1. General

As a company owned by the Federal State of Saxony, the Saxony Economic Development Corporation (WFS) shall be subject to the provisions of Saxony’s Data Protection Act (SächsDSG) as well as the relevant statutory provisions and regulations concerning the protection of the right of self-determination with regard to personal information.

We are pleased that you are interested in our website and the services provided therein. The protection of your personal data (hereinafter briefly referred to as “data”) is of utmost importance to us. That is why we would like to inform you in detail in the following section what data will be collected if you visit our website and/or use the services provided therein and how these data will subsequently be processed and/or used by us.

In order to protect your rights, we have taken the requisite technical and organizational measures that the appropriate provisions and regulations on data protection shall be observed at all times both by the WFS and its staff members and by any and all external service providers insofar as these service providers contribute to the services available on this website.

Please be aware that most of the data which are transmitted particularly by email, via the internet, are currently still unsecured. It can, therefore, not be ruled out that the transmitted data are accessed and/or possibly even be falsified or erased by any unauthorized persons.

If you have reason to believe that the data protection provisions mentioned herein are not observed, or that the WFS misuses any personal data, then please send an email to: info@wfs.saxony.de.

2. Responsible Body / Service Provider

The responsible body pursuant to the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) and, at the same time, also the service provider pursuant to the Telemedia Act (TMG) is the Saxony Economic Development Corporation - WFS (please see also our Imprint). Should you happen to have any questions and/or comments on this Privacy Statement and/or on general data protection, then please write an email to: info@wfs.saxony.de.

3. Data Protection while visiting our Web Pages

For any and all informative use of our website, it is generally not necessary for you to provide any personal data. We actually collect and/or use only those data of yours which your internet browser automatically transmits to us, such as, for example:

• Date and time of the accessing and/or loading of any one of our web pages
• Your browser type
• The browser settings
• The operating system in use
• The last web page visited by you
• The data volume transmitted and the access status (file transmitted, file not found, etc.)
• Your IP address

During an informative visit, we will only collect and/or use these data in a non-personal form. This is done in order to generally enable the use of any and all web pages accessed and/or loaded by you, for statistical purposes as well as for improving our internet services. We will store your IP address only for the duration of your visit; there shall be no personal evaluation.

4. Using Cookies

In order to facilitate the use of our website, we use “cookies.” Cookies are small text files which may be stored by your browser on the hard drive of your computer and which are helpful when it comes to using our website.

We only use the so-called session cookies (also referred to as temporary cookies), i.e. those cookies which are temporarily stored only for the duration you use any one of our web pages. The purpose of these cookies is to continuously identify your computer during a visit to our website when changing from one of our web pages to another and to be able to ascertain the end of your visit. Such cookies will be deleted as soon as you end your browsing session. Please note in this context that we neither collect nor store any of your personal data in any one of these cookies. Furthermore, we do not use any technologies which link any information generated by cookies to any user data.

You can alter the settings of your internet browser in such a way that the storage of any and all cookies on your hard drive is prevented and/or that you are asked every time whether you agree to the placement of cookies or not. Once the cookies have been set, you can delete them again at any time. To find out how this works in detail, please refer to your browser’s help pages. When visiting our web pages for the first time, a message on the web portal points out to any and all visitors that cookies will be stored.

5. Using Google reCAPTCHA

The Saxony Economic Development Corporation (WFS) uses the reCAPTCHA service provided by Google, Inc. (Google) to protect the queries and requests you submit via our internet contact form.

This inquiry is used to determine whether the entry was carried out by a human being or fraudulently by an automated, machine-based agent. The inquiry includes the transmission of the IP address to Google as well as any additional data which Google needs for reCAPTCHA if that proves to be necessary. That is why your entry will be sent to Google for further processing.

By using reCAPTCHA, you have agreed that the identification provided by you will be entered into the digitalization of older data, information, and items. If the IP anonymization is activated for this website, then your IP address will be abbreviated beforehand by Google within the member states of the European Union or within other states that signed the Agreement on the European Economic Area. The full IP address will only be transferred to a Google server in the USA in exceptional cases and then abbreviated there. The IP address which is transmitted within the scope of reCAPTCHA will not be combined with any other data from Google.

You can find further information on Google’s data protection policy here.

6. Using Matomo (Until 2018: Piwik)

We use the web analysis program “Matomo” (until 2018: PIWIK) on our website. This program allows us to record the use of our website and, if need be, to optimize our website in the appropriate manner. For this purpose, the “Matomo” program uses the so-called cookies. The usage information gained therefrom will be forwarded together with your IP address to our server and stored for the analysis of the usage behavior. During this process, your IP address will be immediately anonymized so that we are unable to draw any conclusions about you as a user of our website. Any and all information obtained in such a way shall not be forwarded to any third parties. You can modify the settings of your browser software and, thus, prevent the use of any such cookies. In this case, it might be possible that you cannot make full use of all functions available on our website.

You can object to the storage and/or utilization of these data at any time during your visit to our website. To do so, you only need to click the box below so that the set check mark is no longer visible (opt-out process). In this case, a so-called opt-out cookie is stored in your browser so that Matomo is no longer able to collect any session data. Please note that the deletion of your cookies from the respective session will result in the opt-out cookie being deleted as well and you might have to reactivate the opt-out cookie during your next visit to our website.

7. Data Protection Information for using Contact / Interaction Services

Insofar as you wish to use any services provided by us on our website such as, for example, the contact option available via the contact forms and/or the inclusion in our data bank “Municipal Economic Information System (KWIS)” including the publication of such data in the internet, it will be necessary for you to indicate additional data. The data in question are those data which are required for the respective processing. These data are marked with an asterisk (*). You may enter additional data on a voluntary basis.

Your data will be collected and/or used exclusively for the purpose of rendering the specific service you have chosen; for example, including your data in our data bank or sending the newsletter or any additional publications you may have selected to you.

For the aforementioned purpose, your data will be forwarded to specific service providers supporting us. We have, of course, carefully selected these service providers beforehand. Such service providers may include technical service providers and/or service providers assisting us with the dispatch of shipments. Any forwarding of your data to any third parties shall otherwise only be made if and to the extent that we are legally obliged to do so and/or if and to the extent that you have given your requisite consent thereto in advance.

8. Additional Information for using our Newsletter / Info Service

In order to subscribe to our email newsletter and/or our info service, we need in addition to your declaration of consent under data protection laws at least your email address to which the newsletter is to be sent. The supply of any additional information is completely voluntary and will only be used to personally address you as well as to better individualize the contents of the newsletter and clarify potential queries about the email address.

In order to dispatch our newsletter, we normally use the so-called double-opt-in process, i.e. we will send the newsletter to you only if and when you have confirmed your subscription beforehand via a confirmation email sent to you for this purpose by clicking the link contained therein. This way, we want to ensure that only you yourself are able to subscribe to the newsletter as the owner of the indicated email address. Your requisite confirmation must be made in a timely manner upon receipt of the confirmation email because otherwise your subscription to our newsletter will be automatically deleted from our database.

You may cancel your subscription to any one of our newsletters at all times. To do so, you may either send us an informal email to: info@wfs.saxony.de or cancel your subscription via the link at the end of the newsletter.

For the aforementioned purpose, your data will be forwarded to a specific service provider supporting us. We have, of course, carefully selected this service provider beforehand. It is a service provider who assists us with the dispatch of bulk mailings.

9. Repetition of Declarations of Consent, Right of Withdrawal

Where appropriate, you have expressly declared the following consents to us, and we have recorded your consent. In line with the Telemedia Act, we are obliged to have the contents of any such consents ready for retrieval at any time. You may withdraw and/or revoke your consent(s) at any time with effect for the future.

• Permission to Dispatch the Newsletter

“I would like to receive the newsletter published by the Saxony Economic Development Corporation (WFS). My email address will not be forwarded to any other companies. I can revoke this consent to the use of my email address at any time with effect for the future by clicking the link ‘Unsubscribe’ at the end of the newsletter or by sending the appropriate email to: info@wfs.saxony.de.”

• Permission for Advertising

“I hereby agree that the above mentioned data can be stored, processed, and used by the Saxony Economic Development Corporation (WFS) for market research purposes as well as written and electronic consulting and information purposes (advertising).”

10. Using YouTube

When activating the videos embedded in our web pages on the basis of our YouTube channels “Wirtschaftsstandort Sachsen” and “Business Location Saxony,” we would like to advise you that you herewith access the scope of application of the Google Data Usage Guidelines at: www.google.de/intl/de/policies/privacy/.

Please pay attention to the information that you reveal on these channels via comments. This information is visible to other visitors of the website as well as to the administrators. Since the respective pages are generally accessible, the information you share with any of the web pages are deemed to be public data. This means that any comment may be used also outside of YouTube. Please be aware that this information could probably be indexed by search engines which also include Google.

The administrators of our YouTube channels will neither evaluate nor collect these data anywhere else either currently or at some future time. The statistics which YouTube makes available to the administrators are issued in an aggregated form and do not permit any conclusions to be drawn by the administrators on any personal data.