🇩🇪 Lies unsere Datenschutzerklärung auf Deutsch
Data Protection
We have drafted this privacy policy (version from 01.07.2023) to explain to you, in accordance with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679, what information we collect, how we use data, and what 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. However, we have tried to describe the most important things as simply and clearly as possible.
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. Known browsers include Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Edge. Most websites store small text files in your browser. These files are called cookies.
One thing cannot be denied: Cookies are genuinely useful little helpers. Almost all websites use cookies. More precisely, they are HTTP cookies, as there are also other cookies for other application areas. HTTP cookies are small files that our website stores on your computer. These cookie files are automatically placed in the cookie folder, essentially 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 revisit our site, your browser transmits the “user-related” information back to our site. Thanks to cookies, our website knows who you are and offers you your usual default 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 websites (e.g., Google Analytics). Each cookie must be 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 “pests”. Cookies also cannot access information on your PC.
For example, cookie data might look like this:
- Name: _ga
- Expiration time: 2 years
- Use: Differentiation of website visitors
- Example value: GA1.2.1326744211.152311167714
- 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 specifically use 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.
There are 4 types of cookies:
Essential Cookies
These cookies are necessary to ensure the basic functions of the website. For example, these cookies are needed when a user puts a product in the shopping cart, then continues surfing on other pages, and only goes to the checkout later. Thanks to these cookies, the shopping cart is not deleted, even if the user closes their browser window.
Functional Cookies
These cookies collect information about user behavior and whether the user receives any error messages. Furthermore, these cookies also measure the loading time and the behavior of the website with different browsers.
Targeted Cookies
These cookies ensure better user-friendliness. For example, entered locations, font sizes, or form data are stored.
Advertising Cookies
These cookies are also called targeting cookies. They serve to deliver customized advertising to the user. This can be very practical but also very annoying.
Usually, when you visit a website for the first time, you are asked which of these cookie types you want to accept. 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 which service or website the cookies come from, you always have the option to delete cookies, only partially allow them, or deactivate them. For example, you can block cookies from third parties but allow all other cookies.
If you want to find out which cookies have been stored in your browser, if you want to change or delete cookie settings, you can find this in your browser settings:
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 stored on your computer
Internet Explor er: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
If you generally do not want 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 allow it or not. The procedure varies depending on the browser. It is best to search for instructions in Google with the search term “delete cookies Chrome” or “deactivate cookies Chrome” 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 data protection?
Since 2009, there have been the so-called “cookie guidelines”. It states that storing cookies requires the consent of the website visitor (i.e., you). Within the EU countries, however, 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 done 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”.
Rights according to the General Data Protection Regulation
Ihnen stehen laut den Bestimmungen der DSGVO grundsätzlich die folgende Rechte zu:
- Right to rectification (Article 16 GDPR)
- Right to erasure (“right to be forgotten”) (Article 17 GDPR)
- Right to restriction of processing (Article 18 GDPR)
- Right to notification – obligation to communicate in connection with the correction or deletion of personal data or the 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 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 behavior
In the following privacy policy, we inform you whether and how we evaluate data from your visit to this website. The evaluation of the collected data is usually done anonymously, and we cannot deduce your identity from your behavior on this website.
You can learn more about how to object to this evaluation of visit data in the following privacy policy.
TLS Encryption with HTTPS
We use https to transmit data securely on the Internet (data protection through technology design, Article 25(1) GDPR). By using TLS (Transport Layer Security), an encryption protocol for secure data transmission on the Internet, we can ensure the protection of confidential data. You can recognize the use of this data transmission by the small lock symbol in the top left corner of the browser and the use of the https scheme (instead of http) as part of our Internet address.
ConvertKit Privacy Policy
We use the ConvertKit service on our website for sending newsletters, as well as for the sale of digital products and services. ConvertKit is a service provided by ConvertKit LLC (113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA, 98104-2205, USA). When you sign up for our newsletter or make a purchase at checkout, the data you provide during registration is stored on ConvertKit’s servers. ConvertKit protects your data and only uses it for sending newsletters, analyzing the dispatch, and providing the requested digital products and services.
What is ConvertKit?
ConvertKit is an online service that allows website operators to send newsletters to their subscribers. With ConvertKit, we can inform you about news or interesting offers from us. Additionally, ConvertKit is also an online store for digital products and services.
What data is stored by ConvertKit?
When you sign up for our newsletter, you confirm this via email (Double-Opt-In). This ensures that you are indeed the owner of the provided email address. The date of registration and your IP address are also stored. This is for our security in case someone else misuses your email address.
ConvertKit uses this information to send and evaluate newsletters on our behalf. Furthermore, according to their own information, ConvertKit may use this data to optimize or improve its own services, e.g., for technical optimization of the dispatch and presentation of the newsletters or for economic purposes, to determine from which countries the recipients come. However, ConvertKit does not use the data of our newsletter recipients to write to them themselves or to pass it on to third parties.
We rely on the reliability and IT and data security of ConvertKit. ConvertKit is in the certification process of the US-EU data protection agreement “Privacy Shield” and commits to comply with EU data protection regulations. You can view ConvertKit’s privacy policy here: https://convertkit.com/privacy/.
Statistical Collection and Analyses
The newsletters contain a so-called “web beacon”, i.e., a pixel-sized file that is retrieved from ConvertKit’s server when the newsletter is opened. During this retrieval, technical information, such as information about the browser and your system, as well as your IP address and the time of retrieval, are collected. This information is used to technically improve the services based on the technical data or the target groups and their reading behavior based on their retrieval locations (which can be determined using the IP address) or access times.
The statistical surveys also include determining whether the newsletters are opened, when they are opened, and which links are clicked. For technical reasons, this information can be assigned to individual newsletter recipients. However, neither our intention nor that of ConvertKit is to observe individual users. The evaluations serve us more to recognize the general reading habits of our users and to adapt our content to them or to send different content according to the interests of our users.
Google Fonts Privacy Policy
We use Google Fonts from Google Inc. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043, USA) on our website.
To use Google fonts, you don’t need to sign up or enter a password. Furthermore, no cookies are stored in your browser. The files (CSS, fonts) are requested from 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 that your Google account details will be transmitted to Google while using Google Fonts. Google records the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and the fonts used and stores this data securely. We will take a closer look at how this data storage looks in detail.
What are Google Fonts?
Google Fonts (formerly Google Web Fonts) is an interactive directory with over 800 fonts that Google LLC offers for free use.
Many of these fonts are published under the SIL Open Font License, while others are published under the Apache License. Both are free software licenses. Thus, we can use them freely without paying licensing fees.
Why do we use Google Fonts on our website?
With Google Fonts, we can use fonts on our website without having to upload them to our server. Google Fonts is an essential building block to maintain the quality of our website. All Google fonts are automatically optimized for the web, which saves data volume and is a significant advantage, especially for use with mobile devices. When you visit our site, the small file size ensures a fast loading time. Furthermore, Google Fonts are so-called secure web fonts. Different image synthesis systems (rendering) in various browsers, operating systems, and mobile devices can lead to errors. Such errors can sometimes distort texts or entire web pages visually. Thanks to the fast Content Delivery Network (CDN), there are no cross-platform problems with Google Fonts. Google Fonts supports all common 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).
We use Google Fonts so that we can present our entire online service as beautifully and consistently as possible. According to Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f DSGVO, this already constitutes a “legitimate interest” in the processing of personal data. In this context, “legitimate interest” means both legal and economic or ideal interests that are recognized by the legal system.
Which data is stored by Google?
When you visit our website, the fonts are reloaded from a Google server. This external call transfers data to the Google servers. In this way, Google also recognizes that you or your IP address are visiting our website. The Google Fonts API is designed to reduce the collection, storage, and use of end-user data to what is necessary for the efficient delivery of fonts. By the way, API stands for “Application Programming Interface” and serves, among other things, as a data transmitter in the software area.
Google Fonts securely stores CSS and font requests at Google, making it protected. Through the collected usage figures, Google can determine the popularity of the fonts. Google publishes the results on internal analysis pages, such as Google Analytics. Google also uses data from its web crawler to determine which websites use Google fonts. This data is published in the BigQuery database of Google Fonts. BigQuery is a web service from Google for companies that want to move and analyze large amounts of data.
However, it should be noted that each Google Font request also automatically transfers information such as IP address, language settings, browser screen resolution, browser version, and browser name to the Google servers. Whether this data is also stored is not clearly determined or is not clearly communicated by Google.
How long and where is the data stored?
Requests for CSS assets are stored by Google on their servers for one day, which are primarily located outside the EU. This allows us to use fonts with the help of a Google stylesheet. A stylesheet is a template that allows one to easily and quickly change, for example, the design or font of a website.
Font files are stored by Google for one year. Google’s aim is to generally improve the loading time of websites. When millions of websites refer to the same fonts, they are cached after the first visit and immediately appear on all other websites 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 simply deleted. The data is automatically transmitted to Google when a page is accessed. To delete this data prematurely, you must contact Google support at https://support.google.com/?hl=de&tid=311167714. In this case, you can only prevent data storage if you do not visit our site.
Unlike other web fonts, Google allows us unrestricted access to all fonts. Thus, we can access an unlimited range of fonts and get the best out of our website. For more information on Google Fonts and other questions, please visit https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq?tid=311167714. While Google does address data protection issues there, really detailed information about data storage is not included. It is relatively difficult (almost impossible) to get precise information from Google about stored data.
You can also read about the basic data collected by Google and what this data is used for at https://www.google.com/intl/de/policies/privacy/.
Automatic Data Storage
When you visit websites nowadays, certain information is automatically created and stored, including 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 saves data such as:
- the address (URL) of the accessed website
- browser and browser version
- the operating system used
- the address (URL) of the previously visited page (referrer URL)
- the hostname and IP address of the device accessing the site
- date and time
in files (web server log files).
Web server log files are typically stored for two weeks and then automatically deleted. We do not share this data, but we cannot rule out the possibility of this data being viewed in the event of unlawful behavior.
YouTube Privacy Policy
We have integrated YouTube videos on our website. This allows us to present interesting videos directly on our site. YouTube is a video portal that has been a subsidiary of Google LLC since 2006. The video portal is operated by YouTube, LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066, USA. When you access a page on our website that has an embedded YouTube video, your browser automatically connects to the servers of YouTube or Google. Depending on the settings, various data is transferred. Google is responsible for all data processing, and therefore Google’s privacy policy also applies.
In the following, we want to explain in more detail which data is processed, why we have integrated YouTube videos, and how you can manage or delete your data.
What is YouTube?
On YouTube, users can watch, rate, comment on, and upload videos for free. Over the years, YouTube has become one of the most important social media channels worldwide. To display videos on our website, YouTube provides a snippet of code that we have embedded on our site.
Why do we use YouTube videos on our website?
YouTube is the video platform with the most visitors and the best content. We strive to provide the best possible user experience on our website. And of course, interesting videos are an essential part of this. With our embedded videos, we offer you additional helpful content alongside our texts and images. Moreover, our website is more easily found on the Google search engine due to the embedded videos. Even if we place advertisements via Google Ads, thanks to the collected data, Google can only show these ads to people who are interested in our offers.
What data is stored by YouTube?
As soon as you visit one of our pages that has a YouTube video embedded, YouTube sets at least one cookie that stores your IP address and our URL. If you are logged into your YouTube account, YouTube can usually associate your interactions on our website with your profile using cookies. This data includes session duration, bounce rate, approximate location, technical information such as browser type, screen resolution, or your internet provider. Additional data may include contact details, any ratings, sharing content via social media, or adding to your favorites on YouTube.
If you are not logged into a Google account or a YouTube account, Google stores data with a unique identifier linked to your device, browser, or app. For example, your preferred language setting is retained. However, many interaction data cannot be stored as fewer cookies are set.
In the following list, we show cookies that were set in a browser test. On the one hand, we show cookies set without a logged-in YouTube account. On the other hand, we show cookies set with a logged-in account. The list cannot claim to be exhaustive, as user data always depends on interactions on YouTube.
Name: YSC
Value: b9-CV 6ojI5Y
Purpose: This cookie registers a unique ID to store statistics of the viewed video.
Expiration: after session end
Name: PREF
Value: f1=50000000
Purpose: This cookie also registers your unique ID. Google receives statistics via PREF on how you use YouTube videos on our website.
Expiration: after 8 months
Name: GPS
Value: 1
Purpose: This cookie registers your unique ID on mobile devices to track the GPS location.
Expiration: after 30 minutes
Name: VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
Value: 95Chz8bagyU
Purpose: This cookie attempts to estimate the user’s bandwidth on our websites (with embedded YouTube video).
Expiration: after 8 months
Additional cookies that are set when you are logged into your YouTube account:
Name: APISID
Value: zILlvClZSkqGsSwI/AU1aZI6HY7311167714-
Purpose: This cookie is used to create a profile about your interests. The data is used for personalized advertisements.
Expiration: after 2 years
Name: CONSENT
Value: YES+AT.de+20150628-20-0 Purpose: The cookie stores the status of a user’s consent to use various Google services.
CONSENT also serves security purposes to verify users and protect user data from unauthorized attacks.
Expiration: after 19 years
Name: HSID
Value: AcRwpgUik9Dveht0I
Purpose: This cookie is used to create a profile about your interests. This data helps to display personalized advertising.
Expiration: after 2 years
Name: LOGIN_INFO
Value: AFmmF2swRQIhALl6aL…
Purpose: This cookie stores information about your login data.
Expiration: after 2 years
Name: SAPISID
Value: 7oaPxoG-pZsJuuF5/AnUdDUIsJ9iJz2vdM
Purpose: This cookie works by uniquely identifying your browser and device. It is used to create a profile about your interests.
Expiration: after 2 years
Name: SID
Value: oQfNKjAsI311167714-
Purpose: This cookie stores your Google account ID and your last login time in digitally signed and encrypted form.
Expiration: after 2 years
Name: SIDCC
Value: AN0-TYuqub2JOcDTyL
Purpose: This cookie stores information about how you use the website and any advertisements you might have seen before visiting our site.
Expiration: after 3 months
How long and where are the data stored?
The data that YouTube receives and processes from you is stored on Google’s servers. Most of these servers are located in America. You can see exactly where Google’s data centers are located at https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=de. Your data is distributed across these servers. This makes the data more quickly accessible and better protected against manipulation.
Google stores the collected data for varying lengths of time. Some data you can delete at any time, some is automatically deleted after a limited time, and some is stored by Google for a longer period. Some data (such as items from “My Activity”, photos, or documents, products) stored in your Google account remains stored until you delete it. Even if you are not logged into a Google account, you can delete some data associated with your device, browser, or app.
How can I delete my data or prevent data storage?
In general, you can manually delete data in the Google account. With the automatic deletion function for location and activity data introduced in 2019, information is stored depending on your decision – either for 3 or 18 months and then deleted.
Regardless of whether you have a Google account or not, you can configure your browser to delete or deactivate Google cookies. Depending on which browser you use, this works in different ways. The following instructions show how to manage cookies in your browser:
Chrome: Delete, enable, and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Manage cookies and website data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have stored on your computer
Internet Explorer: Delete and manage cookies
Microsoft Edge: Delete and manage cookies
If you generally do not want any cookies, you can set up your browser to always inform you when a cookie is to be set. This way, you can decide for each individual cookie whether you allow it or not. Since YouTube is a subsidiary of Google, there is a common privacy policy. If you want to learn more about how your data is handled, we recommend reading the privacy policy at https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=de.
Source: Created with the Privacy Policy Generator by AdSimple in cooperation with hashtagmann.de
