Privacy Policy

Table of contents

Privacy Policy Introduction and Overview

We have written this privacy policy (version 07.11.2022-121982535) in order to explain to you, in accordance with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and applicable national laws, which personal data (data for short) we as the controller – and the processors commissioned by us (e.g. providers) – process, will process in the future and what legal options you have. The terms used are to be considered gender-neutral.
In short: We provide you with comprehensive information about any of your personal data we process.

Privacy policies usually sound very technical and use legal terminology. However, this privacy policy is intended to describe the most important things to you as simply and transparently as possible. So long as it aids transparency, technical terms are explained in a reader-friendly manner, links to further information are provided and graphics are used. We are thus informing in clear and simple language that we only process personal data in the context of our business activities if there is a legal basis for it. This is certainly not possible with brief, unclear and legal-technical statements, as is often standard on the internet when it comes to data protection. I hope you find the following explanations interesting and informative. Maybe you will also find some information that you have not been familiar with.
If you still have questions, we kindly ask you to contact the responsible body named below or in the imprint, follow the existing links and look at further information on third-party sites. You can of course also find our contact details in the imprint.

Scope

This privacy policy applies to all personal data processed by our company and to all personal data processed by companies commissioned by us (processors). With the term personal data, we refer to information within the meaning of Article 4 No. 1 GDPR, such as the name, email address and postal address of a person. The processing of personal data ensures that we can offer and invoice our services and products, be it online or offline. The scope of this privacy policy includes:

  • all online presences (websites, online shops) that we operate
  • Social media presences and email communication
  • mobile apps for smartphones and other devices

In short: This privacy policy applies to all areas in which personal data is processed in a structured manner by the company via the channels mentioned. Should we enter into legal relations with you outside of these channels, we will inform you separately if necessary.

Legal bases

In the following privacy policy, we provide you with transparent information on the legal principles and regulations, i.e. the legal bases of the General Data Protection Regulation, which enable us to process personal data.
Whenever EU law is concerned, we refer to REGULATION (EU) 2016/679 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of April 27, 2016. You can of course access the General Data Protection Regulation of the EU online at EUR-Lex, the gateway to EU law, at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32016R0679.

We only process your data if at least one of the following conditions applies:

  1. Consent (Article 6 Paragraph 1 lit. a GDPR): You have given us your consent to process data for a specific purpose. An example would be the storage of data you entered into a contact form.
  2. Contract (Article 6 Paragraph 1 lit. b GDPR): We process your data in order to fulfill a contract or pre-contractual obligations with you. For example, if we conclude a sales contract with you, we need personal information in advance.
  3. Legal obligation (Article 6 Paragraph 1 lit. c GDPR): If we are subject to a legal obligation, we will process your data. For example, we are legally required to keep invoices for our bookkeeping. These usually contain personal data.
  4. Legitimate interests (Article 6 Paragraph 1 lit. f GDPR): In the case of legitimate interests that do not restrict your basic rights, we reserve the right to process personal data. For example, we have to process certain data in order to be able to operate our website securely and economically. Therefore, the processing is a legitimate interest.

Other conditions such as making recordings in the interest of the public, the exercise of official authority as well as the protection of vital interests do not usually occur with us. Should such a legal basis be relevant, it will be disclosed in the appropriate place.

In addition to the EU regulation, national laws also apply:

  • In Austria this is the Austrian Data Protection Act (Datenschutzgesetz), in short DSG.
  • In Germany this is the Federal Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz), in short BDSG.

Should other regional or national laws apply, we will inform you about them in the following sections.

Contact details of the data protection controller

If you have any questions about data protection, you will find the contact details of the responsible person or controller below:
SpineLine e.U.

E-Mail: office@spineline.at
Phone: +43664/400 65 31
Company details: https://www.spineline.at/impressum/

Storage Period

It is a general criterion for us to store personal data only for as long as is absolutely necessary for the provision of our services and products. This means that we delete personal data as soon as any reason for the data processing no longer exists. In some cases, we are legally obliged to keep certain data stored even after the original purpose no longer exists, such as for accounting purposes.

If you want your data to be deleted or if you want to revoke your consent to data processing, the data will be deleted as soon as possible, provided there is no obligation to continue its storage.

We will inform you below about the specific duration of the respective data processing, provided we have further information.

Rights in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation

In accordance with Articles 13, 14 of the GDPR, we inform you about the following rights you have to ensure fair and transparent processing of data:

  • According to Article 15 DSGVO, you have the right to information about whether we are processing data about you. If this is the case, you have the right to receive a copy of the data and to know the following information:
    • for what purpose we are processing;
    • the categories, i.e. the types of data that are processed;
    • who receives this data and if the data is transferred to third countries, how security can be guaranteed;
    • how long the data will be stored;
    • the existence of the right to rectification, erasure or restriction of processing and the right to object to processing;
    • that you can lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority (links to these authorities can be found below);
    • the origin of the data if we have not collected it from you;
    • Whether profiling is carried out, i.e. whether data is automatically evaluated to arrive at a personal profile of you.
  • You have a right to rectification of data according to Article 16 GDPR, which means that we must correct data if you find errors.
  • You have the right to erasure (“right to be forgotten”) according to Article 17 GDPR, which specifically means that you may request the deletion of your data.
  • According to Article 18 of the GDPR, you have the right to restriction of processing, which means that we may only store the data but not use it further.
  • According to Article 20 of the GDPR, you have the right to data portability, which means that we will provide you with your data in a standard format upon request.
  • According to Article 21 DSGVO, you have the right to object, which entails a change in processing after enforcement.
    • If the processing of your data is based on Article 6(1)(e) (public interest, exercise of official authority) or Article 6(1)(f) (legitimate interest), you may object to the processing. We will then check as soon as possible whether we can legally comply with this objection.
    • If data is used to conduct direct advertising, you may object to this type of data processing at any time. We may then no longer use your data for direct marketing.
    • If data is used to conduct profiling, you may object to this type of data processing at any time. We may no longer use your data for profiling thereafter.
  • According to Article 22 of the GDPR, you may have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing (for example, profiling).
  • You have the right to lodge a complaint under Article 77 of the GDPR. This means that you can complain to the data protection authority at any time if you believe that the data processing of personal data violates the GDPR.

In short: you have rights – do not hesitate to contact the responsible party listed above with us!

If you believe that the processing of your data violates data protection law or your data protection rights have been violated in any other way, you can complain to the supervisory authority. For Austria, this is the data protection authority, whose website can be found at https://www.dsb.gv.at/. In Germany, there is a data protection officer for each federal state. For more information, you can contact the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI). The following local data protection authority is responsible for our company:

Austria Data protection authority

Manager: Mag. Dr. Andrea Jelinek
Address: Barichgasse 40-42, 1030 Wien
Phone number.: +43 1 52 152-0
E-mail address: dsb@dsb.gv.at
Website: https://www.dsb.gv.at/

Security of data processing operations

In order to protect personal data, we have implemented both technical and organisational measures. We encrypt or pseudonymise personal data wherever this is possible. Thus, we make it as difficult as we can for third parties to extract personal information from our data.

Article 25 of the GDPR refers to “data protection by technical design and by data protection-friendly default” which means that both software (e.g. forms) and hardware (e.g. access to server rooms) appropriate safeguards and security measures shall always be placed. If applicable, we will outline the specific measures below.

TLS encryption with https

The terms TLS, encryption and https sound very technical, which they are indeed. We use HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) to securely transfer data on the Internet.
This means that the entire transmission of all data from your browser to our web server is secured – nobody can “listen in”.

We have thus introduced an additional layer of security and meet privacy requirements through technology design Article 25 Section 1 GDPR). With the use of TLS (Transport Layer Security), which is an encryption protocol for safe data transfer on the internet, we can ensure the protection of confidential information.
You can recognise the use of this safeguarding tool by the little lock-symbol , which is situated in your browser’s top left corner in the left of the internet address (e.g. examplepage.uk), as well as by the display of the letters https (instead of http) as a part of our web address.
If you want to know more about encryption, we recommend you to do a Google search for “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure wiki” to find good links to further information.

Data Processing Agreement (DPA)

In this section, we would like to explain what a Data Processing Agreement is and why it is needed. As the term “Data Processing Agreement” is quite lengthy, we will often only use the acronym DPA here in this text. Like most companies, we do not work alone, but also use the services of other companies or individuals. By involving different companies or service providers, we may pass on personal data for processing. These partners then act as processors with whom we conclude a contract, the so-called Data Processing Agreement (DPA). Most importantly for you to know is that any processing of your personal data takes place exclusively according to our instructions and must be regulated by the DPA.

Who are the processors?

As a company and website owner, we are responsible for any of your data that is processed by us. In addition to the controller, there may also be so-called processors involved. This includes any company or person who processes your personal data. More precisely and according to the GDPR’s definition, this means: Any natural or legal person, authority, institution or other entity that processes your personal data is considered a processor. Processors can therefore be service providers such as hosting or cloud providers, payment or newsletter providers or large companies such as Google or Microsoft.

To make the terminology easier to comprehend, here is an overview of the GDPR’s three roles:

Data subject (you as a customer or interested party) → Controller (we as a company and contracting entity) → Processors (service providers such as web hosts or cloud providers)

Contents of a Data Processing Agreement

As mentioned above, we have concluded a DPA with our partners who act as processors. First and foremost, it states that the processor processes the data exclusively in accordance with the GDPR. The contract must be concluded in writing, although an electronic contract completion is also considered a “written contract”. Any processing of personal data only takes place after this contract is concluded. The contract must contain the following:

  • indication to us as the controller
  • obligations and rights of the controller
  • categories of data subjects
  • type of personal data
  • type and purpose of data processing
  • subject and duration of data processing
  • location of data processing

Furthermore, the contract contains all obligations of the processor. The most important obligations are:

  • ensuring data security measures
  • taking possible technical and organisational measures to protect the rights of the data subject
  • maintaining a data processing record
  • cooperation with the data protection authority upon request
  • performing a risk analysis for any received personal data
  • subprocessors may only be appointed with the written consent of the controller

You can see an example of what a DPA looks like at https://gdpr.eu/data-processing-agreement/. This link shows a sample contract.

Web hosting

Web hosting Overview
👥 Affected parties: visitors to the website
🤝 Purpose: professional hosting of the website and security of operations
📓 Processed data: IP address, time of website visit, browser used and other data. You can find more details on this below or at the respective web hosting provider.
📅 Storage period: dependent on the respective provider, but usually 2 weeks
⚖️ Legal basis: Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR (legitimate interests)

What is web hosting?

Every time you visit a website nowadays, certain information – including personal data – is automatically created and stored, including on this website. This data should be processed as sparingly as possible, and only with good reason. By website, we mean the entirety of all websites on your domain, i.e. everything from the homepage to the very last subpage (like this one here). By domain we mean example.uk or examplepage.com.

When you want to view a website on a screen, you use a program called a web browser. You probably know the names of some web browsers: Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari.

The web browser has to connect to another computer which stores the website’s code: the web server. Operating a web server is complicated and time-consuming, which is why this is usually done by professional providers. They offer web hosting and thus ensure the reliable and flawless storage of website data.

Whenever the browser on your computer establishes a connection (desktop, laptop, smartphone) and whenever data is being transferred to and from the web server, personal data may be processed. After all, your computer stores data, and the web server also has to retain the data for a period of time in order to ensure it can operate properly.

Illustration:

Browser and Webserver

Why do we process personal data?

The purposes of data processing are:

  1. Professional hosting of the website and operational security
  2. To maintain the operational as well as IT security
  3. Anonymous evaluation of access patterns to improve our offer, and if necessary, for prosecution or the pursuit of claims.li>

Which data are processed?

Even while you are visiting our website, our web server, that is the computer on which this website is saved, usually automatically saves data such as

  • the full address (URL) of the accessed website (e. g. https://www.examplepage.uk/examplesubpage.html?tid=121982535)
  • browser and browser version (e.g. Chrome 87)
  • the operating system used (e.g. Windows 10)
  • the address (URL) of the previously visited page (referrer URL) (e. g. https://www.examplepage.uk/icamefromhere.html/)
  • the host name and the IP address of the device from the website is being accessed from (e.g. COMPUTERNAME and 194.23.43.121)
  • date and time
  • in so-called web server log files

How long is the data stored?

Generally, the data mentioned above are stored for two weeks and are then automatically deleted. We do not pass these data on to others, but we cannot rule out the possibility that this data may be viewed by the authorities in the event of illegal conduct.

In short: Your visit is logged by our provider (company that runs our website on special computers (servers)), but we do not pass on your data without your consent!

Legal basis

The lawfulness of processing personal data in the context of web hosting is justified in Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR (safeguarding of legitimate interests), as the use of professional hosting with a provider is necessary to present the company in a safe and user-friendly manner on the internet, as well as to have the ability to track any attacks and claims, if necessary.

Hetzner Privacy Policy

We use Hetzner for our website, which is a web hosting provider, among other things. The provider of this service is the German company Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany. You can find out more about the data that is processed through the use of Hetzner in their Privacy Policy at https://www.hetzner.com/de/rechtliches/datenschutz.

Data Processing Agreement (DPA) Hetzner

In accordance with Article 28 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we have entered into a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) with Hetzner. What exactly a DPA is and especially what must be included in a DPA, you can read in our general section “Data Processing Agreement (DPA)”.

This contract is required by law because Hetzner processes personal data on our behalf. It clarifies that Hetzner may only process data they receive from us according to our instructions and must comply with the GDPR. You can find the link to the Data Processing Agreement (DPA) under https://docs.hetzner.com/de/general/general-terms-and-conditions/data-privacy-faq/.

Explanation of the terminology used

We always strive to make our privacy policy as clear and comprehensible as possible. However, this is not always easy, especially when it comes to technical and legal matters. It is often sensible to use legal terms (such as ‘personal data)’ or certain technical terms (such as ‘cookies’ or ‘IP address’). But we don’t want to use such terms without any explanation. This is why you will find an alphabetical list of important terms used below. These are terms we may not yet have sufficiently explained in the privacy policy. In case we have adopted any of these terms from the GDPR which are definitions, we will also list the GDPR texts here and add our own further explanations if necessary.

Processor

Definition according to Article 4 of the GDPR

For the purposes of this Regulation, the term means:

“processor” means a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which processes personal data on behalf of the controller;

Explanation: As a company and a website owner, we are responsible for all your data we process (i. e. the ‘controller’). In addition to the controller, there may also be so-called processors. This includes any company or person who processes personal data on our behalf. In addition to service providers such as tax consultants, processors can also be hosting or cloud providers, payment or newsletter providers or large companies such as Google or Microsoft.

Consent

Definition according to Article 4 of the GDPR

For the purposes of this Regulation, the term means:

“consent” of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her;

Explanation: With websites, such consent is usually given via a cookie consent tool. You’ve most certainly come across these. Whenever you visit a website for the first time, you will usually be asked via a banner whether you agree or consent to the data processing. You can usually also make individual settings and thus decide for yourself which level of data processing you want to allow. If you do not give your consent, no personal data may be processed. Consent can of course also be given in writing, i.e. not via a tool.

Personal Data

Definition according to Article 4 of the GDPR

For the purposes of this Regulation, the term means:

“personenal data” means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;

Explanation: Personal data is all data that can identify you as a person. This is usually data such as:

  • name
  • address
  • email address
  • postal address
  • phone number
  • birthday
  • identification numbers such as social security number, tax identification number, ID card number or matriculation number
  • banking data such as account number, credit information, account balances and more.

According to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), your IP address is also personal data. IT experts can use your IP address to determine at least the approximate location of your device and subsequently your location as the connection owner. Therefore, storing an IP address also requires a legal basis within the scope of the GDPR. There are also so-called “special categories” of personal data, which are particularly worthy of protection. These include:

  • racial and ethnic origin
  • political opinions
  • religious or ideological beliefs
  • Union membership
  • genetic data such as data obtained from blood or saliva samples
  • biometric data (this is information about psychological, physical or behavioural characteristics that can identify an individual).
    health Data
  • Data relating to sexual orientation or sex life

Profiling

Definition according to Article 4 of the GDPR

For the purposes of this Regulation, the term means:

“Profiling” means any form of automated processing of personal data consisting of the use of personal data to evaluate certain personal aspects relating to a natural person, in particular to analyse or predict aspects concerning that natural person’s performance at work, economic situation, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behaviour, location or movements;

Explanation: Profiling collects various personal data about an individual in order to learn more about that individual. On the internet, profiling is often used for advertising purposes or for credit checks. Web and advertising analysis programs e. g. collect data about your behaviour and interests on a website. This results in a special user profile that can be used to target advertising to specific target groups.

 

Controller

Definition according to Article 4 of the GDPR

For the purposes of this Regulation, the term means:

“controller” means the natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data; where the purposes and means of such processing are determined by Union or Member State law, the controller or the specific criteria for its nomination may be provided for by Union or Member State law;

Explanation: In our example, we are responsible for the processing of your personal data and are therefore the “controller”. If we pass on collected data to other service providers for processing, they are considered “contract processors”. For this, a “Data Processing Agreement (DPA)” must be concluded.

 

Closing Remarks

Congratulations! If you are reading these lines, you have most likely familiarised yourself with our entire Privacy Policy – or at least scrolled down here. As you can see from the scope of our Privacy Policy, we do not take the protection of your personal data lightly.
We find it important to inform you about the processing of your personal data to the best of our abilities. In doing so, we not only want to tell you which data is processed but also explain to you why we use various software programs. In general, Privacy Policies have very technical and legal jargon. However, since most of you are not web developers or solicitors, we wanted to take a different approach and explain the facts in simple and clear language. Of course, this is not always possible due to the subject matter. Therefore, you can also find a more detailed explanation of the most important terms at the end of the Privacy Policy.
If you have any questions about data protection on our website, please do not hesitate to contact us or the responsible body. We wish you all the best and hope to soon welcome you to our website again.

All texts are copyrighted.