Privacy Policy of Heise Zeitschriften Verlag GmbH & Co. KG (Heise Magazine Publishing)

Heise Magazine Publishing takes privacy of personal data very seriously. We want you to know in which cases we store which data and how we use them. As a company under private law we are subject to the regulations of the Bundesdatenschutzgesetz/BDSG (Federal Data Protection Act for Germany) and the Telemediengesetz/TMG (German Act for Telemedia Services). We have taken measures to ensure that the regulations concerning privacy are observed by us as well as by external service providers.

Personal data

Personal data are information which can be used to find out your identity. This includes information like your real name, adress, postal adress, and phone number. It does not include information which can not be directly linked to your real identity, e. g. favorite web sites or the number of users of a web site.

You may generally use our online service without revealing your identity. If you register for one of our personalised services, order a product, or take out a subscription, we will ask you to give your name and other personal information. Whether or not you enter this data is subject to your own decision.

We store your data on especially protected servers in Germany. Access to your data is limited to a small number of specifically authorized individuals who are in charge of the technical, commercial, or editorial management of the servers.

In conjunction with your access, data will be stored on our servers for backup purposes which may enable an identification, e. g. IP adress, date, time, and visited pages. An individual-related utilization of this data will not take place. We reserve the right to statistical evaluation of data after making them anonymous.

We store IP adresses for a period of at most 28 days. The storage takes place for data security purposes, in order to assure the stability and safe operation of our system.

As far as Heise places online forums at the disposal of third parties, these third parties are not granted access to the stored personal data of the forum users. Administration of this data is solely incumbent on Heise.

Forwarding of personal data to third parties

In case of product orderings we use your personal information solely inside of Heise Magazine Publishing and affiliated companies. We are not forwarding them to third parties without your explicit consent. In the case that data are forwarded to service providers in the context of commissioned data processing, they are subject to the Bundesdatenschutzgesetz/BDSG (Federal Data Protection Act for Germany), other legal provisions, and, contractually, the privacy policy of Heise Magazine Publishing. As far as we are bound by law or court order to forward your data to entities which are entitled to receive this information, we will do so.

The articles in our discussion forums are accessible to everybody. We recommend that you thoroughly scrutinize your contributions before you publish them to ensure that they do not contain information which is not meant for the public. You have to be aware that your contributions may be recorded in search engines and become accessible worldwide even without a decided visit of our online service. The deletion or correction of such entries by web site operators from outside of Germany can often not be enforced. Furthermore, there is no right to deletion of this data by Heise Magazine Publishing.

Right to revocation

In case you left personal data to us, you may delete them at any time. Data used for accounting purposes are not subject to denouncement respectively deletion.

You may delete your user account in the user registration area of heise online (in German only) under "Account löschen".

Cookies and impression tracking

We utilize cookies (small files containing configuration information) according to the provisions of the “Informationsgemeinschaft zur Feststellung der Verbreitung von Werbeträgern e. V. /IVW” (Information association to determine the circulation of advertising media). Cookies help to determine the usage frequency and the number of users of our web site. We do not capture personal data by cookies.

Many of our pages contain Javascript-code to report impression frequency to the collecting society VG Wort. In doing so, we enable our authors to take part in the dividend distribution of the collecting society VG Wort.

In some parts of our online service we use cookies to enable certain user functions. We are pointing to that at the appropriate places. On certain pages ads may be delivered directly by companies or agencies. Cookies may be used here without a possibility for us to inform you.

Our services can also be used without cookies. The most browsers are configured to automatically accept cookies. You may deactive the storage of cookies, though, or configure your browser to notify you as soon as cookies are sent.

Children

Individuals below the age of 18 years should not convey personal data to us without consent of their parents or legal guardian.

Links to other web sites

Our online service contains links to other web sites. We do not have any influence on the operators of these sites to observe privacy regulations.

Questions and comments

For questions, proposals, or comments regarding the issue of privacy, please contact the data protection officer of Heise Magazine Publishing via email under datenschutz@heise.de. The rapid evolution of the Internet requires adjustments of our privacy policy from time to time. We will inform you here about these changes.

Hannover, February 3rd, 2010

Ammendments made to the prior version of the 3rd of September 2007

We now retain your IP address for a total of only seven days, opposed to the 28 days prior.

A statement about the usage of Javascript-code, to report imppression frequency to the collecting society VG Wort was added.

Deutsche Fassung