Privacy Policy

At Seeding Alliance GmbH, we would like to thank you for visiting www.seeding-alliance.de (hereinafter “our website”).

The protection and security of your data is our highest priority. This privacy statement (“Privacy Policy”) explains what information we collect from you during your visit to our website, how and for what purposes we use this information and with whom we share it. In addition, we explain below your rights in relation to the processing of your data, such as the right of access, rectification, objection, and erasure.

We will only use your personal data (hereinafter “your data”), i.e. information that allows conclusions to be drawn about you, in accordance with the applicable data protection regulations. If we use your data for purposes other than those stated in this Privacy Policy, we will inform you separately about these purposes in advance, and, if necessary, obtain your consent.

The legal basis for our data processing can be found for the most part in the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). In the following Privacy Policy, we refer to the corresponding legal basis for our processing.

If you have given your consent for data processing once or several times (e.g. with regard to receiving our newsletter), you may freely revoke this consent for the future at any time. You may send your revocation to the contacts specified in the declaration of consent. The revocation will not incur any costs and will have no negative consequences for you. The legality of the processing of your data before your revocation will remain unaffected in this case.

1. General information

1.1 Who is responsible for the use of your data?

We are the responsible body in terms of the applicable data protection law. This means that we are responsible for the use of the data we collect from you and are legally obligated to ensure that all necessary measures are taken to protect your data and to safeguard your rights.

1.2 What kind of data do we collect?

Depending on the information you provide us with, we collect the following data:

((a) Data provided by you

• First name, last name, e-mail address (newsletter form with consent for e-mails)

(b) Data on the use of our services
We collect information about you when you use our services, such as when you visit our website where our advertising services are used. This includes the following data:

• Device-related information
  We collect device-specific information, such as the model of the hardware you are using, the version of the operating system, unique device identifiers, information about the cellular network you are using and data about device events such as crashes, system activity, hardware settings, browser type, browser language, date and time of your request and referral URL.
• Your IP address
• Location-related information
  When you use our services, we may collect and process information about your location. We use various technologies to determine your location, such as IP addresses, GPS and other sensors that provide us with information about nearby devices, wireless access points or cell towers. We process your location data only with your consent. You may also check, activate or deactivate the collection of location data at any time in the settings of your mobile device.
• Cookies
  When you visit our website, we collect information by using so-called cookies. See below under 2.1.

(c) Data of registered users
In addition to the data mentioned in item 1.2(b), we use the following data for registered users:

• Contact details (when signing up to our website)
• Bank details (optional, only required if you receive invoices or credit notes from us).

Surveys, promotions and competitions
From time to time, we may give you the opportunity to participate in surveys or competitions. If you decide to participate, additional information may be required to complete the survey or to enter the competition, and you will be asked to provide such information (e.g. your postal address for the purpose of notification of winnings, as well as your e-mail address and telephone number in order to be able to ensure that you are notified of winnings even in the event of accidentally incorrect address details, and your date of birth for the purpose of age verification). These data are processed for the purpose of your participation in the specific survey or competition. Any further processing or use of your data, e.g. for the purpose of publishing the winner on our platform, will only take place with your consent.

(d) Newsletter
If you sign up to receive our newsletter, we will record the e-mail address provided, as well as your first and last name. You have the possibility to cancel the sending of newsletters at any time. To do so, simply follow the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any newsletter.

1.3 For what purpose and on what legal basis do we collect your data?

We use your data for the following purposes and on the following legal basis:

(a) To fulfill the contract to which you are a party or to fulfill pre-contractual obligations towards you in accordance with Art. 6 para. 1 lit. b GDPR:

• to enable the use of our services by sharing contributions and interests, preferences, and thoughts on our website,
• to provide your account, for technical support and other similar purposes,
• to resolve other problems regarding our products and the storage of our communications with you, insofar as this is necessary to resolve the problem.

(b) Based on our legitimate interests in accordance with Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR:

• for the provision, maintenance, protection and improvement of our services, for the development of new services and for our protection and the protection of our users,
• also, to offer you customized content in search results and to provide you with personalized advertising (e.g. by means of advertising banners on websites,
• to further improve the security of our IT system for the benefit of all users,
• to enforce applicable terms of use, including investigating possible violations of the terms of use or applicable law (e.g. insult, fraud),
• for any other necessary communication with you, unless this is done to fulfil (pre-) contractual obligations towards you (for example, to inform you of any disruptions),
• to detect or prevent technical problems,
• to protect rights that affect our property or our safety, the property or safety of our users or the public, to the extent permitted and required by law.

(c) Based on our legal obligations in accordance with Art. 6 para. 1 lit. c GDPR:

• to comply with and ensure compliance with applicable laws, regulations, legal proceedings, or enforceable governmental orders that are binding for Ströer,
• to detect, prevent or combat violations of the law, insofar as Ströer is legally obligated to do so or third parties have a claim against Ströer.

(d) Based on your consent in accordance with Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a, Art. 7 GDPR:

• The exact purposes can be found in the respective declaration of consent. These purposes may include processing for the provision, maintenance, protection and improvement of our services, for competitions, for the development of new services and for our protection and the protection of our users, as well as for the purpose of providing you with customized content (e.g. to provide you with personalized advertising) or to send you product information.
• The processing may also be used to record communications with us to help you resolve any problems that may arise and to send communications to your e-mail address regarding the use of our services, including communications about upcoming changes or improvements, unless this is to fulfil our contract with you or to fulfil pre-contractual or legal obligations – in which case your consent is not required.

1.4 With whom do we share your data?

We do not share any of your information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of our company, except:

(a) With your consent
We will pass on your data to companies, organizations, or persons outside our company if we have received your consent to do so.

(b) For its processing by other entities
We make data available to our partners, other trustworthy companies or persons who process the data on our behalf (so-called contract processors, e.g. data hosting providers). This is done in accordance with the applicable law, as well as appropriate confidentiality and security measures to ensure the protection of your data, and in contractual relationships also on the basis of our instructions.

(c) For legal reasons
We will share your information with other companies if this is necessary to

• comply with applicable laws or regulations, e.g. is required for legal proceedings or the disclosure is made in order to comply with a binding governmental order,
• enforce applicable terms of use, including investigation of possible violations,
• detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security, or technical problems; or
• to protect our property, other rights or our security, the property or security of our users or the public from harm to the extent permitted or required by law.

Furthermore, only our employees have access to your data.
We may share data that does not relate to you personally, i.e. data that cannot be linked to you personally (e.g. completely anonymized data), with third parties, e.g. other advertisers or associated websites.

1.5 Where is your data processed?

Your data will only be processed within the European Union (“EU”) and the European Economic Area (“EEA”) by us or by the parties mentioned in item 1.4.

1.6 How long do we store your data?

We will not store your data for longer than is necessary to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected or as long as we have a legitimate interest in storing it and this interest outweighs your interest in deleting it, unless there is a legal basis for longer storage (e.g. also due to commercial or tax law in accordance with Art. 6 para. 1 lit. c GDPR: In the case of such arriving, the data will be blocked for other access and deleted and destroyed in accordance with data protection regulations after the legal retention periods have expired). We will then delete your data. The respective retention periods depend on the underlying purpose and type of data.

If you object to future advertising mailings, we will block your data by using your name, address and, if applicable, the e-mail address provided in corresponding lists with which we compare our advertising measures. This is the only way to ensure that you will not receive any further advertising mailings. In particular we store:

• Data that we require for the purpose of a personalized account (registration data) for as long as you want to use this account. If you no longer wish to use your account, you can have it deleted, including all login data, via your account manager.
• Your IP address for a maximum of 2 months.
• Cookies for a period of up to 24 months. Furthermore, you can delete cookies from your computer at any time. The exact retention periods, which depend on the type of cookie used, can be found in section 2.

1.7 What rights do you have with regard to your data?

With regard to the processing of your data, you have the right of access, rectification, erasure and restriction of processing, as well as the right to object to the processing and the right to data portability.
With regard to the processing of your data, you are entitled to the following rights:

• The right of access against us in relation to your data (Art. 15 GDPR)
• The right to rectification if your data is incorrect (Art. 16 GDPR),
• The right to erasure, (1) if storage of your data is no longer necessary for the purposes mentioned above, (2) if storage is based on consent that you have meanwhile revoked and there is no other legal basis for storage by us, (3) if you have objected to direct advertising or profiling carried out by us and we store your data for these purposes, (4) if we have processed your data unlawfully, or (5) if there is a legal obligation to delete it (so-called “right to be forgotten”, Art. 17 GDPR),
• The right to restrict the processing, (1) if you have disputed the accuracy of your data for the period of time required for us to verify its accuracy, (2) if the processing of your data was unlawful and you wish to limit processing instead of deleting it, or (3) if storage by us is no longer necessary for the purposes stated above, but you need your data for the assertion, exercise or defense of legal claims (Art. 18 GDPR),
• The right to data portability with regard to your data that you have made available to us, if the processing is based on your consent or on a contract with us, i.e. you can demand that the data you have made available to us be returned to you or to third parties in a structured, common and machine-readable format (Art. 20 GDPR),
• The right to object to the processing, provided that we store your data for purposes of direct marketing (Art. 21 GDPR). See in detail item 1.8. of this Privacy Policy.

These rights are partly restricted by law. Should we therefore not be able to fulfil these rights, we will inform you accordingly.

1.8 Right of revocation and objection according to Art. 7 para. 3, 21 GDPR

You may object to further use of your data for advertising purposes (see item 1.3) or revoke any consent you have given, even if the use of the data is legally permissible without your consent. An informal notification to us is sufficient (for contact details, see section 5 below). We will not charge any costs for this.

The consequence of an objection is the stop of future use. Uses preceding the objection remain unaffected. Please refer to item 1.6 of this Privacy Policy for information on the blocking of your data.

Our advertising e-mails (e.g. the newsletter) contain a reference with a link for easy exercise of your right to object.

We explain concrete options for objection under section 2 of this Privacy Policy for the cookies and similar technologies (e.g. tracking tools) used by us.

Further information on your rights can be found in section 3, “Contact, assertion of your rights”.

2. Cookies and similar technologies

2.1 Cookies

When you visit or open our website, we collect information about you by using cookies. Cookies are small text files that allow your browser to be recognized and are sent to your computer or mobile device. We use cookies in order to provide you with a user-friendly and secure website and to tailor our services to your needs and interests, e.g. to display customized advertising on our website (e.g. as banner ads).

You may also use our services without cookies. You can set your browser so that cookies are by default rejected. You can also delete cookies already set in your browser settings. If you do not use cookies, however, you may not be able to use the functions of our website to their full extent.

We use the following different types of cookies on our website:

Name of the Cookies	Function / Use	Duration of storage
_ga	Differentiation of users	2 years
_gid	Differentiation of users	24 hours
_gat	Limiting requests to Google Analytics	1 minute
_gac_<Property-ID>	Campaign relevant data for the user, only set if data is available and the user has not used the Google Analytics opt-out function.	90 days
Session Cookie	Storage of authentication data	Session

2.2 Similar technologies

(a) Pixel tags
We also use “pixel tags”, “web beacons”, “clear GIFs” or similar methods (“pixel tags”), that are used in connection with our services to collect usage, demographic and geographic location data. A pixel tag is an electronic image, often a single image, which is normally not visible to the user. This may be linked to the cookies on the user’s hard drive. Pixel tags allow us to count visitors to our website in order to provide market-oriented services and determine the effectiveness of promotions and advertising campaigns.

(b) Note on the use of Google Analytics
We use the analysis service Google Analytics of the company Goog-le Inc, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA (Google). Google Analytics uses cookies (see above under 2.1) The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website is transferred to a Google server in the USA and stored there. Google will use this information on our behalf to evaluate the use of our website, to compile reports on website activities and to provide us with further services related to website and internet use. User profiles can be created from the processed data pseudonymous.

We have added the code “anonymizeIP” to our Google Analytics website. This means that the IP address of the user will be shortened within the EU or in other countries that are parties to the agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases is the full IP address transferred to a Google server in the USA and shortened there. The IP address transmitted by your browser within the framework of Google Analytics is not merged with other data from Google. You may prevent the storage of cookies by changing the appropriate settings in your browser. You may also prevent the collection of data generated by the cookie and relating to your use of this website to Google and the processing of this data by Google by downloading and installing the browser plugin available under the following link: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=de.

In this case, web analytics remains deactivated as long as the add-on is not deactivated or deleted by Google. Therefore, please do not delete the add-on as long as web analytics is not wanted. The add-on is set per browser and computer. If you access our website with different browsers or from different computers, you will have to add the add-on for each browser or computer separately.

An opt-out cookie is set, which prevents the future collection of your data when visiting this website. The opt-out cookie is only valid in this browser and only for our website and is stored on your device. If you delete the cookies in this browser, you will need to set the opt-out cookie again. We also use Google Analytics to analyze data from DoubleClick cookies and AdWords for statistical purposes. This includes demographic characteristics (e.g. age and gender) and interests. This data cannot be traced back to a specific person. If you do not want this, you may deactivate it at any time via the ad settings.

(c) Contact forms
If you send us an inquiry via the contact form, your personal data from the form, including the contact data you entered there, will be stored for the purpose of processing your inquiry and in case of further follow-up questions. We will not pass on this data without your consent.

(d) Newsletter

If you have subscribed to our newsletter, we need a valid e-mail address, your full name and optionally a company name. Further data will not be collected. We use these data exclusively for sending the requested information and do not pass them on to third parties. You may revoke your consent to the storage of the data, the e-mail address and its use for sending the newsletter at any time, for example, by clicking on the “Unsubscribe” link in the newsletter.

E-mail service provider: We use the provider Mailchimp for sending the newsletter. You can find the privacy policy of the e-mail service provider here.

(e) Social networks
Our website contains programs (so-called plug-ins) from various social networks such as Facebook, Xing or LinkedIn. These are operated exclusively by the respective network operators. On our website, you can recognize the plug-ins by their company logos or similar additions such as “Like” etc.

If you visit a website of our Internet presence on which such a plug-in is displayed, a direct connection to the servers of the social network operators is established and the content of the plug-in is transmitted to your browser and integrated by it into the displayed website. The information that you have visited our website is then forwarded to the network operator. If you are logged in to the network operator via your personal user account while visiting our website, the network operator can assign the website visit to this account. By using the plug-ins, for example by clicking the “Like” button, the relevant information is transmitted directly to the network operator and stored there. To prevent this data transmission, you must log out of your account on the page of your network operator before visiting our website.

For further information on the purpose and scope of data collection, use and application, please refer to the respective data protection notices of the social network operators.

(f) Youtube
Our site uses YouTube LLC, 901 Cherry Avenue, San Bruno, CA 94066, USA, represented by Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA, for the integration of videos. Usually, when you visit a page with embedded videos, your IP address is already sent to YouTube and cookies are installed on your computer. However, we have embedded our YouTube videos with the enhanced privacy mode (in this case, YouTube still contacts Google’s Double Click service, but according to Google’s privacy policy, personal information is not analyzed). As a result, YouTube no longer stores any information about visitors unless they watch the video. When you click on the video, your IP address is sent to YouTube and YouTube learns that you have watched the video. If you are logged in to YouTube, this information is also associated with your account (you can prevent this by logging out of YouTube before viewing the video). We have no knowledge of and no influence on the collection and use of your data by YouTube. For more information, please refer to the YouTube Privacy Policy at http://www.google.de/intl/de/policies/privacy/ . In addition, we refer to our general description in this Privacy Policy for the general handling and deactivation of cookies.

3. Contact, assertion of your rights

To exercise your rights stated above or if you have any questions or comments regarding this Privacy Policy or about data protection in general, please contact us:

Seeding Alliance GmbH
Ströer-Allee 1
50999 Cologne
Germany

E-mail adress: kontakt@seeding-alliance.de

You may also contacxt our Data Protection Office at: datenschutzbeauftragter-sa@stroeer.de.

If you feel that we are not adequately dealing with your request, you also have the right to appeal to the supervisory authority responsible for data protection, in particular in the member state where you reside, your place of work or the place where the alleged violation took place (without prejudice to any other administrative or judicial remedy).

4. How often do we update this Privacy Policy?

This Privacy Policy may be modified from time to time, for example, to adapt it to new data protection regulations. We will post any changes to this Privacy Policy on this page. We will also keep older versions of this Privacy Policy archived for reference. This Privacy Policy was last updated on May 23, 2018.-