The GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel takes the protection and handling of personal data seriously and provides the following information on what data is recorded or collected, when and for what purpose and on what legal basis, how you can contact the controller or the person responsible for data protection and what rights you have with regard to the processing of personal data. Personal data means any information that relates to or can be directly or indirectly related to an identified or an identifiable natural person. A natural person is identifiable in particular by the specification or assignment of a name, an identification number, location data, online identifiers or characteristics that express a physical, physiological, genetic, psychological, economic, cultural, intellectual or social identity of this natural person and enable identification (Article 4 (1) of the [EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/)).

Your rights as a data subject

You can exercise the following rights at any time via the contact details for our data protection officer which are provided below:

• information concerning your data saved by us and its processing,
• rectification of incorrect personal data,
• erasure of your data which is saved by us,
• restriction of data processing should we not yet be permitted to erase your data due to legal obligations,
• objection to the processing of your data by us and
• data portability, should you have consented to the data processing or have concluded a contract with us.
• If you have given us your consent, you can revoke this at any time with effect for the future.

You can contact your responsible supervisory authority at any time with any complaints. Your responsible supervisory authority depends on the German Federal State in which you reside, work or where the alleged breach has taken place. A list of the supervisory authorities (for the non-public sector) with addresses can be found here: https://www.bfdi.bund.de/DE/Infothek/Anschriften_Links/anschriften_links-node.html.

In the state of Schleswig-Holstein the supervisory authority is:

Unabhängiges Landeszentrum für Datenschutz Schleswig-Holstein in Kiel
Phone: +49 431 988-12 00
Fax: +49 431 988-12 23
E-Mail: mail@datenschutzzentrum.de
Homepage: https://www.datenschutzzentrum.de

Purposes of the data processing by the controller and third parties

We only process your personal data for the purposes stated in this data protection statement. Your personal data will not be transmitted to third parties for purposes other than those stated below. We will disclose your personal data to third parties only if:

• you have given explicit consent to this,
• the processing is necessary in order to fulfil a contract with you,
• the processing is necessary in order to fulfil a legal obligation,
• the processing is necessary to safeguard legitimate interests and there is no reason to assume that you have a superordinate protectable interest in the non-disclosure of your data.

Erasure and blocking of data

We comply with the principles of data avoidance and data economy. Therefore, we only save your personal data for as long as is necessary in order to achieve the purposes named here or for the retention periods which have been prescribed by the legislator. Once the respective purpose no longer applies or following the expiry of the retention periods referred to above, the relevant data will be routinely blocked or erased in accordance with the legal regulations.

SSL encryption

In order to protect the security of your data during transfer, we use encryption procedures (for example SSL) via HTTPS which correspond to the current state of technology.

Getting in touch with us

When contacting us, any personal and technical data, at least the email address which you provide by means of email are processed and stored for the purpose of contacting you or replying to your request on the basis of Article 6 (1) of the GDPR. Contact per email is unencrypted and thus completely unprotected during the transmission process regarding any personal data in your email.

In case you are using email addresses of third parties provided by the website, the processing of your personal data is not in the responsibility of GEOMAR. Please contact the addressee directly for inquiries regarding their handling of personal data.

Recording of general information when visiting our website

When you access our website, information of a general nature is automatically recorded with the assistance of a cookie. This information (server logfiles) contains the type of web browser, the operating system used, the domain name of your internet service provider and similar data. This is solely information which does not allow you personally to be traced.

This information is technically necessary in order to correctly deliver the information from websites which you have requested and is required when using the internet. It is processed for the following purposes in particular:

• to ensure a smooth connection to the website,
• to ensure smooth use of our website,
• to evaluate the security and stability of the system and
• for other administrative purposes.

The processing of personal data is based on our legitimate interest from the above-mentioned purposes of the data gathering. We do not use your data in order to trace you personally. The recipients of the data are only the controller and any order processors.

Anonymous data of this type may be statistically evaluated by us in order to optimise our online presence and the underlying technology.

Cookies

As with many websites, we use so-called “cookies”. Cookies are small text files which are transferred to your hard drive by a website server. By means of the cookies, we automatically receive certain data, such as the IP address, browser used, operating system in relation to your computer and connection to the internet.

Cookies cannot be used to launch programs or transfer viruses onto a computer. On the basis of the information contained in cookies, we can make navigation easier and enable the correct display of our websites.

Under no circumstances will the data gathered by us be passed on to third parties and no linkage with personal data will take place without your consent.

Naturally you can generally view our website without cookies. Most internet browsers are generally set to automatically accept cookies. You can deactivate the use of cookies at any time via your browser settings. Please use the help function of your browser to find out how to alter these settings. Please bear in mind that individual functions of our website may not work if you deactivate the cookies.

Server logfiles

Log file information is stored for security reasons (e.g. to investigate instances of misuse or fraud) for a short period of time and then deleted. Data that has to be retained for evidentiary purposes is excluded from erasure until the relevant incident has been fully resolved.

The information generated by the cookie about your use of this internet service is saved on a server in Germany.

The IP address will be anonymised immediately after processing and before it is saved. You can prevent the installation of cookies by changing the settings in your browser software. We wish to inform you that should you change your browser setting in this way, certain functions of this website may no longer be available.

You can decide whether a simple website analysis cookie may be placed in your browser in order to enable the operator of the website to record and analyse various statistical data.

Services of third-party providers

Use of font libraries

FontAwesome
We use FontAwesome in order to visually display our website. FontAwesome is a free font library (SIL OFL 1.1 License). In order to include these fonts, your browser must establish a connection to a server in the USA and download the font which is required for our website. Data protection statement: https://fontawesome.com/privacy

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