Privacy Policy

1. Controller

The controller responsible for the collection, processing and use of your personal data within the meaning of the European General Data Protection Regulation is

VDI Technologiezentrum GmbH

CEO Sascha Hermann

VDI-Platz 1

40468 Düsseldorf

E-mail: vditz(at)vdi.de

Phone: +49 (0) 211 6214-401

If you wish to object to our collection, processing and use of your data pursuant to this data privacy statement or for individual measures, you can address your objection to the aforementioned organization. You can save and print this data privacy statement at any time.

2. Data Protection Office of VDI Technologiezentrum GmbH

If you have any questions or comments as regards our processing of your personal data we welcome your feedback. In this case, you can contact our responsible data protection office as follows:

TÜV Technische Überwachung Hessen GmbH

E-mail: datenschutz@vdi.de

3. Storage of your access data

Each time a user accesses the website www.photonics21.org and each time a document is downloaded from this website, access data about this action will be saved in a log file on the server.

Each data set consists of:

• The IP address of the device that has opened the website
• The date and time of the request ("time stamp")
• The name of the file
• The access status (file transferred, file not found, etc.)
• The amount of data which has been transferred
• The page which has requested the file (referrer-URL)
• A description of the type of web browser which has been used (e.g. Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, Opera, etc.)

The collected data will be analyzed for statistical purposes; it will not be forwarded to third parties for either commercial or non-commercial purposes.

4. Transfer of personal data

Your data will only be transferred from the browser to the web server following encryption. We use a SSL-certificate for this.

5. Information on data transfer to the USA

Among other things, tools from companies based in the USA are integrated into our website. If these tools are active, your personal data may be transferred to the US servers of the respective companies. We would like to point out that the USA is not a safe third country in terms of EU data protection law. US companies are obliged to release personal data to security authorities without you as the person concerned being able to take legal action against this. It cannot therefore be ruled out that US authorities (e.g. secret services) may process, evaluate and permanently store your data on US servers for monitoring purposes. We have no influence on these processing activities.

Where this is possible and reasonable, we prefer contractual partners who use servers in the European Union or other safe countries for our data in accordance with the EU data protection level or agree standard contractual clauses with us that exclude data transfer to US security authorities that does not conform to EU law.

6. Newsletter

The following data will be collected for the transmission of the Photonics21 newsletter, keeping you informed of photonics news and events in Europe:

• e-mail address
• data of registration
• acceptance of data collection
• knowledge of the data privacy statement

Your data will be collected by means of the double-opt-in procedure, which means that your data will only be saved and used in the system if you agree to the registration by clicking a confirmation link in an e-mail. Otherwise, the data that you have entered will be deleted after 24 hours.

The data will be processed by the software webEdition and the newsletter is sent via the software webEdition. You can cancel the newsletter at any time.

The collected data will only be used to send out the Photonics21 newsletter, it will not be forwarded to third parties for either commercial or non-commercial purposes. The data will be stored until such time as the user objects to its storage or the purpose of the data storage announced during the registration process is no longer given.

7. Contact form

The data will be transferred to the web server in an encrypted way. However, the data will not be stored on the web server, but will be sent automatically from the web server via e-mail to the editorial staff of the website. The data will only be stored until this no longer becomes necessary.

8. Registration as a Photonics21 member and to the Photonics21 member area

When you sign up to become a new Photonics21 member, the following data will be stored on our server:

• your name
• first name
• e-mail address
• type of affiliation
• name of affiliation
• your affiliation's address and
• your choice to sign up for one or two Photonics21 work groups

We only use this information so as to be able to contact the Photonics21 members. We neither pass this data on to third parties, nor do we use it for any other purposes of our own. Our registration system, which includes a confirmation message containing a web link to finalize registration (double-opt-in), ensures that you have explicitly requested to become a new Photonics21 member.

When you log-in to the Photonics21 member area you are asked to enter your e-mail address and personal password. You can then access the exclusive member area.

If you would like to cancel your Photonics21 membership, send a corresponding e-mail to secretariat@photonics21.org and your complete account will be deleted immediately.

9. Online registration for Photonics21 Events/Workshops

The Photonics21 website offers the possibility to register for Photonics21 events and workshops via an online form. The following data is collected via this online form:

• Email adress
• First name
• Last name
• Consent to the collection of data
• Knowledge regarding the data-protection declaration

The data is processed with the software webEdition. The stored data will be used exclusively for the organization of Photonics21 event/workshops e.g. for the creation of a participant badge or sending further information ahead of the event, no transfer to third parties for commercial or non-commercial purposes is performed. The data will only be stored until the user objects to the storage, which is possible at any time, or if the purpose of the data collection specified during the registration is no longer current.

10. Right of access

Users have the right to receive– free of charge – information about their personal data that has been saved. Furthermore, they have the right under statutory regulations to request that their personal data be rectified, blocking and erased.

11. Cookies

12. Web analytics

To further optimize the Photonics21 website as regards the needs of the users, we analyze the user behavior of visitors to our website (e.g. which content is of most interest? Which content is of least interest?) We use the web analytics provider Matomo (former Piwik) on our website for this purpose.

Matomo uses cookies to analyze the user behavior of visitors to the website. The user information (including the anonymized IP-address) which is generated by the cookie will be transferred to our server for analysis where it is saved for later evaluation and optimization of our website contents. Even before your IP-address is transferred to our server, it will be anonymized by deleting the last two blocks of numbers, thus ensuring that you remain completely anonymous as a user. The information about how visitors to our website use our website will not be forwarded to third parties, unless we are obliged to do so by law, e.g. in the case of a judicial order.

12.1 Objection to analytical cookies

If you do not approve the storage and analysis of this data resulting from your visit to our website, there are two ways in which you can stop the analysis of your user behavior:

First, you can permanently prevent the use of cookies by changing the corresponding settings in your browser software. However, in this case you may not be able to use all of the functions of our website because your browser then blocks all cookies, not only those cookies which we save on your computer for analytical purposes. Cookies are also necessary to log into the exclusive member area.

Secondly, you can object to the storage and use below via mouse klick at any time. In this case, a so-called opt-out cookie will be saved in your browser which consequently leads to Matomo no longer collecting any session data.

Attention: If you delete cookies on your computer (e.g. by activating the private/incognito mode in your browser), the opt-out cookie will also be deleted and may have to be reactivated so that we do not save an analysis cookie on your computer.

12.2 Opt-out cookie

If you would like to prevent Matomo storing a cookie on your computer you can do so here:

13. Integration of services and contents of third parties

Our website uses CSS files, Java scripts and third-party fonts provided by our service provider of e-nitio mediasign GmbH & Co. KG, Melatengürtel 125a, 50825 Cologne, Germany, for our website. By outsourcing this data to another server, your browser can download this data in parallel and thus deliver the pages of our website faster, which constitutes a legitimate interest within the meaning of Art. 6 (1) lit. f DSGVO. To do this, the browser you are using must connect to the e-nitio server. This will give e-nitio notice that our website has been accessed via your IP address. On our behalf, e-nitio only stores access data in so-called server log files, which your browser automatically transmits to the e-nitio server. These are e.g. browser type and browser version, operating system, referrer URL, name of the requested file, date and time of retrieval, amount of data transferred, the requesting provider and your IP address. These data are evaluated exclusively to ensure a trouble-free operation of our website and do not allow any conclusion on your person. No merge of this data with other data sources will not be carried out.

14. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

The embedded links on our website to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are not embedded via the respective social plugins. The embedded graphic only contains an http-link. This means that if you visit our website, no direct connection will be established to the servers of the social media providers.