Privacy
We have written this privacy policy (version 22.03.2021-111691096) to provide you with information in accordance with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 as well as to explain what information we collect, how we use data and what choices you have as a visitor to this website.
Privacy policies usually sound very technical. However, this version should describe the most important things as simply and clearly as possible. Moreover, technical terms are explained in a reader-friendly manner whenever possible. We would also like to convey that we only collect and use information via this website if there is a corresponding legal basis for it. This is certainly not possible if you give very brief technical explanations, as are often standard on the Internet when it comes to data protection. We hope you find the following explanations interesting and informative. Maybe you will also find some information that you did not know yet.
Should you still have questions, we kindly ask you to follow the existing links to see further information on third-party websites, or to simply write us an email. You can find our contact information in our website’s imprint.

Automatic Data Retention
Every time you visit a website nowadays, certain information is automatically created and stored, just as it happens on this website.
Even while you are currently visiting our website, our web server – this is the computer this website is stored on, usually automatically retains data such as the below – for reasons such as operational security or for creating access statistics etc.

- the full address (URL) of the accessed website
- browser and browser version
- the operating system used
- the address (URL) of the previously visited site (referrer URL)
- the host name and the IP-address of the device the website is accessed from
- date and time

in so-called web server log files.
Generally, these files are stored for two weeks and are then automatically deleted. We do not pass these data to others, but we cannot exclude the possibility that this data may be looked at by the authorities in case of illegal conduct. The legal basis according to Article 6 Paragraph 1 f GDPR (lawfulness of processing) is that there is a legitimate interest in enabling the error-free operation of this website by recording web server log files.
In short: your visit is logged by our provider (company that runs our website on servers), but we do not pass on your data!

Cookies
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.

What exactly are cookies?
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.
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 cookies. 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: GA1.2.1326744211.152111691096-9
purpose: differentiation between website visitors
expiration date: after 2 years

A browser should support these minimum sizes:
- at least 4096 bytes per cookie
- at least 50 cookies per domain
- at least 3000 cookies in total

Which types of cookies are there?
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.

Storage of Personal Data
Any personal data you electronically submit to us on this website, such as your name, email address, home address or other personal information you provide via the transmission of a form or via any comments to the blog, are solely used for the specified purpose and get stored securely along with the respective submission times and IP-address. These data do not get passed on to third parties.
Therefore, we use personal data for the communication with only those users, who have explicitly requested being contacted, as well as for the execution of the services and products offered on this website. We do not pass your personal data to others without your approval, but we cannot exclude the possibility this data will be looked at in case of illegal conduct.
If you send us personal data via email – and thus not via this website – we cannot guarantee any safe transmission or protection of your data. We recommend you, to never send confidential data via email.
The legal basis according to Article 6 Paragraph 1 a GDPR (lawfulness of processing) is that you give us your consent to the processing of the data you have entered. You can revoke this consent at any time - an informal email is sufficient, you will find our contact details in the imprint.

Rights in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation
You are granted the following rights in accordance with the provisions of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and the Austrian Data Protection Act (DSG):

- right to rectification (article 16 GDPR)
- right to erasure (“right to be forgotten“) (article 17 GDPR)
- right to restrict processing (article 18 GDPR)
- right to notification – notification obligation regarding rectification or erasure of personal data or 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 think that the processing of your data violates the data protection law, or that your data protection rights have been infringed in any other way, you can lodge a complaint with your respective regulatory authority. For Austria this is the data protection authority, whose website you can access at https://www.data-protection-authority.gv.at/.

Evaluation of Visitor Behaviour
In the following Privacy Policy, we will inform you on if and how we evaluate the data of your visit to this website. The evaluation is generally made anonymously, and we cannot link to you personally based on your behaviour on this website.
You can find out more about how to disagree with the evaluation of visitor data, in the Privacy Policy below.

TLS encryption with https
The terms TLS, encryption and https sound very technical, which they are indeed. We use HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) to securely transfer data on the Internet.
This means that the entire transmission of all data from your browser to our web server is secured – nobody can “listen in”.
We have thus introduced an additional layer of security and meet privacy requirements through technology design Article 25 Section 1 GDPR). With the use of TLS (Transport Layer Security), which is an encryption protocol for safe data transfer on the internet, we can ensure the protection of confidential information.
You can recognise the use of this safeguarding tool by the little lock-symbol, which is situated in your browser’s top left corner in the left of the internet address (e.g. examplepage.uk), as well as by the display of the letters https (instead of http) as a part of our web address.
If you want to know more about encryption, we recommend you to do a Google search for “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure wiki” to find good links to further information.

Google Fonts Privacy Policy
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.

What are Google Fonts?
Google Fonts (previously Google Web Fonts) is a list of over 800 fonts which 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.

Which data is saved by Google?
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.

How long and where is the data stored?
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.

How can I delete my data or prevent it being stored?
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=111691096. 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=111691096. While Google does address relevant elements on data protection at this link, it does not contain any detailed information on data retention.
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.

Google Analytics Privacy Policy
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.

What is Google Analytics?
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:

- Target audience reports: With the help of target audience reports we can get to know our users better and can therefore better understand who is interested in our service.
- Advertising reports: Through advertising reports we can analyse our online advertising better and hence improve it.
- Acquisition reports: Acquisition reports provide us helpful information on how we can get more people enthusiastic about our service.
- Behaviour reports: With these reports, we can find out how you interact with our website. By the means of behaviour reports, we can understand what path you go on our website and what links you click.
- Conversion reports: A conversion is the process of leading you to carry out a desired action due to a marketing message. An example of this would be transforming you from a mere website visitor into a buyer or a newsletter subscriber. Hence, with the help of these reports we can see in more detail, if our marketing measures are successful with you. Our aim is to increase our conversion rate.
- Real time reports: With the help of these reports we can see in real time, what happens on our website. It makes us for example see, we can see how many users are reading this text right now.

Embedded Social Media elements Privacy Policy
We have embedded elements from social media services on our website, to display pictures, videos and texts. By visiting pages that present such elements, data is transferred from your browser to the respective social media service, where it is stored. We do not have access to this data.
The following links lead to the respective social media services’ sites, where you can find a declaration on how they handle your data:

- Instagram Data Policy: https://help.instagram.com/519522125107875
- For YouTube, the Google Privacy Policy applies: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-GB
- Facebook Data Policy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy
- Twitter Privacy Policy: https://twitter.com/en/privacy

LinkedIn Privacy Policy
On our website we use social plugins from the social media network LinkedIn, of the LinkedIn Corporation, 2029 Stierlin Court, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. Social plugins can be feeds, content sharing or a link to our LinkedIn page. Social plugins are clearly marked with the well-known LinkedIn logo and for example allow sharing interesting content directly via our website. Moreover, LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company Wilton Place in Dublin is responsible for data processing in the European Economic Area and Switzerland.
By embedding these plugins, data can be sent to, as well as stored and processed by LinkedIn. In this privacy policy we want to inform you what data this is, how the network uses this data and how you can manage or prevent data retention.

What data are stored by LinkedIn?
LinkedIn stores no personal data due to the mere integration of social plugins. LinkedIn calls the data generated by plugins passive impressions. However, if you click on a social plugin to e.g. share our content, the platform stores personal data as so-called “active impressions”. This happens regardless of whether you have a LinkedIn account or not. If you are logged in, the collected data will be assigned to your account.
When you interact with our plugins, your browser establishes a direct connection to LinkedIn’s servers. Through that, the company logs various usage data. These may include your IP address, login data, device information or information about your internet or cellular provider. If you use LinkedIn services via your smartphone, your location may also be identified (after you have given permission). Moreover, LinkedIn can share these data with third-party advertisers in “hashed” form. Hashing means that a data set is transformed into a character string. This allows data to be encrypted, which prevents persons from getting identified.
Most data on of your user behaviour is stored in cookies. These are small text files that usually get placed in your browser. Furthermore, LinkedIn can also use web beacons, pixel tags, display tags and other device recognitions.
Various tests also show which cookies are set when a user interacts with a social plug-in. We do not claim for the information we found to be exhaustive, as it only serves as an example. The following cookies were set without being logged in to LinkedIn:

Name: bcookie
Value: =2&34aab2aa-2ae1-4d2a-8baf-c2e2d7235c16111691096-
Purpose: This cookie is a so-called “browser ID cookie” and stores your identification number (ID).
Expiry date: after 2 years

Name: lang
Value: v=2&lang=en-gb Purpose:This cookie saves
your default or preferred language.
Expiry date: after end of session

Name: lidc
Value: 1818367:t=1571904767:s=AQF6KNnJ0G111691096…
Purpose:This cookie is used for routing. Routing records how you found your way to LinkedIn and how you navigate through the website.
Expiry date: after 24 hours

Name: rtc
Value: kt0lrv3NF3x3t6xvDgGrZGDKkX
Purpose: No further information could be found about this cookie.
Expiry date: after 2 minutes

Name: JSESSIONID
Value: ajax:1116910962900777718326218137
Purpose: This is a session cookie that LinkedIn uses to maintain anonymous user sessions through the server.
Expiry date: after end of session

Name: bscookie
Value: “v=1&201910230812…Purpose: This cookie is a security cookie. LinkedIn describes it as a secure browser ID cookie.
Expiry date: after 2 years

Name: fid
Value: AQHj7Ii23ZBcqAAAA…
Purpose: We could not find any further information about this cookie.
Expiry date: after 7 days

Note: LinkedIn also works with third parties. That is why we identified the Google Analytics cookies _ga and _gat in our test.

How long and where are the data stored?
In general, LinkedIn retains your personal data for as long as the company considers it necessary for providing its services. However, LinkedIn deletes your personal data when you delete your account. In some exceptional cases, LinkedIn keeps some summarised and anonymised data, even account deletions. As soon as you delete your account, it may take up to a day until other people can no longer see your data. LinkedIn generally deletes the data within 30 days. However, LinkedIn retains data if it is necessary for legal reasons. Also, data that can no longer be assigned to any person remains stored even after the account is closed. The data are stored on various servers in America and presumably also in Europe.

YouTube Privacy Policy
We have integrated YouTube videos to our website. Therefore, we can show you interesting videos directly on our site. YouTube is a video portal, which has been a subsidiary company of Google LLC since 2006. The video portal is operated by YouTube, LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066, USA. When you visit a page on our website that contains an embedded YouTube video, your browser automatically connects to the servers of YouTube or Google. Thereby, certain data are transferred (depending on the settings). Google is responsible for YouTube’s data processing and therefore Google’s data protection applies.
In the following we will explain in more detail which data is processed, why we have integrated YouTube videos and how you can manage or clear your data.

What data is stored by YouTube?
As soon as you visit one of our pages with an integrated YouTube, YouTube places at least one cookie that stores your IP address and our URL. If you are logged into your YouTube account, by using cookies YouTube can usually associate your interactions on our website with your profile. This includes data such as session duration, bounce rate, approximate location, technical information such as browser type, screen resolution or your Internet provider. Additional data can include contact details, potential ratings, shared content via social media or YouTube videos you added to your favourites.
If you are not logged in to a Google or YouTube account, Google stores data with a unique identifier linked to your device, browser or app. Thereby, e.g. your preferred language setting is maintained. However, many interaction data cannot be saved since less cookies are set.
In the following list we show you cookies that were placed in the browser during a test. On the one hand, we show cookies that were set without being logged into a YouTube account. On the other hand, we show you what cookies were placed while being logged in. We do not claim for this list to be exhaustive, as user data always depend on how you interact with YouTube.

Name: YSC
Value: b9-CV6ojI5Y111691096-1
Purpose: This cookie registers a unique ID to store statistics of the video that was viewed.
Expiry date: after end of session

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.
Expiry date: after 8 months

Name: GPS
Value: 1
Purpose: This cookie registers your unique ID on mobile devices to track GPS locations.
Expiry date: after 30 minutes

Name: VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
Value: 95Chz8bagyU
Purpose: This cookie tries to estimate the user’s internet bandwith on our sites (that have built-in YouTube videos).
Expiry date: after 8 monthsFurther cookies that are placed when you are logged into your YouTube account:

Name: APISID
Value: zILlvClZSkqGsSwI/AU1aZI6HY7111691096-
Purpose: This cookie is used to create a profile on your interests. This data is then used for personalised advertisements.
Expiry date: after 2 years

Name: CONSENT
Value: YES+AT.de+20150628-20-0
Purpose: The cookie stores the status of a user’s consent to the use of various Google services. CONSENT also provides safety measures to protect users from unauthorised attacks.
Expiry date: after 19 years

How long and where is the data stored?
The data YouTube receive and process on you are stored on Google’s servers. Most of these servers are in America.
At https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/?hl=en you can see where Google’s data centres are located. Your data is distributed across the servers. Therefore, the data can be retrieved quicker and is better protected against manipulation.
Google stores collected data for different periods of time. You can delete some data anytime, while other data are automatically deleted after a certain time, and still other data are stored by Google for a long time. Some data (such as elements on “My activity”, photos, documents or products) that are saved in your Google account are stored until you delete them. Moreover, you can delete some data associated with your device, browser, or app, even if you are not signed into a Google Account.