Use of cookies

General provisions

Cookies are small text files that are saved on your computer when you visit our website. If you access this website at a later time, your browser sends the content of the cookies back to the respective provider and thus allows the terminal device to be identified again. Reading cookies allows us to design our website optimally for you and makes it easier for you to use it.

Disabling and deleting cookies

Your browser allows you to delete all cookies at any time. To do this, please refer to the help functions of your browser. This may result in individual functions of our website no longer being available to you.

Overview of the cookies we use

In this section you can find an overview of the cookies we use.

Strictly necessary cookies

Certain cookies are necessary to enable us to provide our services securely through the website. This category includes, for example:

– “Cookies” that identify or authenticate our users;

– “Cookies” that temporarily store certain user data (e.g. content of an online form);

– “Cookies” that store certain user preferences (e.g. search settings or language settings);

– Cookies that store data to ensure smooth playback of video or audio content.

Analytical cookies

We use analytical cookies to record user behavior (e.g. clicks on ad banners, entered search queries) and to statistically evaluate these actions.

Advertising cookies

We also use cookies for advertising purposes. The user behavior profiles created using such cookies (e.g. clicks on advertising banners, subpages visited, search queries entered) are used by us to show you advertisements or offers that are tailored to your interests ("interest-based advertising").

Third-party advertising cookies

We also allow other companies to evaluate our users' data through advertising cookies. This allows us and third parties to show users of our website interest-based advertisements based on an analysis of your usage behavior (e.g. clicks on banner ads, subpages visited, queries entered), and this is not limited to our online offerings.

Referral cookies

Our referral tracking partners set cookies on your computer (a “referral cookie”) if you have reached our website through an advertisement from the respective partner. These cookies usually expire after 30 days. If you visit certain pages that we host and the cookie has not yet expired, we and the respective conversion tracking partner may see that a specific user clicked on the advertisement and was redirected to our page. The information collected through the referral cookie is used to create referral statistics and to determine the total number of users who clicked on the respective advertisement and were redirected to a page that has been provided with a referral tracking tag.

Web space analysis

We need statistical information about the use of our website to make it more accessible, perform reach measurements and conduct market research.

For this purpose, we use the web analytics tools described in this section.

The user profiles created by these tools, using analytical cookies or by evaluating log files, do not contain any personal data. The tools either do not use users' IP addresses at all or shorten them immediately after collection.

The tool providers only process the data as personal data processors on our instructions and not for their own purposes.

Below you will find information about each tool provider and how you can object to the collection and processing of personal data through the tool.

Please note that for tools that use opt-out cookies, the opt-out function is device- or browser-specific and therefore valid for the end device or browser currently in use. If you use multiple end devices or browsers, you must select the opt-out function on each end device and in each browser used. 

Furthermore, you can generally prevent the creation of user profiles by disabling the use of cookies.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is provided by Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA ("Google"). We use Google Analytics with the additional function of anonymizing IP addresses offered by Google. Google shortens the IP address within the EU and only in exceptional cases in the USA, in both cases only saving shortened IP addresses. You can object to the collection and processing of your data by downloading and installing the browser plug-in from the following link: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en