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Data protection

Data Protection at GESIS

GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences operates in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation and all other statutory data protection provisions.

The protection of your privacy when using our webpages is important to us. In what follows, we provide information about the collection of personal data in this context. Personal data are any data that can be related to you personally, for example, name and surname, address, email addresses, or user behavior.

GESIS reserves the right to update this privacy policy from time to time. Therefore, we recommend that it be read at regular intervals.

Contact Data

The controller within the meaning of Article 4(7) of the EU General Data Protection  Regulation (GDPR) is

GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Mannheim
Street address: 
B6, 4-5
68159 Mannheim
Germany
Postal address: 
PO Box 122155
68072 Mannheim
Germany
For further information, see our "imprint" (Provider and Legal Notices page).


Data Protection Officer

If you have any questions about data protection, please contact our data protection officer:

HEC Harald Eul Consulting GmbH
Datenschutzbeauftragte GESIS
Auf der Höhe 34
50321 Brühl
Germany
Email: Datenschutz-GESIS(at)he-c(dot)de

Personal Data

Without your consent, the personal data collected within the framework of the GESIS webpages will be used only for the purpose of contract execution and the processing of your enquiries.The processing for these purposes is based on the legal provisions of Art. 6 para.1 lit. b (Inquiries and contractual relations) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Beyond that, your personal data will be used for the purpose of advertising and market research and for the needs-based design of GESIS' electronic services only if you have given your prior consent. Your data will neither be transmitted to third parties nor exported to states outside the European Economic Area.

You may, of course, revoke your respective consent at any time with effect for the future. 

Your Rights as a User

You have the right, on request, to obtain access free of charge to the personal data stored about you. Furthermore, you have the right to rectification or erasure, the right to restriction of processing, the right to object to processing, and the right to data portability.

You may revoke your consents to data processing at any time with effect for the future. Furthermore, you have the right to complain to a data protection supervisory authority about the processing of your personal data by us.

Data Transfer and Usage Statistics

For technical reasons, when you access our website, your Internet browser automatically transmits data to our Web server. These data include, among other things, the date and time of access, the URL of the referring website, the accessed file, the amount of data transmitted, the browser type and version, the operating system, and your IP address. These data are stored separately from other data that you enter when using our website. It is not possible for us to assign these data to a specific person. They are analyzed for statistical purposes and then deleted.

Cookies

Cookies are used on the GESIS webpages in order to expand the range of functions. This enables data to be temporarily stored on your computer. You can prevent this storage by changing your browser settings accordingly, and you can delete existing cookies at any time. If you deactivate the use of cookies completely, this may lead to restrictions in the range of functions of our webpages. 

Web Analytics

The provider of this website uses the services of etracker GmbH, Hamburg, Germany (www.etracker.com) to analyse usage data.  We do not use cookies for web analysis by default. If we use analysis and optimisation cookies, we will obtain your explicit consent separately in advance. If this is the case and you agree, cookies are used to enable a statistical range analysis of this website, a measurement of the success of our online marketing measures and test procedures, e.g. to test and optimise different versions of our online offer or its components. Cookies are small text files that are stored by the Internet browser on the user’s device. etracker cookies do not contain any information that would allow a user to be identified.

The data generated by etracker on behalf of the provider of this website is processed and stored by etracker solely in Germany by commission of the provider of this website and is thus subject to the strict German and European data protection laws and standards. In this regard, etracker was independently checked, certified and awarded with the ePrivacyseal data protection seal of approval.

The data processing is based on Art. 6 Section 1 lit f (legitimate interest) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Our legitimate interest is the optimisation of our online offer and our website. As the privacy of our visitors is very important to us, the data that may possibly allow a reference to an individual person, such as the IP address, registration or device IDs, will be anonymised or pseudonymised as soon as possible. etracker does not use the data for any other purpose, combine it with other data or pass it on to third parties.

You can object to the outlined data processing at any time. The objection has no disadvantageous consequences. If the "Do not track" option is already activated in yout browser you will not be tracked. The slider then has no function.

Further information on data protection with etracker can be found here.

Tracking Within the Framework of the GESIS Search

For the purpose of scientific research, needs-based design, and continuous optimization in connection with various value-added services (e.g., search term recommenders, various ranking procedures) provided on our webpages, we use an analysis service for the search function on the GESIS website, which is installed on our own Web server. We record actions, for example searches conducted with search terms, document views, and clicking on links. In this connection, pseudonymized usage profiles are created and cookies (see above) are used. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the search function are "session ID," "date and time," "action type," and "action parameters."

Newsletters and Electronic Mailing Lists

Via various newsletters and mailing lists, we offer you the possibility of keeping up to date with news about GESIS and its services. In order to send you the newsletters and mailing lists, we need your email address. The provision of further data, such as your name and surname, is voluntary. We use these data to address you personally.

We provide the following newsletters and mailing lists:

If you no longer wish to receive a particular newsletter or mailing list, you can unsubscribe at any time on the respective aforementioned webpage.

Emails

When you send us an email, your email address is used only for the correspondence with you. After conclusion of the correspondence, your email address is deleted. It is not used for other purposes or transmitted to third parties.

Social Media-Daten

GESIS bindet deaktivierte Social-Media-Buttons ein, die keinen Kontakt mit den Servern von Facebook & Co herstellen. Erst wenn Anwendende diese aktivieren und damit die Zustimmung zur Kommunikation mit Facebook oder Twitter erklären, werden die Buttons aktiv und stellen die Verbindung her. Dann können Anwendende mit einem zweiten Klick ihre Empfehlung übermitteln. Sind Anwendende beim ausgewählten sozialen Netz bereits angemeldet, erfolgt das bei Facebook ohne ein weiteres Fenster. Bei Twitter erscheint ein Popup-Fenster, in dem man den Text des Tweets noch bearbeiten kann.

Ein Klick auf einen dieser Buttons bedeutet somit, dass Anwendende eine Zustimmung erteilen, Daten an die jeweiligen Betreibenden des sozialen Netzes zu übermitteln. Aber nur für diese eine Seite und für den angewählten Dienst. Beim Aufruf weiterer GESIS-Seiten erscheint wieder der deaktivierte Button. So können die sozialen Netze genutzt werden, ohne dass diese gleich komplette Surf-Profile erstellen können.

Social Media Data

GESIS integrates deactivated social media buttons that do not establish contact with the servers of Facebook & Co. Only when the user activates these and thus declares his consent to communication with Facebook, or Twitter do the buttons become active and establish the connection. The user can then submit his recommendation with a second click. If the user is already logged in to the social network of his or her choice, Facebook will do so without another window. On Twitter, a pop-up window appears in which the text of the tweet can still be edited.

Clicking on one of these buttons thus means that the user gives his consent to transmit data to the respective operator of the social network. But only for this one page and for the selected service. When calling up further GESIS pages, the deactivated button appears again. In this way, you can use the social networks without them being able to create complete surfing profiles right away.

Facebook Plugin

Our website uses social plugins (“plugins”) provided by the social network facebook.com, operated by Facebook Inc., 1601 S. California Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA (“Facebook”). The plugins are identifiable by a Facebook logo (white letter f on blue background or a thumb up icon) or the notice “Facebook Social Plugin”. For a full list of all social Plugins please see http://developers.facebook.com/plugins.

When you visit a page of our website that contains a social plugin, your browser establishes a direct connection to Facebook servers. Facebook directly transfers the plugin content to your browser which embeds the latter into the website, enabling Facebook to receive information about your having accessed the respective page of our website. Thus we have no influence on the data gathered by the plugin and inform you according to our state of knowledge: The embedded plugins provide Facebook with the information that you have accessed the corresponding page of our website. If you are logged into Facebook, your visit can be assigned to your Facebook account. If you interact with the plugins, for example by clicking “Like”, or entering a comment, the corresponding information is transmitted from your browser directly to Facebook and stored by it. Even if you are not logged into Facebook, there is possibility that the plugins transmits your IP-address to Facebook.

For the information on the purpose and scope of data collection and procession by Facebook, as well as your rights in this respect and settings options for protecting your privacy please visit Facebook’s privacy policy: http://www.facebook.com/policy.php. If you are a Facebook member and do not want Facebook to connect the data concerning your visit to our website with your member data already stored by Facebook, please log off Facebook before entering our website.

External Links

In order to provide you with the best possible information, you will find links to third-party webpages on our website. If not clearly recognizable as such, we draw your attention to the fact that the link is an external link. GESIS has no influence on the content and design of these pages of other providers. Therefore, the guarantees given in the present privacy statement do not, of course, apply there.

Please note that the integration of external content, for example videos from the video platform YouTube, may lead to the use of trackers by other providers. For further information about this, see Google's privacy policy.

Detailed information on how GESIS handles personal data, the purposes of processing, the legal basis for processing, and personal data protection rights can be found in our data protection information (126 kB) pursuant to Art. 13, 14 and 21 DSGVO (136 kB).

Privacy Policy as of July 23, 2021