We appreciate your interest in our website. Protecting your privacy when processing personal data, as well as the security of all business data, is important to us, and we consider it in our business processes. Here we provide detailed information about how we handle your data.

§ 1 General information about the collection of personal data in connection with visiting our website

(1) Below, we inform you about the collection of personal data when using our website. Personal data includes all data that can be personally related to you, such as name, address, email addresses, and user behavior. Please note that data transmission over the internet (e.g., when communicating via email) may have security vulnerabilities. Complete protection of data from access by third parties is not possible.

(2) Responsible person acc. Art. 4 para. 7 EU General Data Protection Regulation (DSGVO) is
effective GmbH
L13, 3-4
68161 Mannheim
Germany
Phone: +49 621 17893 0
E-mail: mannheim@effective-world.com

You can reach our data protection officer at dataprotection@effective-world.com or by mail with the addition "The Data Protection Officer".

(3) These data protection notices only apply to the part of our internet presence that is aimed at EU citizens. We base this on the language selection you make on our website. This means that these data protection notices only apply if you choose a language that belongs to the EU language area. To protect your data and privacy, we strongly recommend refraining from choosing a different language, as in this case, calls to servers in non-secure third countries and from companies with which there is no data protection agreement to protect your data may occur. These companies may process this data for their own purposes, of which we have no knowledge, and may also disclose it to state intelligence services and law enforcement authorities. We have no control over these processing activities.

(4) This website is hosted by an external service provider (host). The personal data collected on this website is stored on the servers of the host. This may include, in particular, IP addresses, contact requests, meta and communication data, contract data, contact details, names, website access, and other data generated via a website. The use of the host is for the purpose of fulfilling our contractual obligations to our potential and existing customers (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. b GDPR) and in the interest of a secure, fast, and efficient provision of our online offering by a professional provider (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR). If consent has been obtained, processing is carried out exclusively on the basis of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a GDPR and § 25 para. 1 TDDDG, insofar as the consent includes the storage of cookies or access to information on the user's end device (e.g., device fingerprinting) within the meaning of the TDDDG. Consent can be revoked at any time. Our host will only process your data to the extent necessary to fulfill its contractual obligations and will follow our instructions regarding this data.
We have entered into a contract for data processing (AVV) with the host of the website. This is a data protectionally required contract which ensures that it processes the personal data of our website visitors only according to our instructions and in compliance with the GDPR.

(5) Unless a specific storage period is mentioned in this data protection declaration, your personal data will remain with us until the purpose for data processing ceases. If you assert a legitimate request for deletion or revoke consent to data processing, your data will be deleted unless we have other legally permissible reasons for storing your personal data (e.g., tax or commercial retention periods); in the latter case, deletion will occur once these reasons no longer apply.

(6) If you have consented to data processing, we will process your personal data on the basis of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a GDPR or Art. 9 para. 2 lit. a GDPR, if special categories of data according to Art. 9 para. 1 GDPR are processed. In the case of explicit consent to the transmission of personal data to third countries, data processing also takes place on the basis of Art. 49 para. 1 lit. a GDPR. If you have consented to the storage of cookies or access to information on your end device (e.g., via device fingerprinting), data processing also takes place on the basis of § 25 para. 1 TDDDG. Consent can be revoked at any time. If your data is necessary for the performance of a contract or for the implementation of pre-contractual measures, we will process your data on the basis of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. b GDPR. Furthermore, we will process your data if it is necessary to fulfill a legal obligation on the basis of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. c GDPR. Data processing may also take place on the basis of our legitimate interest pursuant to Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR. The relevant legal bases will be provided in the following paragraphs of this data protection declaration.

§ 2 Your rights

(1) Below, we inform you about your rights as a data subject according to Art. 15 GDPR. You can exercise these rights at any time and therefore contact us directly. If you assert these rights against us, we will thoroughly examine them, taking into account the associated legal requirements and obligations. We may request further information from you for this purpose. We will explain the results of our examination and our approach to fulfilling your request in detail. It is possible that we may not be able to fully comply with your wishes in the manner you desire. However, this should not deter you from asserting your rights or inquiring with us. We will be happy to answer all your inquiries.

(2) Right to Information
You have the right to request information from us at any time about whether and what data concerning you is processed by us. This also includes information about the purposes of processing, if applicable, recipients to whom we have disclosed data about you, the planned storage period, and, if we have not collected this data directly from you, information about the origin of this data. In addition, you have the right to receive a one-time free copy of your personal data stored by us. For the creation of subsequent copies, we reserve the right to charge a reasonable administrative fee.

(3) Right to Rectification
You have the right to request us to correct inaccurate data that we have stored about you. This also includes the right to complete incomplete personal data.

(4) Right to Erasure
You have the right to request us to delete data that we have stored about you. If we have published data about you, this also includes our obligation, under the "right to be forgotten" pursuant to Art. 17 (2) GDPR, to forward your deletion request concerning all links to this data as well as copies or replications of this data to other controllers responsible for processing this published personal data, taking into account available technology and implementation costs.

(5) Right to Restriction of Processing
You have the right to request us to restrict the processing of data that we have stored about you. After that, processing of this data is only possible with your consent or for a few legally defined purposes.

(6) Right to Object to Processing
If we base the processing of your personal data on the balancing of interests, you have the right to object to the processing. This is the case, in particular, if the processing is not necessary for the performance of a contract with you, as will be explained by us in the following description of the functions. When exercising such an objection, please explain the reasons why we should not process your personal data as we have done. In the event of your justified objection, we will examine the situation and either stop or adjust the data processing or show you our compelling legitimate reasons for continuing the processing.

(7) Right to Withdraw Consent to Data Processing
If you have given consent to the processing of your data, you can withdraw it at any time. Such withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing your personal data after you have communicated it to us.

(8) Right to Data Portability
You have the right to receive data about yourself that you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format for the purpose of transferring it to another controller. Upon your request and considering the existing technical possibilities, this also includes the direct transfer from us to another controller.

(9) Right to Lodge a Complaint with a Supervisory Authority
You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority at any time regarding our processing of data about you.

§ 3 Collection of personal data when visiting our website

(1) Even when you visit our website for purely informational purposes, we collect at least the following personal data, which your browser transmits to our server with each page request. This is necessary for technical reasons to display our website to you and to ensure its stability and security (the legal basis for this is Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. f GDPR):

• IP address
• Hostname
• Date and time of the request
• Time zone difference from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
• Content of the request (concrete page)
• Access status/HTTP status code
• Data volume transferred in each case
• Website from which the request comes (referrer)
• The specific pages of our website that you have accessed
• Browser: Type, version and set language
• Operating system: Type and version
• With JavaScript enabled moreover:
  • Screen resolution
  • Color depth
  • Browser window size
  • Installed browser plugins

(2) Use of cookies and other storage technologies:
Cookies are small text files that are stored on your device and associated with the browser you are using. Furthermore, websites can store so-called HTML5 storage objects on your device. In both cases, information is stored and read again. This can be done for very different purposes, but no programs can be executed or malware transmitted thereby.

a) This website uses the following elements directly on your device or through external sources. If these are elements requiring consent, we obtain this consent on the respective page where these elements are set. The legal basis for the use of these elements is therefore your consent pursuant to Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. a GDPR in conjunction with § 25 para. 1 TDDDG. The legal basis for the use of the other elements is generally our balancing of interests in operating our website due to technical necessity pursuant to Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. f GDPR in conjunction with § 25 para. 2 TDDDG. If another legal basis applies in individual cases, you will be informed about this when describing the corresponding functionality associated with an element.
 

b) You can configure your browser settings according to your preferences, for example, by rejecting the acceptance of third-party cookies or all cookies. 
We generally recommend deleting cookies, browsing history, and other temporary web storage objects automatically or regularly manually to enhance the protection of your privacy.

§ 4 Additional Features and Offers of Our Website

(1) In addition to purely informative use of our website, we offer various services that you can use if interested. For this purpose, you usually need to provide further personal data, which we use to provide the respective service and for which the principles of data processing mentioned above apply. Mandatory fields are marked with an asterisk. Information in fields not marked in this way is purely voluntary.

(2) When you contact us by email, your email address and any other data you provide will be stored by us to respond to your inquiry. If there is a business relationship between you and us or if one is established as a result of your inquiry, we will store this data for the duration of our business relationship. Otherwise, we will delete this data once storage is no longer necessary for the complete processing of your inquiry. If legal retention obligations prevent deletion, we will restrict processing of the data for the duration of those obligations and then delete it. By sending your email, you consent to us processing the data you have provided in the manner described above (Legal basis: Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. a GDPR).

(3) We sometimes use external service providers to process your data. These service providers have been carefully selected and commissioned by us, and we have entered into agreements with them to protect your data to the extent required by data protection laws.
 

In the following, we provide detailed information about special forms of use, email-based information services, tracking and analytics tools, social media offerings, and other third-party services used on our website.
 

Special Forms of Use

1. Use of Our Chatbot

(1) On our website, we have implemented a chatbot that allows you to ask questions in natural language through its input interface. Your question is processed in a first step on servers within the EU by a program logic defined by us. Only in a second step, your request, along with information defined by us, is passed to GPT 4.0 provided by OpenAI via an interface to generate a response in natural language using AI-based functionalities of GPT based on our specifications. Data transmission to countries outside the EU, especially to the USA, is possible. However, the personal data of your request, such as your IP address, remains with us. We do not forward any personal data about you to OpenAI unless the text you entered contains such data.

(2) To securely prevent the processing of personal or other sensitive data, we recommend avoiding the input of such data into the input interface. We use a paid version of GPT, in which OpenAI contractually commits not to store or use this data for its own purposes. Nevertheless, these inputs are stored for a period of 30 days and may be evaluated to comply with legal obligations regarding the correct handling of inappropriate text inputs. We have no influence on this. Please also consider any AI guidelines that may apply in your company in this context.

(3) If answering your request is not possible, a contact form will be displayed through which you can submit your request for manual processing. Providing some contact details is mandatory. These are marked accordingly, while additional information is voluntary. These data are processed exclusively by us and never shared with OpenAI or any other third parties. When submitting the contact form, you have the option to include the chat history with our chatbot. This helps us to answer your question and, in particular, to improve our chatbot. This option is voluntary. If you choose not to send us the chat history, we will still answer your question to the best of our ability.

(4) By using our chatbot, submitting the contact form, and optionally providing the chat history, you consent, in accordance with the notice displayed to you beforehand, to the processing of your data for answering your inquiries and for the analysis and further development of our chatbot by authorized employees of effective. This consent is voluntary and can be revoked by you at any time for the future by sending an informal message to us.

(5) We store the data you submit for the duration of processing your request and beyond for the purposes of usage analysis and further development of our chatbot until these purposes no longer apply or until you revoke your consent.

(6) The provider of GPT is OpenAI, L.L.C., 3180 18th St., San Francisco, CA 94110, USA. Further information on data protection at OpenAI and the use of ChatGPT can be found at openai.com/de-DE/policies/eu-privacy-policy/. Please note that the processing of personal data listed there by OpenAI largely applies only when ChatGPT is used directly by end users. However, when using our chatbot, no personal data is transmitted to OpenAI via the GPT interface at all unless you enter corresponding data into your request.
 

Web Analytics

The legal basis for the use of all web analytics tools listed in this section is Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. f GDPR, i.e., the protection of our legitimate interests balanced against the interests of our website visitors. Our interest lies in analyzing the usage of our website by our visitors to improve our offering and make it more interesting for you as a user. If the analytics tool serves additional purposes or if we use it for other interests, we will inform you directly in the explanations for the respective analytics tool.

2. Use of Matomo
(1) This website uses the web analytics service Matomo. Matomo stores cookies (see § 3) on your computer. The information collected in this way is stored exclusively on the responsible party's server in Germany. You can object to the use of Matomo in the following dialogue. Please note that you must set this opt-out cookie again if your browser's cookie storage is manually or automatically deleted. Likewise, setting the cookie is also required separately when using any other browser or device.
 

You can prevent Matomo from tracking your visit to our website at any time by clicking on this link. This will set a cookie in your browser, which contains no personal data and is solely intended to deactivate our Matomo tracking for your browser.You have currently opted out of tracking your visit to our website by Matomo. Click here to reactivate Matomo tracking.
 

(2) This website uses Matomo in a privacy-friendly configuration [without the use of cookies]. Your IP address is truncated for all analysis purposes, leaving only the last [two] bytes, which prevents any personal identification and makes geolocation very imprecise. Additionally, the IP address transmitted by your browser is not merged with any other data collected by us.

(3) The Matomo software is an open-source project. Information from the third-party provider about privacy can be found at matomo.org/privacy/policy.
 

Social media and other third-party services 

1. Social Media

(1) Currently, we do not use social media plug-ins on our website but only provide links to our profiles on the following social media platforms: LinkedIn. Merely having these links does not transmit any personal data to the respective provider. Only when you click on the link, identifiable by the social media icon, and thereby access our page hosted by the respective provider, does the provider become aware of it.

2. YouTube video integration

(1) We have embedded videos from the YouTube platform into our online offering to make our website more interesting and attractive to our visitors and to achieve a better presentation of content or topics. These videos are stored on www.YouTube.com and can be played directly from our website. The videos are all embedded in "privacy-enhanced mode," meaning that no data about you as a user is transmitted to YouTube unless you play the videos. Only when you play the videos will the data mentioned in Paragraph 2 be transferred. We have no control over this data transfer.

(2) Starting an embedded YouTube video provides YouTube with information that you have accessed this video and the corresponding subpage of our website. Information about how you interact with this video is also transmitted to YouTube. Additionally, the data mentioned in § 3 para. 1 of these data protection notices is transmitted. These data transfers occur regardless of whether you have a YouTube account and whether you are logged into it. If you are logged into YouTube, this data is directly associated with your account. If you do not wish to associate this data with your YouTube profile, you must log out before activating the video. YouTube stores your data as usage profiles and uses them for advertising, market research, and/or the needs-based design of its website. Such evaluation is carried out in particular (even for users not logged in) for the provision of needs-based advertising and to inform other users of the social network about your activities on our website. You have the right to object to the creation of these user profiles, and to exercise this right, you must contact YouTube.

(3) By playing the videos, you consent to the use and associated data transfer to YouTube. The legal basis for using the plug-in is Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. a GDPR.

(4) For more information about the purpose and scope of data collection and processing by YouTube, please refer to the privacy policy. There you will also find further information about your rights and privacy settings: YouTube LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066, USA, represented by Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA; https://www.google.com/policies/privacy

(5) For data transfers to insecure third countries, Google relies on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and the European Commission's Standard Data Protection Clauses. Details can be found here: https://policies.google.com/privacy/frameworks?hl=en.

3. Integration of Friendly Captcha

(1) On this website, we use the service provided by Friendly Captcha. We do this to protect our contact forms and chatbot from misuse by bots. The legal basis for the use of this plugin is Article 6(1)(f) GDPR.

(2) To achieve this, we integrate a program code from Friendly Captcha into certain areas of our website. This results in the visitor's device establishing a connection to Friendly Captcha’s servers in connection with the protected area (e.g., submitting a contact form). Furthermore, the browser you use receives a computational task from Friendly Captcha. The complexity of this task depends on various risk factors. Your device solves the computational task, consuming some system resources, and sends the result to our web server. This server communicates with Friendly Captcha’s server via an interface and receives a response as to whether the task was solved correctly by the device. Additionally, besides the data mentioned in § 3(1) of this privacy policy, your browser sends other connection data, environmental data, interaction data, and functional data to Friendly Captcha. Friendly Captcha evaluates this data and determines the likelihood of the user being human or a bot and transmits the result to us. Based on this result, we can classify access to our website or individual functions as human or potentially automated.

(3) For further information about the purpose and scope of data collection and processing by Friendly Captcha, please refer to their privacy policy. There, you will also find more information regarding your rights and settings options to protect your privacy: Friendly Captcha GmbH, Am Anger 3-5, 82237 Woerthsee, Germany; https://friendlycaptcha.com/privacy/gdpr/

4. Integration of other third party services

(1) On this website, we have also integrated offerings from Typotheque (fonts), Amazon Web Services (content delivery network).

We use these services on the basis of a balancing of interests due to technical necessity or to provide you with a better user experience on our website and increase its attractiveness (legal basis Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. f GDPR):

(2) By visiting the website, the respective third-party provider receives information that you have accessed the corresponding subpage of our website. Additionally, the data mentioned in § 3 para. 1 of these data protection notices is transmitted. This occurs regardless of whether this third-party provider provides a user account that you are logged into or whether no user account exists. If you are logged into the third-party provider, your data will be directly associated with your account. If you do not wish to associate this data with your profile with the respective third-party provider, you must log out before visiting our website. The third-party provider may store your data as usage profiles and may use them for advertising, market research, and/or the needs-based design of its website. Such evaluation is carried out in particular (even for users not logged in) for the provision of needs-based advertising and to inform other users of the respective service about your activities on our website. You have the right to object to the creation of these user profiles, and to exercise this right, you must contact the respective third-party provider.

(3) For more information about the purpose and scope of data collection and processing by the third-party provider, please refer to the privacy notices provided by these providers. There you will also find further information about your rights and privacy settings:

(4) Addresses of the respective providers and URL with their privacy notices:
a) Amazon Web Services Inc., 410 Terry Avenue North, Seattle WA 98109, USA
https://aws.amazon.com/de/compliance/germany-data-protection/
b) Typotheque, Konigsplein 12, 2518 JE The Hague, Netherlands; 
https://www.typotheque.com/privacy-policy/

Last update  August 20, 2024