The privacy of our visitors is extremely important to us and we do not collect, store, or share any personally identifiable information on our servers except for the purposes mentioned below.
Cookies
Our website makes use of cookies in order to recognize repeat use of our website by the same user/internet connection subscriber. Cookies are small text files that your internet browser downloads and stores on your computer and are used to improve our website and services. In most cases these are so-called “session cookies” that are deleted once you leave our website.
Data such as the following, which your internet browser transmits to us or to our web space provider (so called server log files), are collected:
- type and version of the browser you use
- operating system
- websites that linked you to our site (referrer URL)
- websites that you visit
- date and time of your visit
- your Internet Protocol (IP) address.
You can prevent cookies from being installed by adjusting the settings in your browser accordingly.
Web analytics
This anonymous data is stored separately from any personal information you may have provided, thereby making it impossible to connect it to any particular person. The data is used for statistical purposes in order to improve our website and services. All visitor IP addresses are anonymised before being submitted to Google Analytics and deleted automatically from Google Analytics servers after 14 months.
Our website uses Google Analytics, a web analysis service from Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 USA, hereinafter referred to as “Google”. Google Analytics employs so-called “cookies”, text files that are stored to your computer in order to facilitate an analysis of your use of the site. The information generated by these cookies, such as time, place and frequency of your visits to our site, including your IP address, is transmitted to Google’s location in the US, stored there, and deleted automatically from Google Analytics servers after 14 months. In using Google Analytics our website employs the extension, “_gat._anonymizeIp”. In doing so, Google abbreviates and thereby anonymizes your IP address before transferring it from member states of the European Union or signatory states to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Google uses this information to analyze your use of our site, to compile reports for us on internet activity and to provide other services relating to website and internet use. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law or where such third parties process this data on Google’s behalf. Google states that it will in never associate your IP address with other data held by Google. You can prevent cookies from being installed by adjusting the settings on your browser software accordingly. You should be aware, however, that by doing so you may not be able to make full use of all the functions of our website. Furthermore, Google offers a deactivation add-on for most current browsers that provides you with more control over what data Google can collect on websites you access. The add-on tells the JavaScript (ga.js) used by Google Analytics not to transmit any information about website visits to Google Analytics. However, the browser deactivation add-on offered by Google Analytics does not prevent information from being transmitted to us or to other web analysis services we may engage. You can find additional information on how to install the browser add-on at the following link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en
Contacting us
On our website we offer you the opportunity to contact us, either by email and/or by using a contact form that sends its data by email. In such event, information provided by the user is used only for the purpose of facilitating communications with the user, and is not stored in a database. No data is transferred to third parties. Nor is any of this information matched to any information that may be collected by other components of our website.
Use of Twitter components
Our website employs components provided by Twitter. Twitter is a service of Twitter Inc., 795 Folsom St., Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA.
Each time our website receives an access request equipped with a Twitter component, the component prompts your browser to download an image of this component from Twitter. Through this process, Twitter is informed precisely which page of our website is being visited. We have no control over the data that Twitter collects in the process, or over the extent of the data that Twitter collects. To the best of our knowledge, Twitter collects the URL of each website accessed as well as the IP address of the user, but does so solely for the purpose of displaying Twitter components. Additional information may be obtained from the Twitter data privacy policy, at: http://twitter.com/privacy.
You may change your data privacy settings in your account settings, at https://twitter.com/account/settings.
Use of YouTube components
We use YouTube plug-ins provided by YouTube, LLC. 901 Cherry Ave. San Bruno, CA 94066, USA (a service of Google, Inc.), to enable you to view YouTube videos embedded on our site. When you play a YouTube video on our site, you will receive a cookie from www.youtube.com. By clicking to play the video, you are assumed to consent to this cookie being used. Whenever you view a page of our site containing such a plug-in, your browser establishes a direct connection to the servers operated by YouTube and the plug-in is displayed on our website. This allows YouTube to place tracking cookies on your computer. These files hold data such as the name of the site being viewed, what pages were visited, what products or other content were viewed, etc. Every time you visit a webpage with embedded content from YouTube, a cookie is created to collect more information. If you visit our site while signed into your YouTube user account, YouTube can assign information concerning your visit to our site to your user account. Information arising from interaction with the YouTube plug-ins (such as clicking or starting videos) will also be assigned by YouTube to your YouTube user account. To prevent this you must log out of your YouTube account before visiting our site. Please refer to YouTube’s privacy policy at https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en, for more information on the purpose and scope of data collection and data analysis undertaken by YouTube as well as your options to modify settings and how to protect your privacy.
Use of reCAPTCHA
In order to protect input forms on our site, we use the “reCAPTCHA” service of Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 USA, hereinafter “Google.” By means of this service it can be distinguished whether the corresponding input is of human origin or is created improperly by automated machine processing.
To our knowledge, the referrer URL, the IP address, the behaviour of the website visitors, information about the operating system, browser and length of stay, cookies, display instructions and scripts, user input behaviour and mouse movements in the “reCAPTCHA” checkbox are conveyed to “Google.”
Google uses the information obtained, among other things, to digitize books and other printed matter as well as to optimize services such as Google Street View and Google Maps (e.g. house number and street name recognition).
The IP address provided as part of “reCAPTCHA” is not merged with other data from Google unless you are logged into your Google Account at the time the “reCAPTCHA” plug-in is used. If you want to prevent this transmission and storage of data by “Google” about you and your behaviour on our website, you must log out of “Google” before you visit our site or before using the reCAPTCHA plug-in.
The use of the “reCAPTCHA” service is according to the Google Terms of Use: https://www.google.com/intl/de/policies/privacy/.
Use of Instagram components
On our website we use components of Instagram LLC, 1601 Willow Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025, USA. Each time our website receives an access request equipped with a Instagram component, the component prompts your browser to download files from Instagram. Through this process, Instagram is informed precisely which page of our website is being visited. We have no control over the data that Instagram collects in the process, or over the extent of the data that Instagram collects. To the best of our knowledge, Instagram collects the URL of each website accessed as well as the IP address of the user, but does so solely for the purpose of displaying Instagram components. Further information about data protection by Instagram is provided under the following link: https://help.instagram.com/155833707900388
Use of SoundCloud components
On our website we use components of SoundCloud Limited, Rheinsberger Str. 76/77, 10115 Berlin, Germany. Each time our website receives an access request equipped with a SoundCloud component, the component prompts your browser to download files from SoundCloud. Through this process, SoundCloud is informed precisely which page of our website is being visited. We have no control over the data that SoundCloud collects in the process, or over the extent of the data that SoundCloud collects. To the best of our knowledge, SoundCloud collects the URL of each website accessed as well as the IP address of the user, but does so solely for the purpose of displaying SoundCloud components. Further information about data protection by SoundCloud is provided under the following link: https://soundcloud.com/pages/privacy/