Privacy Policy
Data protection declaration
In the following, we inform about the collection of personal data when using our website. Personal data are all data that are personally identifiable to you, e.g. name, address, e-mail addresses, user behavior. We have taken extensive technical and operational precautions to protect your data from accidental or intentional manipulation, loss, destruction or access by unauthorized persons. Our security procedures are regularly reviewed and adapted to technological progress.
1 Responsible for data processing
Responsible according to Art. 4 para. 7 EU Data Protection Basic Regulation (DSGVO) is INFORM Institut für Operations Research und Management GmbH, Pascalstraße 35, 52076 Aachen, info@inform-software.com (see our imprint/legal).
2 Contact option of the data protection officer
You can contact our data protection officer at privacy@inform-software.com or at our postal address with the addition “the data protection officer”.
3 Your rights
You have the following rights towards us with regard to personal data concerning you:
3.1 General rights
You have a right of access, rectification, cancellation, restriction of processing, objection to processing and data transferability. If processing is based on your consent, you have the right to revoke this consent with effect for the future.
3.2 Rights in data processing according to legitimate interest
Pursuant to Art. 21 para.1 DSGVO, you have the right to object at any time to the processing of personal data concerning you on the basis of Art. 6 para.1 e DSGVO (data processing in the public interest) or Article 6 para.1 f DSGVO (data processing to safeguard a legitimate interest) for reasons arising from your particular situation; this also applies to profiling based on this provision. In the event of your objection, we will no longer process your personal data unless we can prove compelling grounds for processing that outweigh your interests, rights and freedoms, or the processing serves to assert, exercise or defend legal claims.
3.3 Rights in direct advertising
If we process your personal data for direct marketing purposes, you have the right pursuant to Art. 21 para. 2 DSGVO to object at any time to the processing of personal data concerning you for the purpose of such advertising, this also applies to profiling insofar as it is associated with such direct marketing.
In the event of your objection to processing for direct marketing purposes, we will no longer process your personal data for these purposes.
3.4 Right of appeal to a supervisory authority
You also have the right to complain to a competent data protection supervisory authority about our processing of your personal data.
4 Collection of personal data when you visit our website
When using the website for information purposes only, i.e. if you do not register or otherwise provide us with information, we only collect the personal data that your browser transmits to our server. If you wish to view our website, we collect the following data, which is technically necessary for us to display our website to you and to ensure stability and security:
IP address, date and time of the request, time zone difference to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), content of the request (specific page), access status/HTTP status code, amount of data transmitted in each case, website from which the request comes, browser, operating system, and its interface, language and version of the browser software.
The legal basis for this is Art. 6 para. 1 f DSGVO.
5 Contact via e-mail or contact form
When you contact us by e-mail or via a contact form, the data you provide (your e-mail address, if applicable your name and your telephone number) will be stored by us in order to answer your questions. If we use our contact form to request information that is not required to establish contact, we have always marked it as optional. These details serve us to concertize your inquiry and to improve the processing of your request. This information is provided expressly on a voluntary basis and with your consent, Art. 6 Para.1 a DSGVO. If this involves information on communication channels (e.g. e-mail address, telephone number), you also agree that we may contact you via this communication channel in order to respond to your request. You can of course revoke this consent at any time in the future.
We delete the data arising in this context after the storage is no longer necessary, or limit the processing if statutory retention obligations exist.
6 Comment function in the blog on the website
We offer users the opportunity to leave individual comments on individual blog posts on blogs that are located on our website. A blog is a portal on a website, usually open to the public, in which one or more people who are called bloggers or web bloggers can post articles or write down thoughts in so-called blog posts. The blog posts can usually be commented by third parties.
If a person leaves a comment in the blog published on this website, not only the comments left by the person concerned, but also information about the time of entering the comment and the user name (pseudonym) chosen by the person concerned will be stored and published. Furthermore, the IP address assigned to the person concerned by the Internet service provider (ISP) is logged. This data is stored for security reasons and in the event that the person concerned violates the rights of third parties or posts illegal content by submitting a comment. This personal data is stored in accordance with Art. 6 Para. 1 f DSGVO, so that the latter could exculpate itself in the event of a violation of the law. The personal data collected will not be disclosed to third parties, unless such disclosure is required by law or serves the legal defense of the data controller.
7 Participation in sweepstakes
When you participate in sweepstakes, we collect the data necessary to conduct the sweepstake. These are usually an individual competition entry (e.g. a comment or a photo), as well as name and contact details. We may pass on your data to our competition partners, e.g. to send you the prize. The processing and transfer of data may vary depending on the competition and is therefore described in detail in the respective conditions of participation. Participation in the competition and the related data collection is of course voluntary. The legal basis for data processing is your consent in accordance with Art. 6 Para. 1 a DSGVO. Your data will be deleted after the end of the competition.
8 Applications
You can apply to our company electronically, in particular via e-mail or web forms. We will of course use your details exclusively for processing your application and will not pass them on to third parties. Please note that unencrypted e-mails are not transmitted with access protection.
You can also apply online to our company via our application portal. Your online application will be forwarded directly to the HR department via an encrypted connection and will of course be treated confidentially. We will of course use your details exclusively for processing your application and will not pass them on to third parties. Further information on data processing within the application procedure can be found in the data protection declaration of our application portal.
If you have applied for a specific position and it has already been filled or if we consider you suitable for another position, we would be happy to forward your application within the company. Please let us know if you do not agree to a forwarding.
Your personal data will be deleted immediately after completion of the application process or after a maximum of 6 months, unless you have expressly given us your consent for a longer storage of your data or a contract has been concluded. The legal basis is Art. 6 Para. 1 a, b and f DSGVO and § 26 BDSG.
9 Registration for participation in events
If you register online for an event organised by us, we process personal data required for the organisation and planning of the event (e.g., company name, first name, surname, e-mail address, etc.). Further information may be available in the form of preferred hotel, arrival day, and departure day, should you wish to obtain overnight accommodation through our pre-booked partner hotels. For this purpose, information about the type of journey is also required in order to provide parking spaces if necessary. Your personal data will be transmitted to the hotels selected by you. We will delete your personal data after the event has taken place. Your personal data will be processed for the fulfilment of the contract. The legal basis for this is Art. 6 Para. 1 b DSGVO.
10 Newsletter
This website uses the services of MailChimp to send out newsletters. The provider is the Rocket Science Group LLC, 675 Ponce De Leon Ave NE, Suite 5000, Atlanta, GA 30308, USA.
Among other things, MailChimp is a service that can be deployed to organise and analyse the sending of newsletters. Whenever you enter data for the purpose of subscribing to a newsletter (e.g. your e-mail address), the information is stored on MailChimp servers in the United States.
With the assistance of the MailChimp tool, we can analyse the performance of our newsletter campaigns. If you open an e-mail that has been sent through the MailChimp tool, a file that has been integrated into the e-mail (a so-called web-beacon) connects to MailChimp’s servers in the United States. As a result, it can be determined whether a newsletter message has been opened and which links the recipient possibly clicked on. Technical information is also recorded at that time (e.g. the time of access, the IP address, type of browser and operating system). This information cannot be allocated to the respective newsletter recipient. Their sole purpose is the performance of statistical analyses of newsletter campaigns. The results of such analyses can be used to tailor future newsletters to the interests of their recipients more effectively.
If you do not want to permit an analysis by MailChimp, you must unsubscribe from the newsletter. We provide a link for you to do this in every newsletter message. You can also unsubscribe from the newsletter via info@inform-software.com.
The data is processed based on your consent (Art. 6 Sect. 1 lit. a GDPR). You may revoke any consent you have given at any time by unsubscribing from the newsletter. This shall be without prejudice to the lawfulness of any data processing transactions that have taken place prior to your revocation.
The data deposited with us for the purpose of subscribing to the newsletter will be stored by us until you unsubscribe from the newsletter or the newsletter service provider and deleted from the newsletter distribution list after you unsubscribe from the newsletter. Data stored for other purposes with us remain unaffected.
After you unsubscribe from the newsletter distribution list, your e-mail address may be stored by us or the newsletter service provider in a blacklist to prevent future mailings. The data from the blacklist is used only for this purpose and not merged with other data. This serves both your interest and our interest in complying with the legal requirements when sending newsletters (legitimate interest within the meaning of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR). The storage in the blacklist is indefinite. You may object to the storage if your interests outweigh our legitimate interest.
For more details, please consult the Data Privacy Policies of MailChimp at: https://mailchimp.com/legal/terms/.
11 Website analysis
For the purpose of analyzing and optimizing our websites we use various services, which are described below. For example, we can analyze how many users visit our site, which information is most in demand or how users find the offer. Among other things, we collect data about the website from which a person has accessed a website (so-called referrer), which subpages of the website were accessed or how often and for how long a subpage was viewed. This helps us to design and improve our offers in a user-friendly way. The data collected is not used to personally identify individual users. Anonymous or at most pseudonymous data is collected. The legal basis for this is Art. 6 para. 1 f DSGVO.
This website use Post Views Counter, a web analysis service of digital factory (Warsaw, Poland). Post Views Counter allows to display how many times a post, page or custom post type had been viewed. For more information on data protection, please visit https://dfactory.eu/privacy-policy.
You can disable the counter on the cookie policy page by deselecting the cookie category “performance”.
12 YouTube
We use YouTube for the integration of videos. YouTube is operated by YouTube LLC, headquartered at 901 Cherry Avenue, San Bruno, CA 94066, USA. YouTube is represented by Google Inc. based at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.
On some of our websites we use plugins from YouTube. When you access the websites on our website that are provided with such a plugin – for example our media library – a connection to the YouTube servers is established and the plugin is displayed. This transmits to the YouTube server which of our Internet pages you have visited. If you are logged in as a YouTube member, YouTube assigns this information to your personal user account. When using the plugin, e.g. clicking the start button of a video, this information is also assigned to your user account.
You can prevent this assignment by logging out of your YouTube account and other user accounts of YouTube LLC and Google Inc. and deleting the corresponding cookies of the companies before using our website.
Further information on data processing and privacy protection by YouTube (Google) can be found at www.google.de/intl/de/policies/privacy/.
13 Vimeo
For the integration of videos we use the provider Vimeo. Vimeo is operated by Vimeo, LLC, headquartered at 555 West 18th Street, New York, New York 10011.
On some of our websites we use plugins from the provider Vimeo. When you access the websites of our website provided with such a plugin, a connection to the Vimeo servers is established and the plugin is displayed. This will transmit to the Vimeo server which of our web pages you have visited. If you are logged in as a member of Vimeo, Vimeo will assign this information to your personal user account. When using the plugin, e.g. clicking the start button of a video, this information is also assigned to your user account. You can prevent this assignment by logging out of your Vimeo account and deleting the corresponding Vimeo cookies before using our website.
For more information on Vimeo’s data processing and privacy policy, please visit https://vimeo.com/privacy.
The legal basis for the use of this service is Art. 6 para. 1 f DSGVO.
14 Advertising
We use cookies for marketing purposes, in order to address our users with interest-fair advertisement. In addition, we use cookies to limit the likelihood of an advertisement being played and to measure the effectiveness of our advertising measures. This information may also be shared with third parties, such as ad networks. The legal basis for this is Art. 6 para. 1 a and f DSGVO. Direct marketing has a legitimate interest in the purposes pursued by data processing. You have the right to object at any time to the processing of your data for the purpose of such advertising. In the following, we provide you with opt-out options for the respective services. Alternatively, you can prevent cookies from being set in your browser settings.
14.1 Google AdWords
In order to draw attention to our services, we place Google Adwords ads and use Google Conversion Tracking for the purpose of personalized, interest- and location-related online advertising. The option to anonymize IP addresses is controlled by the Google Tag Manager via an internal setting that is not visible in the source of this page. This internal setting is set so that the anonymization of the IP addresses required by the Federal Data Protection Act is achieved.
Ads appear after searches on Google Network web pages. We have the possibility to combine our ads with certain search terms. Cookies enable us to serve ads based on a user’s previous visits to our website.
When you click on an ad, Google sets a cookie on your computer. Further information on the cookie technology used can also be found in Google’s notes on website statistics and in the data protection regulations.
With the help of this technology, Google and we as customers receive information that a user has clicked on an ad and has been redirected to our websites. The information obtained in this way is used exclusively for statistical evaluation for ad optimization. We do not receive any information that personally identifies visitors. The statistics provided to us by Google include the total number of users who clicked on one of our ads and, if applicable, whether they were forwarded to a page of our website with a conversion tag. On the basis of these statistics we can trace the search terms for which our advertisement was clicked particularly often and which advertisements lead to contact by the user via the contact form.
If you do not wish to do so, you can prevent the storage of the cookies required for these technologies, for example via the settings of your browser. In this case, your visit is not included in the user statistics.
You can also use the ad settings to select Google ad types or disable interest-based ads on Google. Alternatively, you can disable the use of cookies by third parties by using the Network Advertising Initiative’s disabling tool.
However, we and Google continue to receive statistical information on how many users visited this page and when. If you do not want to be included in these statistics either, you can prevent this by using additional programs for your browser (for example, the Ghostery add-on).
14.2 Facebook Conversion Tracking Pixel
We use the Facebook Conversion Tracking Pixel service of Facebook Inc, 1601 S. California Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA):
This tool allows us to track users’ actions after they have redirected to a provider’s website after they clicked on a Facebook ad. This enables us to measure the effectiveness of Facebook ads for statistical and market research purposes. The collected data remains anonymous. This means that we cannot see the personal data of an individual user. However, the information collected is stored and processed by Facebook. We will inform you according to our information. Facebook is able to link the data to your Facebook account and use the data for its own promotional purposes, in accordance with Facebook’s privacy policy at: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/.
Facebook Conversion Tracking also allows Facebook and its partners to show you ads on and off Facebook. A cookie is also stored on your computer for this purpose. By using the website, you consent to the integration of Facebook pixels.
Please click here if you wish to revoke your consent: https://www.facebook.com/ads/settings.
14.3 Twitter
Twitter Remarketing: With the Twitter remarketing function we can address the visitors of our website with advertising based on their interests on the Twitter platform. Twitter uses so-called “tags” for this purpose. This tag is used to record visits to the website and data on the use of the website in a pseudonymous, non-personal form. If you visit Twitter below, advertisements based on your interests will be displayed.
Conversion cookies are stored on the basis of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f DSGVO. The website operator has a legitimate interest in analyzing user behavior in order to optimize both its website and advertising efforts.
If you do not want Twitter to address you with targeted advertising, you can deactivate this function on Twitter at https://support.twitter.com/articles/20171528. Twitter also supports the “Do Not Track (DNT)” option. You can activate them at: https://support.twitter.com/articles/20171372. Further information on data protection on Twitter and on Twitter advertisements can be found here: https://business.twitter.com/de/help/troubleshooting/how-twitter-ads-work.html.
14.4 LinkedIn Conversion Tracking
On our website we use the analysis and conversion tracking technology of the LinkedIn platform. With the aforementioned LinkedIn technology, you can see more relevant advertising based on your interests.
Conversion cookies are stored on the basis of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f DSGVO. The website operator has a legitimate interest in analyzing user behavior in order to optimize both its website and advertising efforts.
LinkedIn also provides us with aggregated and anonymous reports of ad activity and information about how you interact with our website. Further information on data protection at LinkedIn can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy#choices-oblig.
You can object to the analysis of your usage behavior by LinkedIn and the display of interest-based recommendations (“Opt-Out”); click on the field “Reject on LinkedIn” (for LinkedIn members) or “Reject” (for other users) under the following link: https://www.linkedin.com/psettings/guest-controls/retargeting-opt-out.
15 Data transmission
A transfer of your data to third parties does not take place, unless we are legally obliged to do so, or the transfer of data is necessary for the execution of the contractual relationship, or you have previously expressly consented to the transfer of your data.
External service providers and partner companies such as online payment providers or the shipping company commissioned with the delivery will only receive your data if this is necessary to process your order. In these cases, however, the scope of the transmitted data is limited to the required minimum. As far as our service providers come into contact with your personal data, we ensure within the scope of the order processing according to Art. 28 DSGVO that these comply with the regulations of the data protection laws in the same way. Please also note the respective data protection information of the providers. The respective service provider is responsible for the content of external services, whereby we check the compliance of the services with the legal requirements within the scope of reasonableness.
It is important to us to process your data within the EU/EEA. However, we may use service providers who process data outside the EU/EEA. In these cases, we ensure that an appropriate level of data protection is established at the recipient prior to the transfer of your personal data. This means that a data protection level comparable to the standards within the EU is achieved via EU standard contracts or an adequacy decision.
16 Data security
We have taken extensive technical and operational precautions to protect your data from accidental or intentional manipulation, loss, destruction or access by unauthorized persons. Our security procedures are regularly reviewed and adapted to technological progress.