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PRIVACY

Since May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been in force. This provides for extended information obligations. In compliance with the new legal regulations, we would, therefore, like to inform you about the data processing carried out by Benz + Walter GmbH (hereinafter also referred to as “B+W”).

The protection and confidentiality of your personal data is of particular importance to B+W. The processing of your personal data by B+W takes place exclusively within the framework of the legal provisions of the applicable data protection law. The following declaration serves to inform you on how your personal data is processed by B+W.

 

1.     Responsible Party

Responsible according to Art. 4 No. 7 EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):

Benz + Walter GmbH

Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Michael Benz, Dr.-Ing. Dipl.-Kfm. Walter Stefan

Kaiser-Friedrich-Ring 82

D-65185 Wiesbaden

Registry Court: Wiesbaden, HRB 29494

E-Mail: info@benz-walter.de

Phone: 0611 – 17277088

Website: www.benz-walter.de

2.     What is personal data?

Personal Data is data that can be used directly or indirectly to identify a natural person. Processing means any operation relating to personal data, such as collection, recording, filling, storage, adaptation or alteration, disclosure or any other form of use.

3.     Legal basis and purpose for the processing of personal data

a)      If B+W obtains the consent of the data subject for the processing of personal data, Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a) of the GDPR serves as the legal basis. You can revoke your consent at any time. B+W informs you separately about the purpose and scope of the respective data processing, the consequences of a revocation or the non-granting of consent in the corresponding text of the consent.

As a matter of principle, the revocation of your consent will only take effect in the future. Processing operations that took place before the revocation are not affected and remain lawful

Consent: Consent shall mean any voluntary, informed and unequivocal expression of will by the data subject in the form of a statement or other unambiguous confirmatory act by which the data subject indicates his or her consent to the processing of personal data concerning him or her.

b.       Insofar as B+W process data required for the performance of a contract to which the data subject concerned is a party, Art. 6 Para 1 lit. b) of the GDPR serves as the legal basis. This also applies to processing operations necessary to carry out pre-contractual operations carried out at the request of the person concerned. The personal data is, for example, names, addresses, e-mail addresses of B+W 's customers or service providers. The provision of the data is therefore usually necessary for the execution of the contract. If the data is, therefore, not made available, the contract may not be concluded or carried out properly.

 

c.        Should the processing of the personal data make it necessary to fulfil a legal obligation to which B+W are subject, Art. 6 para. 1 lit. c) of the GDPR serves as the legal basis.

This applies, for example, to the processing of personal data for the purpose of fulfilling legal requirements such as storage periods in accordance with the German Commercial Code and tax laws.

 

d.       If the processing is necessary to safeguard a legitimate interest of B+W or a third party and if the interests, fundamental rights and fundamental freedoms of the data subject do not outweigh the first-mentioned interest, Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f) of the GDPR serves as the legal basis for the processing. Such processing takes place, for example, if B+W collects the IP address when the data subject visits the website in order to enable you to use the B+W website at all or to make it more convenient for you to do so by using session cookies (see section 10 below).


Furthermore, in accordance with Art. 6 Para. 1 lit f) of the GDPR, B+W processes personal data for advertising purposes when B+W makes information about its services available to its customers, refers them to events or conventions or invites them to such events. B+W’s legitimate interest is to inform users of its website or its customers and to stay in contact with them.


Insofar as B+W uses contact data for direct advertising, to send the person concerned, for example, current information about B+W’s services or event invitations, the person concerned can object to this use at any time by informing B+W of the objection informally using the contact data given above under point 1. B+W will then no longer use the data for this purpose.

 

4.     Processing of personal data which  B+W does not receive directly from the person concerned 

In some cases, B+W also processes personal data that B+W does not receive directly from the person concerned. This is contact data of the persons concerned, such as name, address, e-mail address or telephone number. This concerns on the one hand contact data of employees of B+W’s customers or service providers, but also contact data B+W receives from publicly accessible sources (such as telephone directories, Internet). The legal basis for the processing in these cases is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f) of the GDPR. B+W processes this data either for the purpose of executing contracts with the employers of the persons concerned, or in the case of data which B+W obtains from publicly accessible sources, for the performance of its business operations. These purposes are also B+W’s legitimate interest for the processing.  

5.     Recipients or categories of recipients of your data

Within B+W only authorized employees receive your data, which they need for the fulfilment of B+W’s contractual and legal obligations or in the context of the processing and implementation of B+W’s legitimate interest.


Personal data will only be passed on to external parties on one of the legal bases mentioned under section 3. In individual cases, recipients may be third parties to whom the data subject has given his/her consent. In the execution of the contracts, these may be third parties, such as other project participants, if this is necessary for the execution of the contract. The fulfilment of a legal obligation may involve authorities such as tax authorities. If B+W acts on the basis of its legal interest, the external bodies may be debt collection agencies, lawyers or courts.

In addition, the data will also be passed on to B+W’s supporting service providers, which B+W has of course carefully selected and which process the data only for the specified purposes and on B+W’s instructions. These may be technical service providers or service providers supporting B+W in any other way. B+W has concluded a contract for data processing in accordance with Art. 28 of the GDPR with all such service providers.

 

6.     Processing of personal data for applications

 

B+W processes the personal data of applicants for the purpose of processing the application procedure. Processing may also be carried out electronically. This is particularly the case if an applicant submits corresponding application documents to B+W electronically, for example by email.

The sending of an application is, of course, voluntary and the applicant decides which data he or she wishes to disclose to B+W. However, if the application does not contain the data usually contained in such an application and if this data is not submitted subsequently, it cannot be taken into account in the application. If B+W does not conclude an employment contract with the applicant, B+W will delete the personal data after notification of the rejection decision in accordance with §61 b Para. 1 ArbGG in conjunction with §15 AGG after a period of 6 months, unless there is another legal basis for longer storage.


In the event of an employment relationship with the respective applicant, he/she will receive information about B+W’s handling of employee data within the scope of the respective employment contract.

7.      Data erasure and storage period

In principle, data which is only stored on the basis of consent pursuant to Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a) of the GDPR, unless there are legal obligations to retain them or another legal basis permits or requires further storage, will be deleted if the data subject revokes the consent given. Other personal data will be deleted as soon as the purpose of storage no longer applies, unless another legal basis allows or requires further storage, for example in the case of storage and documentation obligations under the German Commercial Code (HGB) or Tax Code (AO) or on the basis of B+W’s legitimate interest within the framework of statutory limitation periods.

8.        Your data protection rights
 

If personal data is processed by you, you are the person concerned within the meaning of the GDPR and you possess the following rights:

  • You have the right to receive information from B+W about your personal data stored with B+W, their origin and recipient and the purpose of data processing according to the rules of Art. 15 of the GDPR (if necessary, with restrictions according to §34 BDSG).

  • At your request, B+W will correct the data in accordance with Art. 16 of the GDPR if it is inaccurate or erroneous.

  • If you so wish, B+W will delete your data in accordance with the principles of Art. 17 of the GDPR, provided that other statutory provisions (e.g. statutory storage obligations or the restrictions under § 35 BDSG) or a predominant interest on B+W’s part (for example to defend B+W’s rights and claims) do not prevent this.

  • Taking into account the requirements of Art. 18 of the GDPR, you may request B+W to restrict the processing of data.

  • In addition, you can object to the processing of your data in accordance with Art. 21 of the GDPR, on the basis of which B+W must terminate the processing of your data.
    However, this right to object only applies in the case of very special circumstances in your personal situation, whereby B+W’s rights may conflict with your right to objection. See below for details.

  • You also have the right to receive your data under the conditions of Art. 20 of the GDPR in a structured, common and machine-readable format or to forward it to a third party.

  • In addition, you have the right to revoke your consent to the processing of personal data at any time with effect for the future.

  • You also have the right to appeal to a data protection supervisory authority (Art. 77 of the GDPR). The responsible supervisory authority for data protection issues is the Hessian Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (https://datenschutz.hessen.de//)

Your requests to exercise your rights should, where possible, be addressed to the above address. An informal e-mail is sufficient.

9.          Safety

For security reasons and to protect the transmission of confidential content, B+W’s websites use SSL or TLS encryption. You can recognize an encrypted connection by the fact that the address line of the browser changes from “http://” to “https://” and by the padlock symbol in your browser line. If SSL or TLS encryption is activated, the data you transmit to B+W cannot be read by third parties.

In addition, B+W uses appropriate technical and organizational security measures to protect the processing of personal data. For this purpose, the protection objectives of Art 32 para. 1 of the GDPR, such as confidentiality, integrity and availability of the systems and services as well as their resilience with regard to the type, scope, circumstances and purpose of the processing, are taken into account, so that appropriate technical and organisational measures are taken to ensure adequate data protection.

10.        Cookies

Cookies are small text files that are placed on the user’s computer or mobile device (hereinafter referred to as “device”) and lead to the storage of information specific to the device. Cookies are not trojans, viruses or other malware. Accordingly, cookies do not cause any damage to the user’s device.

Information stored by cookies can be used for various purposes. B+W uses session cookies on its website that allow B+W to recognize when users have accessed individual pages of its website during a web visit. These cookies are automatically deleted after leaving B+W’s website.


In addition, so-called third-party cookies can also be set via our website. Further explanations can be found in section 12,13 and 14 below.

 

11.           Deactivation or Deletion of Cookies

In principle, you can influence the use of cookies. Most current browsers have an option to restrict or prevent cookies from being saved. A deletion of already existent cookies can also be carried out by deleting the cache in the browser. B+W would like to point out that the use and especially the comfort of use of B+W’s website can be severely restricted without the use of cookies.

12.            Third-Party-Cookies

In addition to the session cookies mentioned in section 10 above, so-called third-party cookies can be set on our website. Third party cookies are cookies that are used by third parties. B+W uses Google Maps and Google Analytics on its website, both services provided by Google LLC. In both cases, Google will set such third-party cookies. Further explanations can be found in paragraph 13 and 14 below.

13.             Google Analytics

B+W uses Google Analytics, a web analysis service provided by Google LLC (Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA; hereinafter referred to as “Google”), to continuously optimize and increase the user comfort of B+W’s website. Data processing by Google Analytics only takes place if you have explicitly agreed to this. The use is then made in the basis of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a) of the GDPR.

The information collected by the cookies about the use of this website, including but not

  •    Browser-type/-version,

  •    Operating System used,

  •    Referrer-URL (the previously visited page),

  •    Hostname of the accessing computer (IP-address),

  •    time of the server request,

is transferred to a Google server in the USA and stored there. Google uses this information on B+W’s behalf to evaluate the use of B+W’s website, to compile reports on website activity and to provide B+W with other services relating to website activity and internet usage. The IP address transmitted by your browser as part of Google Analytics is not combined with other data from Google. For Google Analytics, B+W’s website uses the function “Activation of IP anonymization”. As a result, your IP address will be previously shortened by Google within member states of the European Union or in other signatory states to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases is the full IP address transmitted to a Google server in the USA and shortened there.

Google is certified according to EU-US Privacy Shield. For the EU-US Privacy Shield, a waiver has been issued by the EU Commission that there is an adequate level of data protection for personal data while complying with the rules of the EU-US Privacy Shield.

In addition to the option described in section 11 above of restricting or preventing the use of cookies, you can prevent the collection by Google of data generated by Google Analytics and relating to the use of the website (including the user IP address) and the processing of this data by Google by downloading and installing the browser plug-in available under the following link: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en.

You can also prevent Google Analytics from collecting cookies by adjusting the cookies settings on B+W’s website.

 

14.  Google Maps

Furthermore, a photo of a Google Maps image is integrated on B+W’S Website to show B+W’s location. by clicking on the image, you will be redirected to Google Maps. Google Maps is a map service of Google LLC (Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA; hereinafter “Google”). The use of Google Maps is based on Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f) of the GDPR. B+W’s legitimate interest lies in making it easier for you to find B+W’s offices.

When you click on the link to Google Maps on B+W’s website, your browser establishes a direct connection to Google’s servers in the USA. More details about which data Google processes can be found at https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en.

Google is certified according to the EU-US Privacy Shield, a waiver has been issued by the EU Commission that there is an adequate level of data protection for personal data, while complying with the rules of the EU-US Privacy Shield.

If you do not consent to this processing, you have the option of preventing the installation of cookies by making the appropriate settings in your internet browser, as described in section 11 above.

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