data protection
Data protection
Introduction and overview
We have written this data protection declaration (version 08/30/2023-122572788) in order to explain to you, in accordance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and applicable national laws, which personal data (in short, data) we as controllers - and those of Processors commissioned by us (e.g. providers) – process, will process in the future and what legal options you have. The terms used are to be understood as gender-neutral.
In short: We inform you comprehensively about the data we process about you.
Privacy policies usually sound very technical and use legal terms. This data protection declaration, however, is intended to describe the most important things to you as simply and transparently as possible. To the extent that it promotes transparency, technical terms are explained in a reader-friendly manner, links to further information are provided and graphics are used. We thereby inform you in clear and simple language that we only process personal data as part of our business activities if there is a corresponding legal basis. This is certainly not possible if you make as brief, unclear and legal-technical statements as possible, as are often standard on the Internet when it comes to data protection. I hope you find the following explanations interesting and informative and perhaps there is one or two pieces of information that you didn't know before.
If you still have questions, we would like to ask you to contact the responsible body named below or in the legal notice, follow the existing links and look at further information on third-party sites. You can of course also find our contact details in the legal notice.
scope of application
This data protection declaration applies to all personal data processed by us in the company and to all personal data that companies commissioned by us (processors) process. By personal data we mean information within the meaning of Article 4 No. 1 GDPR such as a person's name, email address and postal address. The processing of personal data ensures that we can offer and bill our services and products, whether online or offline. The scope of this data protection declaration includes:
all online presences (websites, online shops) that we operate
Social media appearances and email communication
mobile apps for smartphones and other devices
In short: The data protection declaration applies to all areas in which personal data is processed in a structured manner within the company via the channels mentioned. If we enter into legal relationships with you outside of these channels, we will inform you separately if necessary.
Legal basis
In the following data protection declaration we provide you with transparent information about the legal principles and regulations, i.e. the legal bases of the General Data Protection Regulation, which enable us to process personal data.
As far as EU law is concerned, we refer to REGULATION (EU) 2016/679 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of April 27, 2016. You can of course access this EU General Data Protection Regulation online on EUR-Lex, the access to the EU -Law, read at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/DE/ALL/?uri=celex%3A32016R0679.
We only process your data if at least one of the following conditions applies:
Consent (Article 6 paragraph 1 lit. a GDPR): You have given us your consent to process data for a specific purpose. An example would be saving the data you entered on a contact form.
Contract (Article 6 Paragraph 1 Letter b GDPR): In order to fulfill a contract or pre-contractual obligations with you, we process your data. For example, if we conclude a purchase contract with you, we need personal information in advance.
Legal obligation (Article 6 paragraph 1 lit. c GDPR): If we are subject to a legal obligation, we process your data. For example, we are legally obliged to keep invoices for accounting purposes. These usually contain personal data.
Legitimate interests (Article 6 paragraph 1 lit. f GDPR): In the case of legitimate interests that do not restrict your fundamental rights, we reserve the right to process personal data. For example, we need to process certain data in order to operate our website securely and economically efficiently. This processing is therefore a legitimate interest.
Other conditions such as the perception of recordings in the public interest and the exercise of public authority as well as the protection of vital interests generally do not apply to us.
If the legal basis is relevant, it will be shown in the appropriate place.
In addition to the EU regulation, national laws also apply:
In Austria this is the Federal Law for the Protection of Natural Persons with regard to the Processing of Personal Data (Data Protection Act), or DSG for short.
The Federal Data Protection Act, or BDSG for short, applies in Germany.
If other regional or national laws apply, we will inform you about them in the following sections.
Contact details of the person responsible
If you have any questions about data protection or the processing of personal data, you will find the contact details of the responsible person or body below:
Storage period
Our general criterion is that we only store personal data for as long as is absolutely necessary to provide our services and products. This means that we delete personal data as soon as the reason for data processing no longer exists. In some cases, we are legally obliged to store certain data even after the original purpose has ceased, for example for accounting purposes.
If you wish to have your data deleted or revoke your consent to data processing, the data will be deleted as quickly as possible and unless there is an obligation to store it.
We will inform you below about the specific duration of the respective data processing, provided we have further information.
Rights under the General Data Protection Regulation
In accordance with Articles 13, 14 GDPR, we inform you of the following rights to which you are entitled so that data is processed fairly and transparently:
According to Article 15 GDPR, you have a right to information as to whether we are processing your data. If this is the case, you have the right to receive a copy of the data and to know the following information:
for what purpose we carry out the processing;
the categories, i.e. the types of data, that are processed;
who receives this data and, if the data is transferred to third countries, how security can be guaranteed;
how long the data is stored;
the existence of the right to rectification, deletion or restriction of processing and the right to object to processing;
that you can complain to a supervisory authority (links to these authorities can be found below);
the origin of the data if we did not collect it from you;
whether profiling is carried out, i.e. whether data is automatically evaluated in order to create a personal profile for you.
According to Article 16 GDPR, you have a right to correction of data, which means that we must correct data if you find errors.
According to Article 17 GDPR, you have the right to deletion (“right to be forgotten”), which specifically means that you can request the deletion of your data.
According to Article 18 GDPR, you have the right to restrict processing, which means that we are only allowed to store the data but not use it any further.
According to Article 20 GDPR, you have the right to data portability, which means that upon request we will provide you with your data in a common format.
According to Article 21 GDPR, you have a right to object, which, once enforced, will result in a change to the processing.
If the processing of your data is based on Article 6 Paragraph 1 Letter e (public interest, exercise of official authority) or Article 6 Paragraph 1 Letter f (legitimate interest), you can object to the processing. We will then check as quickly as possible whether we can legally comply with this objection.
If data is used to conduct direct advertising, you can object to this type of data processing at any time. We may then no longer use your data for direct marketing.
If data is used to carry out profiling, you can object to this type of data processing at any time. We are then no longer allowed to use your data for profiling.
According to Article 22 GDPR, you may have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing (e.g. profiling).
According to Article 77 GDPR, you have the right to lodge a complaint. This means that you can complain to the data protection authority at any time if you believe that the processing of personal data violates the GDPR.
In short: you have rights – do not hesitate to contact the responsible body listed above!
If you believe that the processing of your data violates data protection law or your data protection rights have been violated in any other way, you can complain to the supervisory authority.
For Austria, this is the data protection authority, whose website you can find at https://www.dsb.gv.at/. In Germany there is a data protection officer for each federal state. For more information, you can contact the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI). The following local data protection authority is responsible for our company:
Austria data protection authority
Head: Mag. Dr. Andrea Jelinek
Address: Barichgasse 40-42, 1030 Vienna
Telephone number: +43 1 52 152-0
Email address: dsb@dsb.gv.at
Website: https://www.dsb.gv.at/
Security of data processing
To protect personal data, we have implemented both technical and organizational measures. Where possible, we encrypt or pseudonymize personal data. In doing so, we make it as difficult as possible for third parties to infer personal information from our data.
Art. 25 GDPR speaks here of “data protection through technology design and through data protection-friendly default settings” and means that one always thinks about security and the corresponding security when it comes to both software (e.g. forms) and hardware (e.g. access to the server room). takes measures. Below we will go into specific measures if necessary.
TLS encryption with https
TLS, encryption and https sound very technical and they are. We use HTTPS (the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure stands for “secure hypertext transfer protocol”) to transmit data on the Internet in a secure manner.
This means that the complete transmission of all data from your browser to our web server is secured - no one can “eavesdrop”.
We have thus introduced an additional security layer and comply with data protection through technical design (Article 25 Paragraph 1 GDPR). By using TLS (Transport Layer Security), an encryption protocol for secure data transmission over the Internet, we can ensure the protection of confidential data.
You can recognize the use of this data transfer protection by the small lock symbol at the top left of the browser, to the left of the internet address (e.g. examplepage.de) and the use of the https scheme (instead of http) as part of our internet address.
If you would like to know more about encryption, we recommend searching Google for “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure wiki” to get good links to further information.
communication
Communication summary
👥 Affected people: Anyone who communicates with us by phone, email or online form
📓 Processed data: e.g. E.g. telephone number, name, email address, entered form data. You can find more details about this under the type of contact used
🤝 Purpose: Handling communication with customers, business partners, etc.
📅 Storage period: Duration of the business case and the legal regulations
⚖️ Legal basis: Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. a GDPR (consent), Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. b GDPR (contract), Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. f GDPR (legitimate interests)
If you contact us and communicate by telephone, email or online form, personal data may be processed.
The data will be processed to process and process your question and the related business transaction. The data is stored for as long as the law requires.
Affected people
The above-mentioned processes affect everyone who tries to contact us via the communication channels we provide.
phone
If you call us, the call data will be stored pseudonymously on the respective device and by the telecommunications provider used. In addition, data such as name and telephone number can then be sent by email and saved to answer your query. The data will be deleted as soon as the business transaction has ended and legal requirements allow it.
e-mail
If you communicate with us via email, data may be stored on the respective device (computer, laptop, smartphone, etc.) and data may be stored on the email server. The data will be deleted as soon as the business transaction has ended and legal requirements allow it.
Online forms
If you communicate with us using an online form, data will be stored on our web server and, if necessary, forwarded to one of our email addresses. The data will be deleted as soon as the business transaction has ended and legal requirements allow it.
Legal basis
The processing of data is based on the following legal bases:
Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. a GDPR (consent): You give us your consent to store your data and to continue using it for purposes relevant to the business transaction;
Art. 6 Paragraph 1 Letter b GDPR (contract): There is a need for the fulfillment of a contracts with you or a processor such as B. the telephone provider or we need to use the data for pre-contractual activities, such as: B. the preparation of an offer;
Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. f GDPR (legitimate interests): We want to conduct customer inquiries and business communication in a professional framework. For this purpose, certain technical facilities such as: B. E-mail programs, exchange servers and mobile phone operators are necessary in order to be able to operate communication efficiently.
Order processing agreement (AVV)
In this section we would like to explain to you what a data processing agreement is and why it is needed. Because the word “order processing agreement” is quite a tongue twister, we will often only use the acronym AVV here in the text. Like most companies, we do not work alone, but also use the services of other companies or individuals. Due to the involvement of different companies or service providers, we may pass on personal data for processing. These partners then act as processors with whom we conclude a contract, the so-called data processing agreement (AVV). The most important thing for you to know is that the processing of your personal data takes place exclusively according to our instructions and must be regulated by the AVV.
Who are processors?
As a company and website owner, we are responsible for all data that we process from you. In addition to those responsible, there can also be so-called processors. This includes every company or person who processes personal data on our behalf. More specifically and according to the GDPR definition: any natural or legal person, authority, institution or other body that processes personal data on our behalf is considered a processor. Processors can therefore be service providers such as hosting or cloud providers, payment or newsletter providers or large companies such as Google or Microsoft.
To make the terminology easier to understand, here is an overview of the three roles in the GDPR:
Data subject (you as a customer or interested party) → Responsible party (we as a company and client) → Processor (service provider such as web host or cloud provider)
Content of an order processing contract
As already mentioned above, we have concluded an AVV with our partners who act as processors. Above all, this states that the processor processes the data to be processed exclusively in accordance with the GDPR. The contract must be concluded in writing, although in this context the electronic contract conclusion is also considered “written”. The processing of personal data only takes place on the basis of the contract. The contract must contain the following:
Binding to us as those responsible
Obligations and rights of the person responsible
Categories of data subjects
Type of personal data
Type and purpose of data processing
Subject and duration of data processing
Place of data processing
The contract also contains all of the processor’s obligations. The most important duties are:
To ensure data security measures
to take possible technical and organizational measures to protect the rights of the data subject
to maintain a data processing directory
to cooperate with the data protection supervisory authority upon request
carry out a risk analysis in relation to the personal data received
Sub-processors may only be commissioned with the written consent of the person responsible
You can see what an AVV looks like in concrete terms at https://www.wko.at/service/wirtschaftsrecht-gewerberecht/eu-dsgvo-mustervertrag-vertragsprocessing.html. A sample contract is presented here.
Cookies
Cookies summary
👥 Affected: Visitors to the website
🤝 Purpose: depending on the respective cookie. You can find more details about this below or from the manufacturer of the software that sets the cookie.
📓 Data processed: Depending on the cookie used. You can find more details about this below or from the manufacturer of the software that sets the cookie.
📅 Storage period: depending on the respective cookie, can vary from hours to years
⚖️ Legal basis: Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. a GDPR (consent), Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. f GDPR (legitimate interests)
What are cookies?
Our website uses HTTP cookies to store user-specific data.
Below we explain what cookies are and why they are used so that you can better understand the following privacy policy.
Whenever you surf the Internet, you use one b
rowser. Well-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 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 areas of application. HTTP cookies are small files that our website stores on your computer. These cookie files are automatically stored in the cookie folder, 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 sends the “user-related” information back to our site. Thanks to cookies, our website knows who you are and offers you the settings you are used to. In some browsers each cookie has its own file, in others, such as Firefox, all cookies are stored in a single file.
The following graphic shows a possible interaction between a web browser such as: B. Chrome and the web server. The web browser requests a website and receives a cookie back from the server, which the browser uses again as soon as another page is requested.
There are both first-party cookies and third-party cookies. First-party cookies are created directly by our site, third-party cookies are created by partner websites (e.g. Google Analytics). Each cookie must be evaluated individually because each cookie stores different data. The expiry 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 “malicious” things. Cookies also cannot access information on your PC.
For example, cookie data might look like this:
Name: _ga
Value: GA1.2.1326744211.152122572788-9
Purpose: Differentiation of website visitors
Expiry date: after 2 years
A browser should be able to support these minimum sizes:
At least 4096 bytes per cookie
At least 50 cookies per domain
At least 3000 cookies in total
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 data protection declaration. 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 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 later checks out. These cookies do not delete the shopping cart, even if the user closes their browser window.
Purposeful cookies
These cookies collect information about user behavior and whether the user receives any error messages. These cookies are also used to measure the loading time and behavior of the website on different browsers.
Targeting cookies
These cookies ensure better user experience. For example, entered locations, font sizes or form data are saved.
Advertising cookies
These cookies are also called targeting cookies. They serve to provide the user with individually tailored advertising. This can be very practical, but also very annoying.
Typically, when you first visit a website, you will be asked which of these types of cookies you would like to allow. And of course this decision is also saved in a cookie.
If you want to know more about cookies and are not afraid of technical documentation, we recommend https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6265, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments called “HTTP State Management Mechanism” .
Purpose of processing via cookies
The purpose ultimately depends on the respective cookie. You can find more details about this below or from the manufacturer of the software that sets the cookie.
Which data is processed?
Cookies are little helpers for many different tasks. Unfortunately, it is not possible to generalize which data is stored in cookies, but we will inform you about the data processed or stored in the following data protection declaration.
Storage period of cookies
The storage period depends on the respective cookie and is further specified below. Some cookies are deleted after less than an hour, others can remain on a computer for several years.
You also have influence yourself
on the storage period. You can delete all cookies manually at any time via your browser (see also “Right to object” below). Furthermore, cookies that are based on consent will be deleted at the latest after you revoke your consent, although the legality of storage remains unaffected until then.
Right to object – how can I delete cookies?
You decide for yourself how and whether you want to use cookies. Regardless of which service or website the cookies come from, you always have the option of deleting cookies, deactivating them or only partially allowing them. For example, you can block third-party cookies but allow all other cookies.
If you would like to find out which cookies have been stored in your browser, if you want to change or delete cookie settings, you can do this in your browser settings:
Chrome: Delete, enable and manage cookies in Chrome
Safari: Manage cookies and site data with Safari
Firefox: Delete cookies to remove data that websites have placed on your computer
Internet Explorer: Deleting and managing cookies
Microsoft Edge: Deleting and managing cookies
If you generally do not want cookies, you can set your browser so that it always informs you when a cookie is to be set. This means you can decide for each individual cookie whether you allow the cookie or not. The procedure varies depending on the browser. The best thing to do is to search for the instructions in Google using the search term “delete cookies Chrome” or “deactivate cookies Chrome” in the case of a Chrome browser.
Legal basis
The so-called “Cookie Guidelines” have existed since 2009. This states that the storage of cookies requires your consent (Article 6 Para. 1 lit. a GDPR). However, there are still very different reactions to these guidelines within the EU countries. In Austria, however, this directive was implemented in Section 96 Paragraph 3 of the Telecommunications Act (TKG). In Germany, the cookie guidelines have not been implemented as national law. Instead, this directive was largely implemented in Section 15 Paragraph 3 of the Telemedia Act (TMG).
For absolutely necessary cookies, even if consent is not given, there are legitimate interests (Article 6 Para. 1 lit. f GDPR), which in most cases are of an economic nature. We want to provide website visitors with a pleasant user experience and certain cookies are often absolutely necessary for this.
If non-essential cookies are used, this will only happen with your consent. The legal basis in this respect is Article 6 Paragraph 1 Letter a GDPR.
In the following sections you will be informed in more detail about the use of cookies if the software used uses cookies.
Web hosting introduction
Web hosting summary
👥 Affected: Visitors to the website
🤝 Purpose: professional hosting of the website and securing operations
📓 Processed data: IP address, time of website visit, browser used and other data. You can find more details about this below or with the web hosting provider you use.
📅 Storage period: depends on the respective provider, but usually 2 weeks
⚖️ Legal basis: Art. 6 Para. 1 lit.f GDPR (legitimate interests)
What is web hosting?
When you visit websites these days, certain information - including personal data - is created and stored automatically, including on this website. This data should be processed as sparingly as possible and only with justification. By the way, by website we mean the entirety of all websites on a domain, i.e. everything from the start page (homepage) to the very last subpage (like this one). By domain we mean, for example, example.de or musterexample.com.
If you want to view a website on a computer, tablet, or smartphone, you use a program called a web browser. You probably know a few web browsers by name: Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari. We call it browser or web browser for short.
To display the website, the browser must connect to another computer where the website's code is stored: the web server. Operating a web server is a complicated and time-consuming task, which is why it is usually carried out by professional providers. These offer web hosting and thus ensure reliable and error-free storage of website data. A lot of technical terms, but please stay tuned, it gets better!
When the browser connects to your computer (desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone) and during data transfer to and from the web server, personal data may be processed. One