies and site data in Firefox

Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies

Microsoft Edge: Delete cookies in Microsoft Edge

If you generally do not want to allow any cookies at all, you can set up your browser to notify you whenever a cookie is about to be set. This gives you the opportunity to decide upon the permission or deletion of every single cookie.

Facebook is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which regulates correct and secure transfer of personal data. You can find more information at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000GnywAAC. We hope we could give you an understanding of the most important information about the use of Facebook tools and data processing. If you want to find out more on how Facebook use your data, we recommend reading the data policies at https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update.

Instagram Privacy Policy

We have integrated functions of Instagram to our website. Instagram is a social media platform of the company Instagram LLC, 1601 Willow Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025, USA. Since 2012, Instagram is a subsidiary company of Facebook Inc. and is a part of Facebook’s products. The inclusion of Instagram’s contents on our website is called embedding. With this, we can show you Instagram contents such as buttons, photos or videos directly on our website. If you open websites of our online presence, that have an integrated Instagram function, data gets transmitted to, as well as stored and processed by Instagram. Instagram uses the same systems and technologies as Facebook. Therefore, your data will be processed across all Facebook firms.

In the following, we want to give you a more detailed insight on why Instagram collects data, what data these are and how you can control data processing. As Instagram belongs to Facebook Inc., we have, on the one hand received this information from the Instagram guidelines, and on the other hand from Facebook’s Data Policy.

What is Instagram?

Instagram is one of the most famous social media networks worldwide. Instagram combines the benefits of a blog with the benefits of audio-visual platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo. To “Insta“ (how the platform is casually called by many users) you can upload photos and short videos, edit them with different filters and also share them to other social networks. Also, if you do not want to be active on Instagram yourself, you can just follow other interesting users.

Why do we use Instagram on our website?

Instagram is a social media platform whose success has skyrocketed within recent years. Naturally, we have also reacted to this boom. We want you to feel as comfortable as possible on our website. Therefore, we attach great importance to diversified contents. With the embedded Instagram features we can enrich our content with helpful, funny or exciting Instagram contents. Since Instagram is a subsidiary company of Facebook, the collected data can also serve us for customised advertising on Facebook. Hence, only persons who are genuinely interested in our products or services can see our ads.

Instagram also uses the collected data for tracking and analysis purposes. We receive summarised statistics and therefore more insight to your wishes and interests. It is important to mention that these reports do not identify you personally.

What data is saved by Instagram?

Whenever you land on one of our sites, which have Instagram functions (i.e. Instagram photos or plugins) integrated to them, your browser automatically connects with Instagram’s servers. Thereby, data is sent to, as well as saved and processed by Instagram. This always happens, whether you have an Instagram account or not. Moreover, it includes information on our website, your computer, your purchases, the advertisements you see and on how you use our offer. The date and time of your interaction is also stored. If you have an Instagram account or are logged in, Instagram saves significantly more data on you.

Facebook distinguishes between customer data and event data. We assume this is also the case for Instagram. Customer data are for example names, addresses, phone numbers and IP addresses. These data are only transmitted to Instagram, if they have been “hashed” first. Thereby, a set of data is transformed into a string of characters, which encrypts any contact data. Moreover, the aforementioned “event data“ (data on your user behaviour) is transmitted as well. It is also possible, that contact data may get combined with event data. The collected data data is matched with any data Instagram already has on you.

Furthermore, the gathered data are transferred to Facebook via little text files (cookies) which usually get set in your browser. Depending on the Instagram function used, and whether you have an Instagram account yourself, the amount of data that gets stored varies.

We assume data processing on Instagram works the same way as on Facebook. Therefore, if you have an account on Instagram or have visited www.instagram.com, Instagram has set at least one cookie. If this is the case, your browser uses the cookie to send information to Instagram, as soon as you come across an Instagram function. No later than 90 days (after matching) the data is deleted or anonymised. Even though we have studied Instagram’s data processing in-depth, we cannot tell for sure what exact data Instagram collects and retains.

In the following we will show you a list of the least cookies placed in your browser when click on an Instagram function (e.g. button or an Insta picture). In our test we assume you do not have an Instagram account, since if you would be logged in to your Instagram account, your browser would place significantly more cookies.
The following cookies were used in our test:

Name: csrftoken
Value: “”
Purpose: This cookie is most likely set for security reasons to prevent falsifications of requests. We could not find out more information on it.
Expiry date: after one year

Name: mid
Value: “”
Purpose: Instagram places this cookie to optimise its own offers and services in- and outside of Instagram. The cookie allocates a unique user ID.
Expiry date: after end of session

Name: fbsr_111721487124024
Value: no information
Purpose: This cookie stores the login request of Instagram app users.
Expiry date: after end of session

Name: rur
Value: ATN
Purpose: This is an Instagram cookie which guarantees functionality on Instagram.
Expiry date: after end of session

Name: urlgen
Value: “{”194.96.75.33”: 1901}:1iEtYv:Y833k2_UjKvXgYe111721487”
Purpose: This cookie serves Instagram’s marketing purposes.
Expiry date: after end of session

Note: We do not claim this list to be exhaustive. The cookies that are placed in each individual case, depend on the functions embedded as well as on your use of Instagram.

How long and where are these data stored?

Instagram shares the information obtained within the Facebook businesses with external partners and persons you are globally connected with. Data processing is done according to Facebook’s internal data policy. Your data is distributed to Facebook’s servers across the world, partially for security reasons. Most of these servers are in the USA.

How can I delete my data or prevent data retention?

Thanks to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have the right of information, rectification, transfer and deletion of your data. Furthermore, you can manage your data in Instagram’s settings. If you want to delete your data on Instagram completely, you will have to delete your Instagram account permanently.

And this is how an Instagram account can be deleted:

First, open the Instagram app. Then, navigate to your profile page, select the three bars in the top right, choose “Settings” and then click “Help”. Now, you will be redirected to the company’s website, where you must click on “Managing Your Account” and then “Delete Your Account”.

When you delete your account completely, Instagram deletes posts such as your photos and status updates. Any information other people shared about you are not a part of your account and do therefore not get deleted.

As mentioned before, Instagram primarily stores your data via cookies. You can manage, deactivate or delete these cookies in your browser. Depending on your browser, managing them varies a bit. We will show you the instructions of the most relevant browsers here.

Chrome: Clear, enable and manage cookies in Chrome

Safari: Manage cookies and website data in Safari

Firefox: Clear cookies and site data in Firefox

Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies

Microsoft Edge: Delete cookies in Microsoft Edge

Generally, you can set your browser to notify you whenever a cookie is about to be set. Then you can individually decide upon the permission of every cookie.

Instagram is a subsidiary company of Facebook Inc. and Facebook is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. This framework regulates correct transfer between the USA and the European Union. At https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000GnywAAC you can find out more about this. We gave our best to make you familiar with the most important information on data processing by Instagram. At https://help.instagram.com/519522125107875 you can find out more on Instagram’s data policies.

LinkedIn Privacy Policy

On our website we use social plugins from the social media network LinkedIn, of the LinkedIn Corporation, 2029 Stierlin Court, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. Social plugins can be feeds, content sharing or a link to our LinkedIn page. Social plugins are clearly marked with the well-known LinkedIn logo and for example allow sharing interesting content directly via our website. Moreover, LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company Wilton Place in Dublin is responsible for data processing in the European Economic Area and Switzerland.

By embedding these plugins, data can be sent to, as well as stored and processed by LinkedIn. In this privacy policy we want to inform you what data this is, how the network uses this data and how you can manage or prevent data retention.

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is the largest social network for business contacts. In contrast to e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn focuses exclusively on establishing business connections. Therefore, companies can present services and products on the platform and establish business relationships. Many people also use LinkedIn to find a job or to find suitable employees for their own company. In Germany alone, the network has over 11 million members. In Austria there are about 1.3 million.

Why do we use LinkedIn on our website?

We know how busy you are. You just cannot keep up with following every single social media channel. Even if it would really be worth it, as it is with our channels, since we keep posting interesting news and articles worth spreading. Therefore, on our website we have created the opportunity to share interesting content directly on LinkedIn, or to refer directly to our LinkedIn page. We consider built-in social plugins as an extended service on our website. The data LinkedIn collects also help us to display potential advertising measures only to people who are interested in our offer.

What data are stored by LinkedIn?

LinkedIn stores no personal data due to the mere integration of social plugins. LinkedIn calls the data generated by plugins passive impressions. However, if you click on a social plugin to e.g. share our content, the platform stores personal data as so-called “active impressions”. This happens regardless of whether you have a LinkedIn account or not. If you are logged in, the collected data will be assigned to your account.

When you interact with our plugins, your browser establishes a direct connection to LinkedIn’s servers. Through that, the company logs various usage data. These may include your IP address, login data, device information or information about your internet or cellular provider. If you use LinkedIn services via your smartphone, your location may also be identified (after you have given permission). Moreover, LinkedIn can share these data with third-party advertisers in “hashed” form. Hashing means that a data set is transformed into a character string. This allows data to be encrypted, which prevents persons from getting identified.

Most data on of your user behaviour is stored in cookies. These are small text files that usually get placed in your browser. Furthermore, LinkedIn can also use web beacons, pixel tags, display tags and other device recognitions.

Various tests also show which cookies are set when a user interacts with a social plug-in. We do not claim for the information we found to be exhaustive, as it only serves as an example. The following cookies were set without being logged in to LinkedIn:

Name: bcookie
Value: =2&34aab2aa-2ae1-4d2a-8baf-c2e2d7235c16111721487-
Purpose: This cookie is a so-called “browser ID cookie” and stores your identification number (ID).
Expiry date: after 2 years

Name: lang
Value: v=2&lang=en-gb
Purpose:This cookie saves your default or preferred language.
Expiry date: after end of session

Name: lidc
Value: 1818367:t=1571904767:s=AQF6KNnJ0G111721487…
Purpose:This cookie is used for routing. Routing records how you found your way to LinkedIn and how you navigate through the website.
Expiry date: after 24 hours

Name: rtc
Value: kt0lrv3NF3x3t6xvDgGrZGDKkX
Purpose:No further information could be found about this cookie.
Expiry date: after 2 minutes

Name: JSESSIONID
Value: ajax:1117214872900777718326218137
Purpose: This is a session cookie that LinkedIn uses to maintain anonymous user sessions through the server.
Expiry date: after end of session

Name: bscookie
Value: “v=1&201910230812…
Purpose: This cookie is a security cookie. LinkedIn describes it as a secure browser ID cookie.
Expiry date: after 2 years

Name: fid
Value: AQHj7Ii23ZBcqAAAA…
Purpose: We could not find any further information about this cookie.
Expiry date: after 7 days

Note: LinkedIn also works with third parties. That is why we identified the Google Analytics cookies _ga and _gat in our test.

How long and where are the data stored?

In general, LinkedIn retains your personal data for as long as the company considers it necessary for providing its services. However, LinkedIn deletes your personal data when you delete your account. In some exceptional cases, LinkedIn keeps some summarised and anonymised data, even account deletions. As soon as you delete your account, it may take up to a day until other people can no longer see your data. LinkedIn generally deletes the data within 30 days. However, LinkedIn retains data if it is necessary for legal reasons. Also, data that can no longer be assigned to any person remains stored even after the account is closed. The data are stored on various servers in America and presumably also in Europe.

How can I delete my data or prevent data retention?

You have the right to access and delete your personal data at any time. In your LinkedIn account you can manage, change and delete your data. Moreover, you can request a copy of your personal data from LinkedIn.

How to access account data in your LinkedIn profile:

In LinkedIn, click on your profile icon and select the “Settings & Privacy” section. Now click on “Privacy” and then on the section “How LinkedIn uses your data on”. Then, click “Change” in the row with “Manage your data and activity”. There you can instantly view selected data on your web activity and your account history.

In your browser you also have the option of preventing data processing by LinkedIn. As mentioned above, LinkedIn stores most data via cookies that are placed in your browser. You can manage, deactivate or delete these cookies. Depending on which browser you have, these settings work a little different. You can find the instructions for the most common browsers here:

Chrome: Clear, enable and manage cookies in Chrome

Safari: Manage cookies and website data in Safari

Firefox: Clear cookies and site data in Firefox

Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies

Microsoft Edge: Delete cookies in Microsoft Edge

You can generally set your browser to always notify you when a cookie is about to be set. Then you can always decide individually whether you want to allow the cookie or not.

LinkedIn is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks. This framework ensures correct data transmission between the USA and the European Union. You can find out more about it at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000L0UZAA0. We gave our best to provide you the most essential information about LinkedIn’s data processing. At https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy you can find out more about data processing of the social media network LinkedIn.

All texts are copyrighted.

Source: Created with the Datenschutz Generator by AdSimple