Cookies, web analysis tools and social plug-ins

“Cookies” are small files which allow us to save specific information related to you on your PC whilst you visit our website. Cookies help us to determine the frequency of use and number of users of our website and to design our offers as secure, comfortable and efficient for you as possible.

We use “session cookies” on the one hand, which are only temporarily saved for the duration of your use of our website. On the other hand we use “permanent cookies” to retain information about computers visiting our website repeatedly. This allows us to offer you optimum user guidance and to “recognise” you and present you with the most varied website and new content possible during repeated use. The content of the permanent cookie is restricted to an identification number. The validity period of a permanent cookie is 60 days; after expiry of these 60 days the cookie is automatically deleted. Name, IP address or other information about your actual identify will not be saved, nor do we create individual profiles about your user pattern.

You can also use our offering without cookies. You can disable the saving of cookies in your respective browser, limit it to specific websites or configure your browser to be notified when a cookie is sent. You can also delete cookies from the hard drive of your PC at any time. However, please note that you can expect a limited presentation of our website with limited user guidance in this case.

We use Google Analytics, a web analysis service of Google Inc. (hereinafter called “Google”). Google Analytics uses so-called “cookies”, i.e. text files which are stored on your computer in order to enable analysis of your use of our website. The information the cookie generates about your use of our website is usually communicated to a Google server in the USA and stored there. Due to IP anonymisation having been activated on our website, your IP address will, however, be first abbreviated by Google within member states of the European Union or other signatories to the treaty on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases will the full IP address be transmitted to a Google server in the USA and abbreviated there. Google uses this information on our behalf to analyse your use of our website, to compile reports about the website activities and to provide additional services related to the website use and internet use to us. The IP address transmitted by your browser as part of Google Analytics will not be combined with other data of Google. You can prevent the storage of the cookies via appropriate settings in your browser software; however, we must point out that in this case you might not be able to make full use of all functions of our website. You can also prevent the collection of the data generated by the cookie and related to your use of our website (incl. your IP address) and the processing of these data by Google if you download and install the browser plugin available at the following link: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en.

Further information is available at http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=de or at http://www.google.com/intl/de/analytics/privacyoverview.html (general information about Google Analytics and data protection). We would like to point out that on our website Google Analytics has been extended with the code “gat._anonymizeIp();” to guarantee the anonymised capture of IP addresses (so-called IP masking).

You can also prevent the capture by Google Analytics by clicking on the following link. An opt-out cookie will be placed which prevents the future capture of your data when visiting the website:Disable Google Analytics.