Privacy

Privacy policy

Scope of application

This Data Protection Policy informs you about the nature, extent and purpose of personal data gathered by the service provider in charge, Institute of Automatic Control, RWTH Aachen University, (in short: “IRT”), Campus Boulevard 30, 52074 Aachen (Phone +49 241 80 27500, mail: secretary@irt.rwth-aachen.de).

We take the protection of personal data very seriously and we would like you to feel safe when visiting our website. Personal data gathered while accessing our site is being processed in accordance with the applicable laws, in particular referring to the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/676 (GDPR), the German Federal Data Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz/BDSG) and the German Telemedia Act (Telemediengesetz/TMG).

Responsibility for our contents

The contents on our web pages have been created with the utmost care. However, all information is provided without liability in respect of accuracy, completeness and timeliness.

As a service provider we are liable for own content on this site as defined by § 7 para. 1 TMG and common laws. Per definition of §§ 8 to 10 TMG, as a service provider we are not responsible to monitor information transmitted or stored by third parties or to investigate circumstances pointing to unlawful actions. Legal obligations to remove information or block its utilization are not affected by this. However, a liability regarding this is only possible after a particular violation of law has been brought to our attention. After gaining knowledge of such violation of law the respective content will be removed immediately.

Usage of personal data

At some points within our web presence you are offered the opportunity to contact us. Data transmitted during this process is only being processed for the purpose it has been provided to us. It will not be passed on to third parties.

What is personal data?

Personal data as defined by Art. 4 GPDR means all 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.

Information that is not related directly to a real identity (such as favorite websites or the number of users of a website) is not defined as personal data.

What data is being gathered?

If the website provides an opportunity to enter personal or business-related data (such as email addresses, names, addresses), a disclosure by the user explicitly occurs on a voluntary basis. The utilization of all services offered, if feasible and reasonable, is also enabled without disclosure of such data or by using anonymized data as well as an alias. However, by providing us with correct information including optional data, a personal and individual support service can be offered.

Email contact

If you wish to contact us by email, we would like to inform you that under certain circumstances the confidentiality of information communicated in these ways may not be guaranteed. The content of emails may be viewed by third parties. Therefore we would like to recommend you sending confidential information by letter mail.

Data entered when contacting us by email will solely be stored by us in order to answer your inquiry. Data accumulated in this process will be deleted as soon as it is no longer needed to achieve the purpose of its collection. If there is an obligation to preserve records, processing of this data will be limited.

Forms

There are forms on the website that you can use to send data to us. In this section you will first find general information that applies to all forms. In the subsections there is then detailed information about the data collected, the legal basis, the purpose of data processing and the duration of storage.

For all forms, the system collects the date and time of submission of the form, as well as the language in which the web page is displayed. The IP address is generally not stored in our forms.

Of course, you are generally entitled to data subject rights. If there is a possibility of objection or removal, please contact us by e-mail at secretary@irt.rwth-aachen.de and describe as precisely as possible when you sent which form with which data (ideally a forwarding of the confirmation e-mail). We will then arrange for the deletion of the corresponding form data.

Forms event and booking request

The data entered in these forms is used to process and handle your requests. Mandatory fields are marked with (*) and reduced to a minimum number so that we can process the requests.

The legal basis for the processing of the data is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a DSGVO if the user has given his consent. The legal basis for the processing of the data transmitted by means of the form is Art. 6 (1) lit. f DSGVO.

Duration of storage: The data in the database is automatically deleted after 90 days. In addition, the data is forwarded to our employees according to the thematic assignment. We delete this data after storage is no longer necessary or restrict processing if there are legal retention obligations.

Possibility of objection and removal: After submitting the form, you have the possibility to revoke your consent to the processing of personal data at any time. For the procedure, see above.

Your rights

You have the following rights regarding your personal data:

• Right to disclosure

• Right to rectification or erasure

• Right to restriction of processing

• Right to object data processing

• Right to data portability

In addition, you have the right to file a complaint regarding the processing of your personal data with the Data Protection Authority.

Collection of personal data when accessing our website

By solely using our website for information purposes, without registering or sending other information, we only gather the personal data your browser submits to our servers. Upon viewing our website, the transfer of the following data is necessary in order to display our website and to ensure a stable and secure operation (legal basis is provided by Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR):

• IP address

• Date and time of access

• Time zone difference to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)

• Content of the request (particular web page)

• Response status code (HTTP status code)

• Transferred amount of data per request

• Website from which the user’s system is led to our website

• Browser

• Operation system and interface

• Language and version of the browser used

Use of cookies

Our website uses transient cookies (session cookies). This data is not stored permanently. You can benefit from temporary cookies when filling in forms on our website, helping you when repeatedly entering personal data. These Cookies will be deleted automatically after 30 minutes of inactivity or after closing the browser.

Most browsers are configured to accept cookies automatically. Storage of cookies can be disabled or your browser can be configured to notify you as soon as cookies are being sent to your machine.

If you have cookies disabled a session ID is generated, allowing to identify a person coherently accessing our website. There is no data stored on your machine. The session ID is deleted after 30 minutes of inactivity.

Of course merely you have the right to decide if and for what purpose we may use your data. Furthermore you decide if we may use your data for the purpose of consulting, advertisement and market research. Certainly you can revoke your agreement at all times.

Processing of personal data

Personal data is solely used for internal purposes within the scope of customer relationship. Passing on to third parties will not occur without your required consent. Gathering of personal data and transfer to authorized federal organizations and authorities only takes place according to applicable legislation or if we are obliged due to a court order. All employees and contractors are bound to a confidentiality agreement and are obliged to comply with data protection regulations.

Copyright

The Layout of the Homepage, graphics and pictures used and the collection of individual contributions are protected by copyright.

The IRT reserves all rights including the rights of photomechanical reproduction, the duplication and distribution via special processes (e.g. data processing, data carriers, data networks).

Social Media

On our website we have included links to the social media channels LinkedIn (www.linkedin.de), Instagram (www.instagram.de) and Facebook (www.facebook.com). No personal data is transferred when simply viewing the pages we provide. Only when you click on the links provided can cookies be stored on your computer or your IP address by the providers. We have no influence on the data processing.

Further information can be found in the operator's data protection information:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/policy.php
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/legal/privacy/

Youtube Videos

On some of our websites we embed YouTube videos. The operator of the corresponding plug-ins is YouTube, LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066, USA. When you visit a page with the YouTube plug-in, a connection to YouTube servers is established. This tells YouTube which pages you visit. If you are logged in to your YouTube account, YouTube can personally associate your browsing behavior with you. You can prevent this by first logging out of your YouTube account.

If a YouTube video is started, the provider uses cookies that collect information about user behaviour.

If you've disabled cookies for the Google Ad program, you won't have to worry about these cookies when watching YouTube videos. YouTube also stores non-personal usage information in other cookies. If you want to prevent this, you need to block cookies from being stored in your browser.

Further information can be found in the operator's data protection information:

YouTube: google.de/intl/en/policies/privacy/