Privacy Policy

We created this Privacy Policy (version 01.01.1970-121452682), to declare which information we collect, how we use data and which options the users of our website have, according to the guidelines of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679

Unfortunately, these subjects sound rather technical due to their nature, but we have put much effort into describing the most important things as simply and clearly as possible.

Automatic Data Retention

Every time you visit a website nowadays, certain information is automatically created and saved, just as it happens on this website.
Whenever you visit our website such as you are doing right now, our webserver (computer on which this website is saved/stored) automatically saves data such as

the address (URL) of the accessed website
browser and browser version
the used operating system
the address (URL) of the previously visited site (referrer URL)
the host name and the IP-address of the device the website is accessed from
date and time

in files (webserver-logfiles).

Generally, webserver-logfiles stay saved for two weeks and then get deleted automatically. We do not pass this information to others, but we cannot exclude the possibility that this data will be looked at in case of illegal conduct.

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 coookies. 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: GA1.2.1326744211.152121452682-9
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:

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

We use https to transfer information on the internet in a tap-proof manner (data protection 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, as well as by the use of the letters https (instead of http) as a part of our web address.

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: 2.1326744211.152121452682-5
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: 2.1687193234.152121452682-1
Purpose: This cookie also serves the purpose of differentiating between website users
Expiration date: After 24 hours

Name: _gat_gtag_UA_
Value: 1
Purpose: 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: After 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: 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=de

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:

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=121452682 . 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://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt000000001L5AAI&tid=121452682 . 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.1.1568287647279.257405483-6121452682-7
Purpose: Dieses Cookie verwendet Facebook, um Werbeprodukte anzuzeigen.
Expiration date: After 3 months

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

Name: comment_author_50ae8267e2bdf1253ec1a5769f48e062121452682-3
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 .

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=121452682 . 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: 2.1326744211.152121452682-2
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: 2.1687193234.152121452682-7
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:

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=121452682 . For more information on Google’s data processing, we recommend Google’s comprehensive privacy policy at https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-GB .

Newsletter Privacy Policy

When you subscribe to our Newsletter you submit your personal data and give us the right to contact you via email. We use the data that is stored for the registration for the Newsletter exclusively for our Newsletter and do not pass them on.

If you unsubscribe from the newsletter – for which you can find a link in the bottom of every newsletter – we will delete all data that was saved when you registered for the newsletter.

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: F1766FA98C9BB9DE4A39F70A9E5EEAB55F6517348A7000001121452682-3
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: 8D545C8CCA4C3A50579014C449B045121452682-9
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:

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=121452682 . 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/ .

Google AdSense Privacy Policy

We use Google AdSense on this website. It is an advertising program of the company Google Inc. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA). With Google AdSense we can show advertisements that fit our theme. Thus, we can offer you adverts that ideally give you added value. In this privacy statement on Google AdSense we will explain to you, why we use Google AdSense on our website and which of your data is processed and saved, as well as how you can prevent this data retention.

What is Google AdSense?

The advertising program Google AdSense has been around since 2003. As opposed to Google Ads (previously: Google AdWords) it is not possible to advertise on Google AdSense oneself. Google AdSense displays advertisements on websites, such as ours. The biggest advantage of this web service compared to some others, is that Google AdSense only shows ads to you which match our website’s contents. Google has its own algorithm which calculates what ads are shown to you. Of course, we only want to show you ads that interest you and provide you added value. Google checks which advertisements are suitable for our users, considering your interests, your user behaviour and our offer. At this point we want to mention that we are not responsible for the choice of the ads. We merely offer advertising space on our website, while Google selects the displayed ads. Moreover, since August 2013 the ads are customised to the respective user interface. This means, that no matter if you visit our website with your smartphone, your PC or your laptop, the ads adjust to your terminal device.

Why do we use Google AdSense on our website?

The operation of a high-quality website requires tremendous dedication and commitment. We are essentially never finished with working on our website. This is, because we continuously maintain and keep our website up to date. Of course, we want to achieve economic success with this work. Therefore, we decided for to use advertisements as a source of revenue. It is most important to us however, that we do not disrupt your visit to our website with these advertisements. Thence, with the aid of Google AdSense, only adverts that are tailored to you and our themes are shown.

Like with Google’s indexation for a website, a bot examines both, the matching content and the offers on our website. Then, the ads are adapted to and presented on the website. Alongside the contextual overlaps between the ads and website offer, AdSense also supports interest-based targeting. This means, that Google also uses your data to offer advertising that is tailored to you. That way you receive ads that ideally offer you added value, and it gives us a higher chance of earning a bit.

What data is stored by Google AdSense?

Google AdSense uses cookies to display ads that are customised to you. Cookies are little text files, that store certain information on your computer.

Cookies are supposed to enable improved advertisements in AdSense. They do not contain any personally identifiable data. However, it should be considered that Google does not view data such as “Pseudonymous Cookie-IDs” (name or other identification feature is replaced with a pseudonym) or IP addresses as personally identifiable information. Although, within the framework of the GDPR, this data can be classified as personal data. Following every impression (every time you see an ad), every click and any other activity that leads to a call on its servers, Google AdSense sends a cookie to the browser. The cookie is then saved in the browser, provided the browser accepts it.

Under certain circumstances, third parties can place cookies in your browser, and read them or use web beacons, to store data they receive through the display of ads on the website. Web beacons are little graphics that analyse and a record the log file. This analysis allows a statistical evaluation for the online marketing.

Through this cookie, Google can collect certain information on your user behaviour on our website. These include:

Information on how you interact with an ad (clicks, impressions, mouse movements)
Information if an ad has already been displayed in your browser. This data helps to prevent an ad from showing multiple times.

Thereby, Google evaluates and analyses data on the displayed advertising material along with your IP address. Primarily, Google uses the data to measure the effectiveness of an ad and improve the advertising offer. Moreover, the data does not get linked to your personal data which Google might have received via other Google services.

In the following we will introduce you to the cookies that Google AdSense uses for tracking purposes. Please note, that we will refer to a test website, which only has Google AdSense installed to it:

Name: uid
Value: 891269189121452682-8
Purpose: The cookie is stored under the domain adform.net. It provides a uniquely assigned user ID that is generated automatically and collects data on the activity on our website.
Expiry date: after 2 months

Name: C
Value: 1
Purpose: This cookie identifies if your browser accepts cookies. The cookie is stored under the domain track.adform.net.
Expiry date: after 1 month

Name: cid
Value: 8912691894970695056,0,0,0,0
Purpose: This cookie is saved under the domain track.adform.net. It stands for the client ID and is used to offer you improved advertisements. It can forward more relevant adverts to the user and helps to improve reports on campaign performance.
Expiry date: after 2 months

Name: IDE
Value: zOtj4TWxwbFDjaATZ2TzNaQmxrU121452682-1
Purpose: The cookie is stored under the domain doubleclick.net. It serves the purpose of registering your actions following an impression or a click on the ad. Thus, it can be measured how our visitors like an ad.
Expiry date: after 1 month

Name: test_cookie
Value: keine Angabe
Purpose: With the „test_cookies“ it can be verified, if your browser even supports cookies. The cookie is saved under the domain doubleclick.net.
Expiry date: after 1 month

Name: CT592996
Value: 733366
Purpose: It is saved under the domain adform.net. The cookie is placed upon your click on an ad. We could not find any further information on the use of this cookie.
Expiry date: after one hour

Note: This list does not claim to be exhaustive, as Google frequently change the choice of their cookies.

How long and where is the data stored?

Google retains your IP address, as well as various activities you perform on the website. Cookies store this information with the interactions on our website. According to Google, the company collects and saves the given information securely on its internal servers in the USA.

If you do not have a Google account or are not logged in, Google usually stores the collected data on your browser with a unique identification (ID). The IDs saved in cookies serve e.g. for providing personalised advertisements. If you are logged into a Google account, Google can gather personal information.

You can delete certain data that is saved by Google anytime (see next section). Much of the information saved in cookies get automatically deleted after a specific time. However, there are also data which are retained by Google for a longer period. This is the case, when Google must store certain data for an undefined, longer period due to economical or legal necessities.

How can I delete my data or prevent data retention?

You can always clear or deactivate cookies that are on your computer. How exactly this can be done depends on the browser.

Here you can find an instruction on how you can manage cookies in your browser:

If you generally do not want to allow any cookies, you can set your browser to notify you whenever a potential cookie is about to be set. This lets you decide to either permit or deny the placement of every single cookie. By downloading and installing the browser plugin at https://support.google.com/ads/answer/7395996 , any advertising cookies get deactivated as well. Please note, that deactivating these cookies does not stop advertisements, it only inhibits personalised adverts.

If you have a Google account, you can deactivate personalised adverts on the website https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated . You will continue to see ads, but they will stop being customised to your interests. Nevertheless, the ads are displayed based on a few factors, such as your location, the browser type and the used search terms.

You can learn more about what data Google generally collects and what they are used for at https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-GB .

Google Ads (Google AdWords) Conversion Tracking Privacy Policy

We use Google Ads (previously Google AdWords) as an online marketing measure, to advertise our products and services. Thus, we want to draw more people’s attention on the internet to the high quality of our offers. As part of our advertising measures with Google Ads, we use the conversion tracking of Google LLC., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA (“Google”) on our website. With the aid of this free tracking tool we can tailor our advertising offer better to your interests and needs. In the following article we will explain, why we use conversion tracking, what data gets saved and how you can prevent this data retention.

What is Google Ads conversion tracking?

Google Ads (previously Google AdWords) is the internal online advertising sxstem of the company Google LLC. We are convinced of our offer‘s quality and would like as many people as possible to discover our website. For this, Google Ads offers the best platform within the online environment. Of course, we also want to get an overview of the cost-benefit factor of our advertising campaigns. Thence, we use Google Ads’ conversion tracking tool.

But what is a conversion actually? A conversion occurs, when you turn from an interested visitor into an acting website visitor. This happens every time you click on our ad and then make another action, such as paying a visit to our website. With Google’s conversion tracking tool, we can understand what happens after a user clicks our Google ad. It shows us for instance if products get bought, services are used or whether users have subscribed to our newsletter.

Why do we use Google Ads conversion tracking on our website?

We use Google Ads to show our offer also across other websites. Our aim is for our advertising campaigns to reach only those people, who are interested in our offers. With the conversion tracking tool, we see what keywords, ads, ad groups and campaigns lead to the desired customer actions. We see how many customers interact with our ads on a device, to then convert. With this data we can calculate our cost-benefit-factor, measure the success of individual ad campaigns and therefore optimise our online marketing measures. With the help of the obtained data we can give our website a more interesting design and customise our advertising offer better to your needs.

What data is stored with Google Ads conversion tracking?

For a better analysis of certain user actions, we have integrated a conversion tracking tag, or code snippet to our website. Therefore, if you click one of our Google ads, a Google domain stores the cookie “conversion” on your computer (usually in the browser) or on your mobile device. Cookies are little text files that save information on your computer.

Here are data of the most significant cookies for Google’s conversion tracking:

Name: Conversion
Value: EhMI_aySuoyv4gIVled3Ch0llweVGAEgt-mr6aXd7dYlSAGQ121452682-3
Purpose: This cookie saves every conversion you make on our website after you came to us via a Google ad.
Expiry date: after 3 months

Name: _gac
Value: 1.1558695989.EAIaIQobChMIiOmEgYO04gIVj5AYCh2CBAPrEAAYASAAEgIYQfD_BwE
Purpose: This is a classic Google Analytics Cookie that records various actions on our website.
Expiry date: after 3 months

Note: The cookie _gac only appears in connection with Google Analytics. The above list does not claim to be exhaustive, as Google repeatedly change the cookies they use for analytical evaluation.

As soon as you complete an action on our website, Google identifies the cookie and saves your action as a so-called conversion. For as long as you surf our website, provided the cookie has not expired, both Google and us can determine that you found your way to us via a Google ad. Then, the cookie is read and sent back to Google Ads, together with the conversion data. Moreover, other cookies may also be used for measuring conversions. Google Ads‘ conversion tracking can be fine-tuned and improved with the aid of Google Analytics. Furthermore, ads which Google displays in various places across the web, might be placed under our domain with the name “__gads” or “_gac”.

Since September 2017, analytics.js retains various campaign information with the _gac cookie. This cookie stores data, as soon as you open one of our sites that has been set up for Google Ads’ auto-tagging. In contrast to cookies that are placed for Google domains, Google can only read these conversion cookies when you are on our website. We do neither collect nor receive any personal data. We do obtain a report with statistical evaluations by Google. With the help thereof, we can not only see the total number of users who clicked our ad, but also what advertising measures were well received.

How long and where is the data stored?

At this point we want to reiterate, that we have no influence on how Google use the collected data. According to Google, the data are encrypted and saved on a secure server. In most cases, conversion cookies expire after 30 days, and do not transmit any personalised data. The cookies named “conversion“ and “_gac“ (which is used with Google Analytics) have an expiry date of 3 months.

How can I delete my data or prevent data retention?

You have the possibility to opt out of Google Ads’ conversion tracking. The conversion tracking can be blocked by deactivating the conversion tracking cookie via your browser. If you do this, you will not be considered for the statistic of the tracking tool. You can change the cookie settings in your browser anytime. Doing so, works a little different in every browser. Hence, in the following you will find an instruction on how to manage cookies in your browser:

If you generally do not want to allow any cookies at all, you can set up your browser to notify you whenever a potential cookie is about to be set. This lets you decide upon permitting or denying the cookie’s placement. By downloading and installing the browser plugin at https://support.google.com/ads/answer/7395996 you can also deactivate all “advertising cookies”. Please consider that by deactivating these cookies, you cannot prevent all advertisements, only personalised ads.

Due to the certification for the American-European data protection convention “Privacy Shield”, the American corporation Google LLC must comply to the EU’s applicable data protection laws. If you want to find out more on data protection at Google, we recommend Google’s general Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-GB .

Embedded Social Media elements Privacy Policy

We have embedded elements from social media services on our website, to display pictures, videos and texts. By visiting pages that present such elements, data is transferred from your browser to the respective social media service, where it is stored. We do not have access to this data.

The following links lead to the respective social media services’ sites, where you can find a declaration on how they handle your data:

Instagram Data Policy: https://help.instagram.com/519522125107875
For YouTube, the Google Privacy Policy applies: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-GB
Facebook Data Policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy
Twitter Privacy Policy: https://twitter.com/de/privacy

Wix Privacy Policy

For our website we use the website construction-kit Wix by the Israeli company Wix.com Ltd., 40 Hanamal Tel Aviv St., Tel Aviv 6350671, Israel. In addition to the headquarters in Tel Aviv, the company also has other headquarters such as in Berlin, Dublin, Vancouver, or New York. Due to the use of Wix, your personal data may be collected, stored and processed. In this privacy policy we want to explain why we use Wix, what data is stored, where your data is stored and how you can prevent data retention.

What is Wix?

Wix is a website construction-kit that makes it very easy to create HTML5 websites as well as mobile websites. The online platform is based on the cloud principle and allows easy integration of various Wix or third-party provider functions into your own website.

Why do we use Wix on our website?

For working on our website, we need an easy-to-use system, that allows us to present you a beautiful design and interesting content quickly and easily. We have found Wix to be the right system for this. Thanks to both, Wix’s easy operation and its extensive functions, we can design our website as we wish, while ensuring its user-friendliness.

What data is stored by Wix?

Non-personal data include for example technical usage information such as browser activity, clickstream activity, session heat maps, as well as data about your computer, operating system, browser, screen resolution, language and keyboard settings, internet provider and date of the page visit.
Personal data are also recorded. These are primarily contact details (email address or telephone number, if you have provided them), IP address or your geographical location.

Tracking systems such as cookies are used to collect data about your behaviour on our website. For example, it records which sub-pages you take a particular interest in, how much time you spend on individual pages, when you leave a page (bounce rate) or which pre-sets (e.g. language settings) you have made. Based on this data, Wix.com can adjust their marketing measures better to your interests and your user behaviour. Therefore, the next time you visit our website, you will get to view it with the settings you have chosen priorly. Wix.com may also forward personal data to third parties (such as service providers).

Below we will show you a list of exemplary cookies that are placed due to the use of Wix:

Name: XSRF-TOKEN
Value: 1591628008|P01ovn-JtsrK
Purpose: This cookie is a security cookie and prevents the so-called cross-site request forgery, which is an attack on a computer system.
Expiry date: after end of session

Name: _wixCIDX
Value: b2474394-b64f-4c7a-a598-16b9043a8938121452682-9
Purpose: This cookie appropriately stores data when you to log in to our website, to shorten the logon process the following time.
Expiry date: after 3 months

Name: AWSELB
Value: EB626B5A40C80CEFD0EB26286F9684716FECD023880992D31DEC38121452682-1
Purpose: This cookie is used to distribute the website’s load across multiple servers. Therefore, the page loading speed gets increased.
Expiry date: after one hour

Name: AWSELBCORS
Value: 85FDC7C91873988D19D2D53305AA8CAB73AF02FCEAEB626B5A40C
Purpose: We have not yet been able to find out more information on this cookie. We will inform you as soon as we know more.
Expiry date: after one hour

Note: Please note that the cookies shown above are examples and that this list does not claim to be exhaustive.

How long and where is the data stored?

Your data can be stored on various servers that are distributed across the globe. For example, the data can be stored in the USA, Ireland, South Korea, Taiwan, or Israel.

Wix always stores data until it is no longer required for their provided service. We have not yet been able to find out more about the period the data is stored for.

How can I delete my data or prevent data retention?

You have the option to update, correct or delete your personal data at any time. You can also contact Wix’s data protection department directly at privacy@wix.com .

To deactivate, delete, or manage cookies you have to select the appropriate settings in your browser. Depending on which browser you use, the cookie settings work a little differently. The following instructions show how you can set or manage cookies in the most common browsers.

Wix.com Ltd. is headquartered in Israel. The European Commission declared Israel to be a country that provides adequate protection for personal data of EU citizens.

Moreover, Wix.com is an active participant in the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework, which regulates the correct and secure transfer of personal data. You can find more information at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000GnbGAAS&status=Active .

We hope that with this data protection declaration we were able to make you more familiar to data processing by Wix.com. If you would like more detailed information on this, we recommend the company’s privacy guidelines at https://www.wix.com/about/privacy .

Source: Created with the Datenschutz Generator by AdSimple® Blog Marketing in cooperation with aboutbusiness.at