October 22, 2020 at 10:30 AM
We have created this privacy policy (version 22.10.2020-311223983) to explain to you, in accordance with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679, what information we collect, how we use data and what choices you have as a visitor to this website.
Unfortunately, it is in the nature of things that these explanations sound very technical, but we have tried to describe the most important things as simply and clearly as possible.
Our website uses HTTP cookies to store user-specific data. Below we explain what cookies are and why they are used, so that you can better understand the following privacy policy.
Whenever you browse the internet, you use a browser. Well-known browsers include Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Edge. Most websites store small text files in your browser. These files are called cookies.
One thing is undeniable: cookies are really useful helpers. Almost all websites use cookies. More specifically, they are HTTP cookies, as there are also other cookies for other applications. HTTP cookies are small files that are stored on your computer by our website. These cookie files are automatically placed in the cookie folder, which is essentially the 'brain' of your browser. A cookie consists of a name and a value. When defining a cookie, one or more attributes must be specified.
Cookies store certain user data about you, such as language or personal page settings. When you return to our site, your browser sends the 'user-related' information back to our site. Thanks to cookies, our website knows who you are and offers you your usual default setting. In some browsers, each cookie has its own file, while in others, such as Firefox, all cookies are stored in a single file.
Name: _ga
Expiration: 2 Jahre
Usage: Distinguishing website visitors
Example value: GA1.2.1326744211.152311223983
Browser Minimum Requirements for Cookies
A cookie should be able to contain at least 4096 bytes
At least 50 cookies should be able to be stored per domain
At least 3000 cookies should be able to be stored in total
Types of Cookies
These cookies are necessary to ensure the basic functionality of the website. For example, these cookies are needed when a user adds a product to the shopping cart, then continues browsing on other pages, and only later proceeds to checkout. These cookies ensure that the shopping cart is not deleted even when the user closes their browser window.
These cookies collect information about user behavior and whether the user receives any error messages. In addition, these cookies are used to measure the loading time and the behavior of the website with different browsers.
These cookies provide a better user experience. For example, locations, font sizes, and other settings are stored.
These cookies provide better user-friendliness. For example, entered locations, font sizes, or form data are stored.
These cookies are also called targeting cookies. They are used to deliver individually tailored advertising to the user. This can be very convenient, but also very annoying.
Usually, you will be asked which types of cookies you want to allow when you first visit a website. And of course, this decision is also stored in a cookie.
When you visit websites today, certain information is automatically created and stored, as is the case with this website.
When you visit our website as you are doing now, our web server (the computer on which this website is stored) automatically stores data such as:
the address (URL) of the accessed webpage
browser and browser version
the operating system used
the address (URL) of the previously visited page (referrer URL)
the hostname and IP address of the device being used to access
date and time
Web server log files are typically stored for two weeks and then automatically deleted. We do not share this data, but we cannot rule out that this data may be viewed in the event of illegal behavior.
According to the provisions of the GDPR, you are generally entitled to the following rights:
Right to rectification (Article 16 GDPR)
Right to erasure ('right to be forgotten') (Article 17 GDPR)
Right to restriction of processing (Article 18 GDPR)
Right to notification (Article 19 GDPR)
Right to data portability (Article 20 GDPR)
Right to object (Article 21 GDPR)
How and whether you want to use cookies is up to you. Regardless of which service or website the cookies come from, you always have the option to delete, only partially allow, or disable cookies. For example, you can block third-party cookies but allow all other cookies.
If you want to find out which cookies have been stored in your browser, if you want to change or delete cookie settings, you can find this in your browser settings:
If you generally don't want cookies, you can set up your browser to notify you whenever a cookie is about to be set. This way you can decide whether to allow or deny each individual cookie. The procedure varies depending on the browser. It's best to search for instructions in Google with the search term 'delete cookies Chrome' or 'disable cookies Chrome' in the case of a Chrome browser, or replace 'Chrome' with the name of your browser, e.g., Edge, Firefox, Safari. What about my data protection?
Since 2009, there are the so-called 'cookie directives'. These state that storing cookies requires your consent. Within EU countries, however, there are still very different reactions to these directives. In Germany, the cookie directives were not implemented as national law. Instead, the implementation of this directive was largely carried out in Section 15(3) of the Telemedia Act (TMG).
If you want to know more about cookies and don't shy away from 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'.
Personal data that you submit to us electronically on this website, such as name, email address, address or other personal details when submitting a form or commenting on the blog, are stored by us together with the time and the IP address. This data is only used for the specified purpose, kept secure and not disclosed to third parties.
We therefore use your personal data only for communication with visitors who explicitly request contact and for the processing of the services and products offered on this website. We do not disclose your personal data without your consent, but we cannot rule out that this data may be accessed in the event of illegal behavior.
If you send us personal data by email – thus outside of this website – we cannot guarantee secure transmission and protection of your data. We recommend that you never send confidential data by email without encryption.
The legal basis is Article 6(1)(a) GDPR (lawfulness of processing), which states that you give us consent to process the data you have entered. You can revoke this consent at any time – an informal email is sufficient, you can find our contact details in the imprint.
Personal data that you submit to us electronically on this website, such as name, email address, address or other personal details when submitting a form or commenting on the blog, are stored by us together with the time and the IP address. This data is only used for the specified purpose, kept secure and not disclosed to third parties.
We therefore use your personal data only for communication with visitors who explicitly request contact and for the processing of the services and products offered on this website. We do not disclose your personal data without your consent, but we cannot rule out that this data may be accessed in the event of illegal behavior.
If you send us personal data by email – thus outside of this website – we cannot guarantee secure transmission and protection of your data. We recommend that you never send confidential data by email without encryption.
The legal basis is Article 6(1)(a) GDPR (lawfulness of processing), which states that you give us consent to process the data you have entered. You can revoke this consent at any time – an informal email is sufficient, you can find our contact details in the imprint.
According to the provisions of the GDPR, you are generally entitled to the following rights:
Right to rectification (Article 16 GDPR)
Right to erasure ('right to be forgotten') (Article 17 GDPR)
Right to restriction of processing (Article 18 GDPR)
Right to notification (Article 19 GDPR)
Right to data portability (Article 20 GDPR)
Right to object (Article 21 GDPR)
If you believe that the processing of your data violates data protection law or your data protection rights have been violated in any other way, you can contact the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI). Analysis of Visitor Behavior
In the following privacy policy, we inform you whether and how we evaluate data from your visit to this website. The evaluation of the collected data is usually anonymous and we cannot draw conclusions about your person from your behavior on this website.
You can find out more about ways to object to this analysis of visit data in the following privacy policy.
We use https to transmit data securely on the internet (data protection through technology design, Article 25(1) GDPR). By using TLS (Transport Layer Security), an encryption protocol for secure data transmission on the internet, we can ensure the protection of confidential data. You can recognize the use of this data transmission security by the small lock symbol in the top left of the browser and the use of the https scheme (instead of http) as part of our internet address.
We use Google Maps from Google Inc. on our website. For the European area, the company Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street Dublin 4, Ireland) is responsible for all Google services. With Google Maps, we can better show you locations and thereby adapt our service to your needs. By using Google Maps, data is transferred to Google and stored on Google's servers. Here we want to go into more detail about what Google Maps is, why we use this Google service, what data is stored and how you can prevent this.
Google Maps is an internet map service from Google. With Google Maps, you can search online for exact locations of cities, sights, accommodations, or businesses via a PC, tablet, or app. If businesses are represented on Google My Business, additional information about the company is displayed in addition to the location. To show how to get there, map sections of a location can be embedded in a website using HTML code. Google Maps shows the earth's surface as a road map or as an aerial or satellite image. Thanks to the Street View images and the high-quality satellite images, very precise representations are possible. Why do we use Google Maps on our website?
All our efforts on this page aim to provide you with a useful and meaningful time on our website. By integrating Google Maps, we can provide you with the most important information about various locations. You can see at a glance where we have our company headquarters. The directions always show you the best or fastest way to us. You can get directions for routes by car, public transport, on foot, or by bike. For us, providing Google Maps is part of our customer service.
In order for Google Maps to fully offer its service, the company must collect and store data from you. This includes, among other things, the search terms entered, your IP address, and the latitude and longitude coordinates. If you use the route planner function, the entered start address is also stored. However, this data storage happens on the websites of Google Maps. We can only inform you about it, but have no influence. Since we have integrated Google Maps into our website, Google sets at least one cookie (name: NID) in your browser. This cookie stores data about your user behavior. Google primarily uses this data to optimize its own services and to provide you with individualized, personalized advertising.
The following cookie is set in your browser due to the integration of Google Maps:
Name: NID Value: 188=h26c1Ktha7fCQTx8rXgLyATyITJ311223983-5 Purpose: NID is used by Google to adapt advertisements to your Google search. With the help of the cookie, Google 'remembers' your most frequently entered search queries or your previous interaction with advertisements. This way, you always get customized advertisements. The cookie contains a unique ID that Google uses to collect your personal preferences for advertising purposes. Expiration Date: after 6 months
Note: We cannot guarantee completeness of the stored data information. Especially when using cookies, changes are never excluded. To identify the NID cookie, a separate test page was created where only Google Maps was embedded.
Google has distributed its servers all over the world. Most servers are located in America and consequently your data is mostly stored on American servers. Here you can read exactly where Google's data centers are located: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=en
Your data is distributed across various physical media. This has the advantage that the data can be accessed more quickly and is better protected against manipulation. In every Google data center, there are corresponding emergency programs for your data. If, for example, the hardware at Google fails or natural disasters paralyze servers, the risk of a service interruption at Google remains low.
By default, Google Analytics has a retention period of 26 months for your user data. Then your user data will be deleted. However, we have the option to choose the retention period of user data ourselves. We have five options available:
Deletion after 14 months
Deletion after 26 months
Deletion after 38 months
Deletion after 50 months
No automatic deletion
Once the specified time period has expired, the data is deleted once a month. This retention period applies to your data linked to cookies, user recognition, and advertising IDs (e.g., cookies from the DoubleClick domain). Report results are based on aggregated data and are stored independently of user data. Aggregated data is a merging of individual data into a larger unit.
We have implemented IP address anonymization for Google Analytics on this website. This function was developed by Google so that this website can comply with applicable data protection regulations and recommendations of local data protection authorities if they prohibit the storage of the full IP address. The anonymization or masking of the IP takes place as soon as the IP addresses arrive in the Google Analytics data collection network and before any storage or processing of the data takes place.
##Google Analytics Reports on Demographics and Interests
We have enabled the advertising reporting features in Google Analytics. The reports on demographics and interests contain information about age, gender, and interests. This allows us – without being able to assign this data to individual persons – to get a better picture of our users. Learn more about the advertising features at https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3450482?hl=en_US&utm_id=ad.
Google has distributed its servers all over the world. Most servers are located in America and consequently your data is mostly stored on American servers. Here you can read exactly where Google's data centers are located: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=en
You always have the right to receive information about your data, have your data deleted, corrected, or restricted. You can also deactivate, delete, or manage cookies in your browser to match your preferences exactly. Here we show you the corresponding instructions for the most common browsers.
We use Google AdSense on this website. This is an advertising program from Google Inc. For the European area, the company Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street Dublin 4, Ireland) is responsible for all Google services. With Google AdSense, we can display advertisements on this website that match our topic. Thus, we offer you advertisements that ideally represent real added value for you. In the course of this privacy policy about Google AdSense, we explain to you why we use Google AdSense on our website, which of your data is processed and stored, and how you can prevent this data storage.
We use Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) as an online marketing measure to advertise our products and services. This way, we want to make more people aware of the high quality of our offers on the internet. As part of our advertising measures through Google Ads, we use conversion tracking from Google Inc. on our website. In Europe, however, the company Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street Dublin 4, Ireland) is responsible for all Google services. With the help of this free tracking tool, we can better adapt our advertising offer to your interests and needs. In the following article, we want to go into more detail about why we use conversion tracking, what data is stored, and how you can prevent this data storage.