Privacy policy

Data protection

We have drawn up this data protection declaration (version 27.11.2019-311131548) in order to explain to you, in accordance with the provisions of the basic data protection regulation (EU) 2016/679, what information we collect, how we use data and what decision-making options you have as a visitor to this website.

Unfortunately, it is in the nature of things that these explanations sound very technical, but we have tried to describe the most important things as simply and clearly as possible.

Automatic data storage

Nowadays, when you visit websites, certain information is automatically created and stored, as is the case on this website.

When you visit our website as you are doing right now, our web server (the computer on which this website is stored) automatically stores data such as

– the address (URL) of the web page accessed

– Browser and browser version

– the operating system used

– the address (URL) of the previously visited page (referrer URL)

– the host name and IP address of the device from which access is made

– date and time

in files (web server log files).

Usually web server log files are stored for two weeks and then automatically deleted. We do not pass on this data, but cannot exclude the possibility that this data may be viewed in the event of illegal behaviour.

According to Article 6 paragraph 1 f DSGVO (Legality of processing), the legal basis is that there is a legitimate interest in enabling the error-free operation of this website by recording web server log files.

Cookies

Our website uses HTTP cookies to store user-specific data.

In the following we explain what cookies are and why they are used, so that you can better understand the following privacy policy.

What exactly are cookies?

Whenever you surf the Internet, you use a browser. Common 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 of them cannot be denied: Cookies are really useful little helpers. Almost all websites use cookies. To be more precise, they are HTTP cookies, as there are also other cookies for other applications. HTTP cookies are small files that are stored on your computer by our website. These cookie files are automatically stored in the cookie folder, quasi the “brain” of your browser. A cookie consists of a name and a value. When defining a cookie, one or more attributes must also be specified.

Cookies store certain user data about you, such as language or personal page settings. When you visit our site again, your browser transmits the “user-related” information back to our site. Thanks to the cookies, our website knows who you are and offers you your usual standard settings. In some browsers, each cookie has its own file, in others, such as Firefox, all cookies are stored in a single file.

There are both first-party cookies and third-party cookies. First-party cookies are created directly by our site, while third-party cookies are created by partner sites (such as Google Analytics). Each cookie is evaluated individually, as each cookie stores different data. The expiration time of a cookie also varies from a few minutes to a few years. Cookies are not software programs and do not contain viruses, trojans or other “malware”. Cookies also cannot access information on your PC.

For example, cookie data may look like this:

– Name: _ga

– Expiry period: 2 years

– Usage: Differentiation of website visitors

– Example value: GA1.2.1326744211.152311131548

A browser should support the following minimum sizes:

– A cookie should be able to contain at least 4096 bytes

– At least 50 cookies should be able to be stored per domain

– A total of at least 3000 cookies should be able to be stored

What types of cookies are there?

The question of which cookies we use in particular depends on the services used and is clarified in the following sections of the privacy policy. At this point we would like to briefly discuss the different types of HTTP cookies.

You can distinguish between 4 types of cookies:

Essential cookies

These cookies are necessary to ensure basic functions of the website. For example, these cookies are needed when a user places a product in the shopping cart, then continues surfing on other pages and only proceeds to checkout later. These cookies do not delete the shopping cart, even if the user closes his browser window.

Functional cookies

These cookies collect information about user behavior and whether the user receives any error messages. In addition, these cookies also measure the loading time and the behaviour of the website with different browsers.

Target-oriented cookies

These cookies ensure a better user-friendliness. For example, entered locations, font sizes or form data are stored.

Advertising cookies

These cookies are also called targeting cookies. They are used to deliver customized advertising to the user. This can be very practical, but also very annoying.

Usually the first time you visit a website, you are asked which of these types of cookies you would like to allow. And of course this decision is also stored in a cookie.

How can I delete cookies?

How and whether you want to use cookies is up to you. Regardless of the ervice or website from which the cookies originate, you always have the option to delete cookies, to only partially allow them or to deactivate them. For example, you can block third-party cookies, but allow all other cookies.

If you want to find out which cookies are stored in your browser, if you want to change or delete cookie settings, you can find this in your browser settings:

Chrome: Delete, activate and manage cookies in Chrome

Safari: Manage cookies and website data with Safari

Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer

Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies

Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies

If you do not wish to receive cookies, you can set up your browser so that it always informs you when a cookie is to be set. This way you can decide for each individual cookie whether you want to allow it or not. The procedure varies from browser to browser. The best thing to do is to search the instructions in Google with the search term “Delete Chrome cookies” or “Disable Chrome cookies” in the case of a Chrome browser, or replace the word “Chrome” with the name of your browser, e.g. Edge, Firefox, Safari.

What about my privacy?

Since 2009 there are the so-called “Cookie Guidelines”. This states that the storage of cookies requires the consent of the website visitor (i.e. you). However, within the EU countries there are still very different reactions to these guidelines. In Germany, the Cookie Guidelines have not been implemented as national law. Instead, the implementation of this directive was largely carried out in § 15 para.3 of the Telemedia Act (TMG).

If you want to know more about cookies and are not afraid of technical documentation, we recommend https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6265, the Request for Comments of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) called “HTTP State Management Mechanism”.

Storage of personal data

Personal information that you submit to us electronically on this website, such as your name, email address, postal address or other personal information when submitting a form or comments on the blog, together with the time and IP address, will only be used by us for the purpose stated in each case, will be kept securely stored and will not be disclosed to third parties.

Thus, we will only use your personal data for communication with those visitors who expressly request contact and for processing the services and products offered on this website. We will not pass on your personal data without your consent, but we cannot exclude the possibility that this data may be viewed in the event of unlawful behaviour.

If you send us personal data by e-mail – thus off this website – we cannot guarantee secure transmission and protection of your data. We recommend that you never send confidential data by e-mail without encryption.

According to article 6 paragraph 1 a DSGVO (legality of processing), the legal basis is that you give us your consent to process the data you have entered. You can revoke this consent at any time – an informal e-mail is sufficient; you will find our contact details in the imprint.

Rights under the basic data protection regulation

In accordance with the provisions of the DSGVO, you are basically entitled to the following rights:

– Right of rectification (Article 16 DSGVO)

– Right of deletion (“right to be forgotten”) (Article 17 DPA)

– Right to restrict processing (Article 18 DSGVO)

– Right of notification – obligation to notify in connection with the rectification or erasure of personal data or the restriction of processing (Article 19 DPA)

– Right to data transferability (Article 20 DSGVO)

– Right of objection (Article 21 DSGVO)

– Right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling (Article 22 DPA)

If you believe that the processing of your data violates data protection law or your data protection rights have otherwise been violated in any way, you can contact the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI).

Evaluation of visitor behaviour

In the following data protection declaration we inform you whether and how we evaluate data from your visit to this website. The evaluation of the collected data is usually anonymous and we cannot deduce your identity from your behaviour on this website.

You can find out more about how to object to this evaluation of visit data in the following data protection declaration.

TLS encryption with https

We use https to transmit data tap-proof on the Internet (data protection through technology design article 25 paragraph 1 DSGVO). By using TLS (Transport Layer Security), an encryption protocol for secure data transmission on the Internet, we can ensure the protection of confidential data. You can recognize the use of this data transmission security by the small lock symbol in the upper left corner of the browser and the use of the https scheme (instead of http) as part of our Internet address.

Google Fonts Local Privacy Policy

We use Google Fonts of the company Google Inc. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA) on our website. We have integrated the Google fonts locally, i.e. on our web server – not on the Google servers. This means that there is no connection to Google’s servers and therefore no data transfer or storage.

What are Google Fonts?

Google Fonts (formerly Google Web Fonts) is an interactive directory with more than 800 fonts provided by Google LLC for free use. With Google Fonts you could use the fonts without uploading them to your own server. But to prevent any information transfer to the Google server in this regard, we have placed the fonts on our Server downloaded. In this way we act in accordance with data protection regulations and do not send any data to Google Fonts.

Unlike other web fonts, Google allows us unlimited access to all fonts. So we have unlimited access to a sea of fonts and can get the most out of our website. You can find more information about Google Fonts and other questions at https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq?tid=311131548.

Google Fonts Privacy Policy

We use Google Fonts of the company Google Inc. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA) on our website.

To use Google fonts, you do not need to log in or set a password. Furthermore, no cookies are stored in your browser. The files (CSS, fonts/fonts) are requested via the Google domains fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com. According to Google, the requests for CSS and fonts are completely separate from all other Google services. If you have a Google Account, you don’t need to worry about your Google Account information being submitted to Google while using Google Fonts. Google tracks the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and the fonts used and stores this information securely. We’ll be taking a closer look at what exactly this data storage looks like.

What are Google Fonts?

Google Fonts (formerly Google Web Fonts) is an interactive directory with more than 800 fonts provided by Google LLC for free use.

Many of these fonts are released under the SIL Open Font License, while others are released under the Apache license. Both are free software licenses. So we can use them freely without paying royalties.

Why do we use Google Fonts on our website?

With Google Fonts we can use fonts on our own website, and we don’t have to upload them to our own server. Google Fonts is an important component to keep the quality of our website high. All Google Fonts are automatically optimized for the web and this saves data volume and is a great advantage especially for mobile devices. When you visit our site, the low file size ensures a fast loading time. Furthermore, Google fonts are so-called secure web fonts. Different image synthesis systems (rendering) in different browsers, operating systems and mobile devices can lead to errors. Such errors can visually distort some texts or entire web pages. Thanks to the fast Content Delivery Network (CDN) there are no cross-platform problems with Google Fonts. Google Fonts supports all major browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera) and works reliably on most modern mobile operating systems, including Android 2.2+ and iOS 4.2+ (iPhone, iPad, iPod).

So we use the Google fonts so that we can present our entire online service as beautifully and consistently as possible. According to Art. 6 para. 1 f lit. F DSGVO, this already constitutes a “legitimate interest” in the processing of personal data. In this case, “legitimate interest” means both legal and economic or idealistic interests which are recognised by the legal system.

Which data is stored by Google?

When you visit our website, the fonts are reloaded via a Google server. Through this external call, data is transmitted to the Google servers. In this way Google also recognises that you or your IP address is visiting our website. The Google Fonts API was developed to reduce the collection, storage and use of end user data to what is necessary for the efficient provision of fonts. By the way, API stands for “Application Programming Interface” and serves, among other things, as a data transmitter in the software sector.

Google Fonts stores CSS and font requests securely with Google and is therefore protected. Google can determine the popularity of the fonts through the collected usage figures. Google publishes the results on internal analysis pages, such as Google Analytics. Google also uses data from its own web crawler to determine which websites use Google fonts. This data is published in Google Fonts’ BigQuery database. BigQuery is a web service from Google for companies that want to move and analyse large amounts of data.

However, it should also be noted that every Google Font request automatically transfers information such as IP address, language settings, screen resolution of the browser, browser version and browser name to the Google servers. Whether this data is also stored is not clearly ascertainable or is not clearly communicated by Google.

How long and where is the data stored?

Google stores requests for CSS assets for one day on your servers, which are mainly located outside the EU. This allows us to use the fonts with the help of a Google style sheet. A stylesheet is a style template that allows you to easily and quickly change, for example, the design or font of a web page.

The font files are stored at Google for one year. Google’s goal is to improve the loading time of web pages. If millions of web pages link to the same fonts, they are cached after the first visit and reappear immediately on all other web pages visited later. Sometimes Google updates font files to reduce file size, increase language coverage and improve design.

How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?

The data that Google stores for a day or a year cannot be easily deleted. The data is automatically sent to Google when you visit the site. To delete this data prematurely, you must contact Google Support

at https://support.google.com/?hl=de&tid=311131548. In this case you only prevent data storage if you do not visit our site.

Unlike other web fonts, Google allows us unlimited access to all fonts. This means we have unlimited access to a sea of fonts and can thus get the best out of our website. You can find more information about Google Fonts and other questions at https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq?tid=311131548. Although Google addresses privacy issues there, it does not include really detailed information about data storage. It’s relatively difficult (almost impossible) to get really detailed information about data storage from Google.

You can also find out what data Google collects and what this data is used for at https://www.google.com/intl/de/policies/privacy/.

Google Maps Privacy Policy

On our website we use Google Maps from the company Google Inc. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA). With Google Maps we can visually improve the presentation of locations and thus improve our service. By using Google Maps, data is transferred to Google and stored on Google’s servers. Here we will 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.

What is Google Maps?

Google Maps is an online map service provided by Google Inc. With Google Maps, you can search the Internet for exact locations of cities, places of interest, accommodations or businesses using a PC or an app. If companies are represented on Google My Business, additional information about the company is displayed next to the location. To show how to get there, map sections of a location can be embedded into a website using HTML code. Google Maps displays the surface of the earth as a street map or as an aerial or satellite image. Thanks to the Street View images and the high quality satellite images, very accurate representations are possible.

Why do we use Google Maps on our website?

All our efforts on this site are aimed at providing 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. Thanks to Google Maps you can see at a glance where we have our headquarters. The directions always show you the best or fastest way to reach us. You can call up the directions for routes by car, public transport, on foot or by bicycle. For us, providing Google Maps is part of our customer service.

What information does Google Maps store?

In order for Google Maps to provide its full service, the company must collect and store information about you. This includes, among other things, the search terms you enter, your IP address and latitude and longitude coordinates. Use If you use the route planner function, the entered start address is also saved. However, this data storage happens on the websites of Google Maps. We can only inform you about it, but we cannot influence it. 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 behaviour. Google uses this data primarily to optimise its own services and to provide individual, personalised advertising for you.

The following cookie is set in your browser due to the integration of Google Maps:

– Name: NID

– Expiry time: after 6 months

– use: NID is used by Google to match ads to your Google search. Google uses the cookie to “remember” your most commonly entered search queries or your previous interaction with ads. So you can always get customized ads. The cookie contains a unique ID that Google uses to collect user preferences for advertising purposes.

– Example value: 188=h26c1Ktha7fCQTx8rXgLyATyITJ311131548

Note: We cannot guarantee the completeness of the stored data. Especially with the use of cookies, changes can never be excluded at Google. In order to identify the cookie NID, a separate test page was created where only Google Maps was integrated.

How long and where is the data stored?

The Google servers are located in data centers around the world. However, most of the servers are located in America. For this reason, your data is also increasingly stored in the USA. Here you can find out exactly where the Google data centers are located: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=de

Google distributes the data on different data carriers. This means that the data can be accessed more quickly and is better protected against any attempts at manipulation. Each data center also has special emergency programs. If, for example, there are problems with

Google hardware or a natural disaster affects the servers, the data is still highly likely to remain protected.

Some data is stored by Google for a specified period of time. For other data, Google only offers the option to delete it manually. The company also anonymizes information (such as advertising data) in server logs by deleting part of the IP address and cookie information after 9 and 18 months, respectively.

How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?

With the automatic deletion of location and activity data introduced in 2019, location and web/app activity information is stored for either 3 or 18 months, depending on your decision, and then deleted. You can also manually delete this data from your history at any time using your Google Account. If you want to completely prevent your location tracking, you’ll need to pause web and app activity in Google Account.

Click “Data and personalization” and then click the “Activity setting” option. Here you can switch the activities on or off.

You can also deactivate, delete or manage individual cookies in your browser. Depending on the browser you use, this works in different ways. The following instructions show how to manage cookies in your browser:

Chrome: Delete, activate and manage cookies in Chrome

Safari: Manage cookies and website data with Safari

Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer

Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies

Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies

If you do not wish to receive cookies, you can set up your browser so that it always informs you when a cookie is to be set. This way you can decide for each individual cookie whether you want to allow it or not.

Google is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which regulates the correct and secure transfer of personal data. You can find more information on this at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000TO6hAAG. If you want to learn more about Google’s data processing practices, we recommend that you read the company’s own privacy policy at https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=de.

Source: Created with the AdSimple privacy generator in cooperation with bauenwir.de