Privacy
What We Do with Your Data
We created this Privacy Policy, 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.
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.
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:
GA1.2.1326744211.152111439348-9
purpose:
differentiation between website visitors
expiration date:
after 2 years
A browser should support these minimum sizes:
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.
You yourself take the decision if and how you want to use cookies. Thus, no matter what service or website cookies are from, you always have the option to delete, deactivate or only partially allow them. Therefore, you can for example block cookies of third parties but allow any other cookies.
If you want change or delete cookie-settings and would like to determine which cookies have been saved to your browser, you can find this info in your browser-settings:
Chrome: Clear, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Manage cookies and website data in Safari
Firefox: Clear cookies and site data in Firefox
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete cookies in Microsoft Edge
If you generally do not want to allow any cookies at all, you can set up your browser in a way, to notify you whenever a potential cookie is about to be set. This gives you the opportunity to manually decide to either permit or deny the placement of every single cookie. The settings for this differ from browser to browser. Therefore, it might be best for you to search for the instructions in Google. If you are using Chrome, you could for example put the search phrase “delete cookies Chrome” or “deactivate cookies Chrome” into Google.
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”.
On our website we use Google Fonts, from the company Google Inc. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA).
To use Google Fonts, you must log in and set up a password. Furthermore, no cookies will be saved in your browser. The data (CSS, Fonts) will be requested via the Google domains fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com. According to Google, all requests for CSS and fonts are fully separated from any other Google services. If you have a Google account, you do not need to worry that your Google account details are transmitted to Google while you use Google Fonts. Google records the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) as well as the utilised fonts and stores these data securely. We will have a detailed look at how exactly the data storage works.
Google Fonts (previously Google Web Fonts) is a list of over 800 fonts which href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google?tid=111439348”>Google LLC provides its users for free.
Many of these fonts have been published under the SIL Open Font License license, while others have been published under the Apache license. Both are free software licenses.
With Google Fonts we can use different fonts on our website and do not have to upload them to our own server. Google Fonts is an important element which helps to keep the quality of our website high. All Google fonts are automatically optimised for the web, which saves data volume and is an advantage especially for the use of mobile terminal devices. When you use our website, the low data size provides fast loading times. Moreover, Google Fonts are secure Web Fonts. Various image synthesis systems (rendering) can lead to errors in different browsers, operating systems and mobile terminal devices. These errors could optically distort parts of texts or entire websites. Due to the fast Content Delivery Network (CDN) there are no cross-platform issues with Google Fonts. All common browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera) are supported by Google Fonts, and it reliably operates on most modern mobile operating systems, including Android 2.2+ and iOS 4.2+ (iPhone, iPad, iPod). We also use Google Fonts for presenting our entire online service as pleasantly and as uniformly as possible.
Whenever you visit our website, the fonts are reloaded by a Google server. Through this external cue, data gets transferred to Google’s servers. Therefore, this makes Google recognise that you (or your IP-address) is visiting our website. The Google Fonts API was developed to reduce the usage, storage and gathering of end user data to the minimum needed for the proper depiction of fonts. What is more, API stands for „Application Programming Interface“ and works as a software data intermediary.
Google Fonts stores CSS and font requests safely with Google, and therefore it is protected. Using its collected usage figures, Google can determine how popular the individual fonts are. Google publishes the results on internal analysis pages, such as Google Analytics. Moreover, Google also utilises data of ist own web crawler, in order to determine which websites are using Google fonts. This data is published in Google Fonts’ BigQuery database. Enterpreneurs and developers use Google’s webservice BigQuery to be able to inspect and move big volumes of data.
One more thing that should be considered, is that every request for Google Fonts automatically transmits information such as language preferences, IP address, browser version, as well as the browser’s screen resolution and name to Google’s servers. It cannot be clearly identified if this data is saved, as Google has not directly declared it.
Google saves requests for CSS assets for one day in a tag on their servers, which are primarily located outside of the EU. This makes it possible for us to use the fonts by means of a Google stylesheet. With the help of a stylesheet, e.g. designs or fonts of a website can get changed swiftly and easily.
Any font related data is stored with Google for one year. This is because Google’s aim is to fundamentally boost websites’ loading times. With millions of websites referring to the same fonts, they are buffered after the first visit and instantly reappear on any other websites that are visited thereafter. Sometimes Google updates font files to either reduce the data sizes, increase the language coverage or to improve the design.
The data Google stores for either a day or a year cannot be deleted easily. Upon opening the page this data is automatically transmitted to Google. In order to clear the data ahead of time, you have to contact Google’s support at https://support.google.com/?hl=en-GB&tid=111439348. The only way for you to prevent the retention of your data is by not visiting our website.
Unlike other web fonts, Google offers us unrestricted access to all its fonts. Thus,
we have a vast sea of font types at our disposal, which helps us to get the most out of our website. You can
find out more answers and information on Google Fonts at
https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq?tid=111439348.
While Google does address relevant elements on data protection at this link, it does not contain any detailed
information on data retention.
It proofs rather difficult to receive any precise information on stored data by Google.
On https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-GB you can read more about what data is generally collected by Google and what this data is used for.
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.
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:
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.
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:2.1326744211.152111439348-5
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:2.1687193234.152111439348-1
Purpose:
This cookie also serves the purpose of differentiating between website users
Expiration date:
After 24 hours
Name:
_gat_gtag_UA_
Value:
1
Verwendungszweck:
It is used for decreasing the demand rate. If Google Analytics is provided via Google Tag Manager, this
cookie gets the name _dc_gtm_
Expiration date:
After 1 minute
Name:
AMP_TOKEN
Value:
No information
Purpose:
This cookie has a token which is used to retrieve the user ID by the AMP Client ID Service. Other possible
values suggest a logoff, a request or an error.
Expiration date:
After 30 seconds up to one year
Name:
__utma
Value:1564498958.1564498958.1564498958.1
Purpose:
With this cookie your behaviour on the website can be tracked and the site performance can be measured. The
cookie is updated every time the information is sent to Google Analytics.
Expiration date:
After 2 years
Name:
__utmt
Value:
1
Purpose:
Just like _gat_gtag_UA_
Expiration date:
Afer 10 minutes
Name:
__utmb
Value:3.10.1564498958
Purpose:
This cookie is used to determine new sessions. It is updated every time new data or information gets sent to
Google Analytics.
Expiration date:
After 30 minutes
Name:
__utmc
Value:
167421564
Purpose:
This cookie is used to determine new sessions for recurring visitors. It is therefore a session cookie, and
only stays saved until you close the browser again.
Expiration date:
After closing the browser
Name:
__utmz
Value:
m|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/
Purpose:
This cookie is used to identify the source of our website’s visitor number. This means, that the cookie saves
information on where you came to our website from. This could be another site or an advertisement.
Expiration date:
After 6 months
Name:
__utmv
Value:
No information
Purpose:
The cookie is used to store custom user data. It gets updated whenever information is sent to Google
Analytics.
Expiration date:
After 2 years
Note: This list is by no means exhaustive, since Google are repeatedly changing the use of their cookies.
Below we will give you an overview of the most important data that can be evaluated by Google Analytics:
Heatmaps: Google creates so-called Heatmaps an. These Heatmaps make it possible to see the exact areas you click on, so we can get information on what routes you make on our website.
Session duration: Google calls the time you spend on our website without leaving it session duration. Whenever you are inactive for 20 minutes, the session ends automatically.
Bounce rate If you only look at one page of our website and then leave our website again, it is called a bounce.
Account creation: If you create an account or make an order on our website, Google Analytics collects this data.
IP-Address: The IP address is only shown in a shortened form, to make it impossible to clearly allocate it.
Location: Your approximate location and the country you are in can be defined by the IP address. This process is called IP location determination.
Technical information: Information about your browser type, your internet provider and your screen resolution are called technical information.
Source: Both, Google Analytics as well as ourselves, are interested what website or what advertisement led you to our site.
Further possibly stored data includes contact data, potential reviews, playing media (e.g. when you play a video on our site), sharing of contents via social media or adding our site to your favourites. This list is not exhaustive and only serves as general guidance on Google Analytics’ data retention.
Google has servers across the globe. Most of them are in America and therefore your data is mainly saved on American servers. Here you can read detailed information on where Google’s data centres are located: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=en
Your data is allocated to various physical data mediums. This has the advantage of allowing to retrieve the data faster, and of protecting it better from manipulation. Every Google data centre has respective emergency programs for your data. Hence, in case of a hardware failure at Google or a server error due to natural disasters, the risk for a service interruption stays relatively low.
Google Analytics has a 26 months standardised period of retaining your user data. After this time, your user data is deleted. However, we only retain your anonymized data for a period of 14 months.
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.
Under the provisions of the European Union’s data protection law, you have the right to obtain information on your data and to update, delete or restrict it. With the help of a browser add on that can deactivate Google Analytics’ JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, dc.js), you can prevent Google Analytics from using your data. You can download this add on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en-GB. Please consider that this add on can only deactivate any data collection by Google Analytics.
Should you generally want to deactivate, delete or manage all cookies (independently of Google Analytics), you can use one of the guides that are available for any browser:
Chrome: Clear, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Manage cookies and website data in Safari
Firefox: Clear cookies and site data in Firefox
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete cookies in Microsoft Edge
Google Analytics is an active participant of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework,
which regulates correct and save transfer of personal data.
You can find more information on this at
https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt000000001L5AAI&tid=111439348. We
hope we were able to make you more familiar with the most important information on Google Analytics’ data
processing. If you want to learn more about the tracking service, we recommend both of the following links:
https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/terms/gb/
and
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=en.
We implemented Google Analytics’ IP address anonymisation to this website. Google
developed this function, so this website can comply with the applicable privacy laws and the local data
protection authorities’
recommendations, should they prohibit the retention of any full IP addresses.
The anonymisation or masking of IP addresses takes place, as soon as they reach Google Analytics’ data
collection network, but before the data would be saved or processed.
You can find more information on IP anonymisation at https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2763052?hl=en.
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.
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.
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.
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:
F1766FA98C9BB9DE4A39F70A9E5EEAB55F6517348A7000001111439348-3
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:
8D545C8CCA4C3A50579014C449B045111439348-9
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.
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.
You can withdraw your approval for the receipt of our newsletters anytime, by clicking the link in the lower area of the received newsletter email. When you click on the unsubscribe link, your data with MailChimp gets deleted.
When you land on a MailChimp website via a link in our newsletter and cookies are consequently set in your browser, you can delete or deactivate these cookies anytime.
Depending on the browser, the deactivation or deletion differs slightly. The following instructions show how to manage cookies in your browser:
Chrome: Clear, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Manage cookies and website data in Safari
Firefox: Clear cookies and site data in Firefox
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete cookies in Microsoft Edge
If you generally do not want to allow any cookies, you can set up your browser in a way so it would notify you whenever a potential cookie is about to be set. This lets you decide upon the placement of every single cookie.
MailChimp is an active participant in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which regulates the correct and secure transfer of personal data. You can find more information on this at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000TO6hAAG&tid=111439348. 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/.
We entered a contract with MailChimp on the Data Processing Addendum. This contract serves as a protection of your personal data and ensures that MailChimp follows the applicable data protection regulations and disclose your personal data to third parties.
You can find more information on this contract at https://mailchimp.com/legal/data-processing-addendum/.