Our website may be used without entering personal information. Different rules may apply to certain services on our site, however, and are explained separately below. We collect personal information from you (e.g. name, address, email address, telephone number, etc.) in accordance with the provisions of German data protection statutes. Information is considered personal if it can be associated exclusively to a specific natural person. The legal framework for data protection may be found in the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) and the Telemedia Act (TMG). The provisions below serve to provide information as to the manner, extent and purpose for collecting, using and processing personal information by the provider.

Please be aware that data transfer via the internet is subject to security risks and, therefore, complete protection against third-party access to transferred data cannot be ensured.

Our website makes use of so-called cookies in order to recognize repeat use of our website by the same user/internet connection subscriber. Cookies are small text files that your internet browser downloads and stores on your computer. They are used to improve our website and services. In most cases these are so-called “session cookies” that are deleted once you leave our website.

To an extent, however, these cookies also pass along information used to automatically recognize you. Recognition occurs through an IP address saved to the cookies. The information thereby obtained is used to improve our services and to expedite your access to the website.

You can prevent cookies from being installed by adjusting the settings on your browser software accordingly. You should be aware, however, that by doing so you may not be able to make full use of all the functions of our website.

For technical reasons, data such as the following, which your internet browser transmits to us or to our web space provider (so called server log files), is collected:

– type and version of the browser you use

– operating system – websites that linked you to our site (referrer URL)

– websites that you visit

– date and time of your visit

– your Internet Protocol (IP) address.

This anonymous data is stored separately from any personal information you may have provided, thereby making it impossible to connect it to any particular person. The data is used for statistical purposes in order to improve our website and services.

On our website we offer you the opportunity to contact us, either by email and/or by using a contact form. In such event, information provided by the user is stored for the purpose of facilitating communications with the user. No data is transferred to third parties. Nor is any of this information matched to any information that may be collected by other components of our website.

On our website we offer you the opportunity to post comments about individual articles. For this purpose, the IP address of the user/internet connection subscriber is stored. This information is stored for our security in the event the author through his/her comments infringes against third party rights and/or unlawful content is entered. Consequently, we have a direct interest in the author’s stored data, particularly since we may be potentially liable for such violations. No data is transferred to third parties. Nor is any of this information matched to any information that may be collected by other components of our website.

We use the “Google Maps” component of Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 USA, hereinafter “Google.”

Google sets a cookie in order to process the user configuration and data when the page with the integrated “Google Maps” component is displayed. As a general rule, this cookie is not deleted by closing the browser, but rather expires after a certain time, as long as it is not previously manually deleted by you.

If you do not agree with this processing of your data, you may choose to deactivate the “Google Maps” service and thereby prevent the transfer of data to Google. To do this, you must deactivate the Java Script function in your browser. However, we would like to point out that in this case you will not be able to use “Google Maps” or at least only to a limited extent.

The use of “Google Maps” and the information obtained through “Google Maps” is according to Google’s Terms of Use

as well as the additional Terms and Conditions for “Google Maps”

https://www.google.com/intl/de_de/help/terms_maps.html.

Our website employs components provided by facebook.com. Facebook is a service of Facebook Inc., 1601 S. California Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA.

Each time our website receives an access request equipped with a Facebook component, the component prompts your browser to download an image of this Facebook component. Through this process, Facebook is informed precisely which page of our website is being visited.

When you access our site while logged into Facebook, Facebook uses information gathered by this component to identify the precise page you are viewing and associates this information to your personal account on Facebook. Whenever you click on the “Like“ button, for example, or enter a comment, this information is transmitted to your personal account on Facebook and stored there. In addition, Facebook is informed of your visit to our website. This occurs regardless of whether you click on a component or not.

If you wish to prevent the transfer to and storage of data by Facebook about you and your interaction with our website, you must first log out of Facebook before visiting our website. The data protection policies of Facebook provide additional information, in particular about the collection and use of data by Facebook, your rights in this regard as well as the options available to you for protecting your privacy: https://de-de.facebook.com/about/privacy/

In addition, tools are freely available on the market that can be used to block Facebook social plug-ins with add-ons from being added to all commonly used browsers:  http://webgraph.com/resources/facebookblocker/

You can find an overview of Facebook plugins at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/

Our site uses the Jetpack app by Automattic Inc., 132 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94107, United States of America, with technology by Quantcast Corp., 201 Third Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103, United States of America. Data about each time our website is access is recorded via cookies and then stored in the United States to conduct web analytics. Cookies are small text files that are stored locally in the cache of the internet browser used by site visitors so that the browser can be recognised when the visitor returns to the site. The IP address is in this case immediately anonymised before it is stored. You may refuse the use of cookies and/or delete previously saved cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser; however, please be advised that if you opt out of using cookies, you may not be able to make full use of all the features of this website.

The collection and use of data by Jetpack can be excluded with future effect by setting an opt-out cookie for your browser at http://www.quantcast.com/opt-out. If you should delete all cookies from your browser, this opt-out process will have to be repeated.

On the basis of the Federal Data Protection Act, you may contact us at no cost if you have questions relating to the collection, processing or use of your personal information, if you wish to request the correction, blocking or deletion of the same, or if you wish to cancel explicitly granted consent. Please note that you have the right to have incorrect data corrected or to have personal data deleted, where such claim is not barred by any legal obligation to retain this data.

Model Data Protection Statement for Anwaltskanzlei Weiß & Partner