Data privacy statement

for the Federal Gazette, the Company Register, the Publication Platform and the Shareholder Forum.

1. General

The

Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH
Amsterdamer Str. 192
50735 Cologne

Tel.: +49 (0) 2 21 / 9 76 68-0
Fax: +49 (0) 2 21 / 9 76 68-278
E-Mail: service(at)bundesanzeiger.de

operates this website for purposes of offering information and services.

We will process your personal data exclusively in accordance with the provisions of Data Privacy Legislation as amended. The following provisions will inform you about the type, extent and purpose of collection, processing and use of personal data. This Data Privacy Statement applies exclusively to our Web pages. Should links on our Web pages take you to other Web pages, please refer to those pages for information on how your data will be handled there.

Your personal data will, wherever possible, be encrypted by digital security systems to protect them from damage, erasure or unauthorised access, using technical and organisational measures.

2. Processing of personal data

We collect, store and use your transmitted personal data (for example: your name, address and phone number or e-mail address, further identification and identifying data, also data needed for accounting) to the extent they are needed for processing of requests and orders (e.g. chargeable retrievals of annual financial statement deposits, orders for publication or information services or newsletters) or for technical website administration or mandatory reasons or to which you have given your consent. Article 6 (1) a), b), c), e) and f) GDPR provides the legal basis for processing such data. To facilitate this task it may at times be necessary to transmit your data to service providers commissioned to process orders and accounts. Over and above this, we shall not disclose your personal data to third parties unless under mandatory regulations, for collection of fees and payments, or at your request.

Your personal data will, to the extent required for justification, structuring of content or changes to a contractual or official user relationship (master data), be processed exclusively for such purposes. We reserve the right of recourse to authorised remedial action and legal grounds.

We may ask you for certain personal information should you contact us via e-mail, fax or by phone. We will ask only for data required for proper processing of your contact enquiry, including at least your surname and first name, your e-mail address and phone number, the legal basis is Article 6 (1) c), e) or f) GDPR. You may also in the course of  your contact enquiry offer additional voluntary data. We will store the data and use them in responding to your contact enquiry. Voluntary provisioning of such data will signify your consent to their use as defined above. We will log your consent to the collection and use of data. The legal basis for data processing pursuant to Article 6 (1) a) GDPR includes consent by affected parties.

Your name, email address and address must, for instance, be disclosed to accounting service providers for invoicing for chargeable services. Unless with your consent or mandatory, your personal data will not be disclosed to third parties not in a contractual or usage relationship.
We are permitted in specific cases and on request of authorised bodies to release master data for purposes of law enforcement, aversion of danger by police authorities of the states, execution of statutory tasks by Federal and State authorities for the protection of the constitution, Federal Information services, military counter-intelligence, or for assertion of intellectual property rights.

We will carefully examine any such requests using the means available to us and will not disclose your data unless our statutory obligation is abundantly clear. The legal basis of data processing pursuant to Article 6 (1) c) and e) GDPR would in such cases be compliance with our statutory obligations and pertinent special legislation.

Your personal data will be deleted or blocked as soon as the purpose underlying the storage no longer applies and no conflicting storage obligations or rights are present. Storage may also take place if this has been provided for by European or national lawmakers in Union regulations, laws or other provisions to which the responsible person is subject. Data will also be blocked or deleted if a storage period stipulated in the aforementioned statutes expires, unless there is a need to continue storing the data on the basis of other legal foundations.

3. Registration and identification

(1) You have the possibility of registering on our website and therewith creating a user profile. When you register on our website, in addition to the data that your Internet browser automatically transmits to us, we collect and use the following data, which are marked as mandatory or voluntary depending on the purpose of the processing:

- Date and time of registration
- Your first name and surname or company name
- Date of birth
- Your email address
- Your telephone number

The legal basis for data processing is Article 6 (1) a) and e) of the GDPR.

(2) For registration for data transmission pursuant to Section 11 (2) sentence 1 (data transmission by persons obligated to publish or commissioned third parties) of the German Company Register Regulation (Unternehmensregisterverordnung - URV) for companies entered in the Commercial or Cooperative Registers, the following minimum information is still required in addition to information pursuant to Section 3 (1) of the German Company Register Regulation (company or name of the user, address of the domicile or registered office, electronic postal address and telephone number) pursuant to Section 3 (2) of the German Company Register Regulation:

- Company or name of the company
- Court of registry
- Register type
- Registration number

The legal basis for data processing is laid down in Article 6 (1) a) and e) of the GDPR.

(3) For registration pursuant to Section 3 (2) of the German Company Register Regulation, the user must also be electronically identified under Section 3 (3) of the German Company Register Regulation. User is deemed to mean the natural person who is actually to transmit data pursuant to Section 11 (2) for persons subject to publication and disclosure obligations. Identity is checked on the basis of the means of identification laid down in section 3 (3) nos. 1 to 3 of the German Company Register Regulation. The identification data collected in the course of the identification procedure will be processed exclusively to ensure proper performance of the tasks of the Company register and will be deleted as soon as the purpose of the storage no longer applies and no conflicting retention obligations or rights exist.

The legal basis for data processing is Article 6 (1) a) and e) of the GDPR.

(4) If users desire to make transmissions for themselves or as authorised representatives for third parties, they are to specify an identifier and a password upon registration by which they authenticate themselves as authorised users of the Company register.

4. Collection and processing of non-personal data

    a. Browser data

Information that your Internet browser transmits to us will, for technical reasons and for reasons of maintaining and improving functionality, be automatically collected and stored here and we will transmit such data to third parties to the extent required. Our legitimate interest pursuant to Article 6 (1) f) GDPR in processing such data would be operational reliability of the website.

These data comprise:

- Browser type and version
- Operating system
- Website from where you arrived (referrer URL)
- Website you are visiting
- Date and time of access
- Your Internet protocol data (IP address)
- Transmitted data volumes
- Access status (files transferred, file not found etc.)

These anonymous data will be stored separately from personal data you may have given, thus preventing tracking of specific persons. Your visits may be analysed for statistical purposes, for optimisation of our Internet presence and our offers. Such data will be erased in our system and those of our service providers after the analysis.

    b. Anonymised usage profiles

Unless otherwise indicated here, you will not be required to furnish personal data when using our website. Information will be stored in a log file when a user accesses the abovementioned websites or retrieves a file. We use such information to ensure technical functionality of your visit to our website. We will also use such information for statistical purposes towards improvement of our website design and layout. These data will not be used with reference to a person. Pursuant to Article 6 (1) f) GDPR, our legitimate interest for processing lies in the reliability and functionality of the website.

The following dataset will be stored on each retrieval specifically:

- Name of the retrieved file
- Date and time of retrieval
- Transmitted data volume
- Message whether retrieval was successful
- Description of the type of Web browser used
- Requesting domain
- Country of domain origin

5. Use of Cookies and analysis tools

We use Cookies on our website. Cookies are small text files our Web server sends to your computer to store certain information (e.g. attributes for identification).

If you use our website anonymously, Cookies will be used for statistical analysis of usage, including recording of new and recurring visits. We also use Cookies to assess the extent to which free content is used. To determine this figure our website will send a Unit ID to your browser. This is an anonymous code used exclusively to establish the free content that has been used already.

When you visit our website under your user profile, Cookies will be used to identify your browser for the duration of your visit, including the various Web pages you visited.

Our website can also be used without storing Cookies. You can block the storage of Cookies in your browser settings or tell your browser to inform you when a Web page intends to store Cookies. You will then decide to accept or reject Cookie storage. For our website to remain fully functional it is necessary for technical reasons, however, that storage of temporary Cookies will not be blocked. Even when Cookies are deactivated, our website will send the described Unit ID to your browser to determine the usage of free content. The legitimate interest pursuant to Article 6 (1) f) GDPR is the legal basis here.

Refer to the Help pages in your Internet browser for further information on blocking of Cookies. For example, look under windows.microsoft.com for Windows Internet Explorer and under support.mozilla.com for Firefox.

    a. Technical necessary cookies

The legal basis for the use of technical necessary cookies will be a legitimate interest pursuant to Article 6 (1) f) GDPR.

session_secret_*

Publisher
Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH

Lifetime
Session duration, maximum 24 hours

Purpose of processing
Administration and security of the user session.

cc

Publisher
Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH

Lifetime
90 days

Purpose of processing
Storage of settings related to cookie consent

jsessionid

Publisher
Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH

Lifetime
Session duration, maximum 24 hours

Purpose of processing
Administration and security of the user session.

SSOID

Publisher
Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH

Lifetime
Session duration, maximum 24 hours

Purpose of processing
Administration and security of the user session.

    b. Matomo

With your consent, Matomo, an Open Source Web Analysis tool (https://matomo.org), will collect and store data on this website for optimisation purposes. These data may be used to create user profiles under pseudonyms. Cookies may be used here. Cookies are small text files stored locally in the website visitor’s Internet browser buffer. Cookies will allow recognition of the returning Internet browser. The data collected by Matomo will not be used to personally identify visitors to this website unless with the consent of the affected party and will also not be linked to personal data via the owner of the pseudonym. Information about your usage of the website created by the cookie also shall not be disclosed to third parties. The legal base for processing is your consent pursuant to Article 6 (1) a) GDPR. Data collected by the Matomo technology (including your anonymized IP address) are processed exclusively on the servers of the Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH. From the data collected (e.g. which page was visited, length of time spent on the website, whether downloads were made, search terms, etc.) we can draw conclusions about the usage behaviour on our website and obtain information about other technical parameters (e.g. browser used and version, screen resolution of the terminal device used, operating system). In detail, the following cookies are used:

_pk_id

Publisher
Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH

Lifetime
13 months

Purpose of processing
Statistical analysis purposes

_pk_ref

Publisher
Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH

Lifetime
6 months

Purpose of processing
Statistical analysis purposes

_pk_ses

Publisher
Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH

Lifetime
30 minutes

Purpose of processing
Statistical analysis purposes

_pk_cvar

Publisher
Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH

Lifetime
30 minutes

Purpose of processing
Statistical analysis purposes

_pk_hsr

Publisher
Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH

Lifetime
30 minutes

Purpose of processing
Statistical analysis purposes

_pk_testcookie

Publisher
Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH

Lifetime
briefly (< 1 second)

Purpose of processing
To test whether the user's browser supports cookies.

By default, web analytics is disabled. You can decide here whether a unique web analysis cookie may be stored in your browser to enable the website operator to collect and analyse various statistical data. If you would like to decide against this at a later time, please select the appropriate option under the following link Edit cookie settings to store the Matomo deactivation cookie in your browser.

6. Chat bot

For service requests, we offer you the possibility to obtain information on our website through our chat bot.

No further information is required from you to use the chat bot. If you nonetheless provide us with personal information, it will be rendered anonymous. In order to optimise the algorithm, which makes it possible for the chat bot to independently assign enquiries to topical fields using the keywords that come up, log files and chat histories are stored in anonymous form for 90 days. We would like to note in particular that you do not have to provide any personal data.

Should you have any questions concerning your customer account, you can contact us directly by telephone or e-mail, as it is not possible to automatically route such enquiries.

The data processing is performed without any use of cookies (cookieless) on the basis of our legitimate interests as laid down in Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 letter f) of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

7. Your rights / contact details / objection

Objection and revocation

You may object to the use of your data without prior consent at any time, with future effect.

We point out that you may also at any time revoke (even partially) any consent you may have given, with future effect. In this case, send an e-mail to

Data Privacy Officer,
Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH,
Amsterdamer Straße 192,
50735 Cologne,
Tel.: +49 (0) 2 21 / 9 76 68-0,
dsb(at)bundesanzeiger.de

You also have the following rights:

Article 13, 14 EU-GDPR – Right to information
Article 15 EU GDPR – Right of access: We shall gladly on request inform you about your stored personal data. The information will be in text form. Contact – see below.
Article 16 EU GDPR – Right to rectification
Article 17 EU GDPR – Right to erasure, with restrictions, especially Art. 17 (3) b)
Article 18 EU GDPR – Right to restriction of processing
Article 19 EU GDPR – Notification
Article 20 EU GDPR – Right to data portability
Article 21 EU GDPR – Objection
Article 22 EU GDPR – Automated individual decision-making, including profiling
Article 23 EU GDPR – Restrictions
Article 77 EU GDPR – Right to lodge a complaint

The Bundesanzeiger Verlag processes personal and other data on this website to meet its statutory obligations, to perform its official responsibilities and to exercise its public authority. Legislature has furthermore promulgated various obligations and periods of retention e.g. § 147 Abgabenordnung. Erasure of data will be subject exclusively to these statutory provisions.

Note:

We endeavour to take technical and organisational steps allowing us to store your personal data in a way to render them inaccessible to third parties. Since we cannot guarantee full data security during communication by e-mail, we recommend mailing confidential information by post.

8. Scope

This Data Privacy Statement is applicable to the domains www.bundesanzeiger.de, www.unternehmensregister.de, www.publikations-plattform.de and www.aktionärsforum.de.

9. Amendments and currentness of this Data Privacy Statement

Amendments to the Data Privacy Statement will be published on this website and will apply from the date of publication.

This Data Privacy Statement is dated 21 August 2023 and currently valid.

10. Amicable online dispute resolution

The European Commission provides a platform for amicable online dispute resolution (OS platform) at http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr/. We point out that we do not participate in dispute resolution before a consumer dispute resolution authority.