Privacy Policy

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(* for “Cookie Policy” please scroll down or click here)

LearnGermanOnline.org is committed to protecting your privacy and does everything it can to fulfill this obligation. The following paragraphs specify all issues related to collecting and using information about visitors of LearnGermanOnline.org as well as some of the steps taken to safeguard protection of such information. Read this page in full so as to make an informed decision about sharing your personal information at LearnGermanOnline.org.

No Automatic Collection of Personally Identifiable Information

Please note that this website does not automatically collect any personal data from you as a human visitor. Personally identifiable data is defined as any information such as name, e-mail/postal address or mobile phone number that is unique to an individual and can be thus used to identify them as a person. As a result of this policy, LearnGermanOnline.org can only receive personally identifiable information from its visitors when they provide it intentionally and voluntarily through Contact Form.

Contact Form

Personal and other information, such as e-mail addresses or first and last names provided by visitors through Contact Form, is not collected or stored anywhere and is used solely for purposes that this form fulfills. Moreover, the private information you provide in the message will under no circumstances be passed onto anybody else and the entire communication will be deleted no later than three months after the last interaction between you and the webmaster of LearnGermanOnline.org. However, since more than 99% of messages received through Contact Form are either spam or are classified as irrelevant they are not answered. They are deleted immediately after being read and so the information contained therein is irreversibly removed.

This website is purely informational, not selling any product or service. Therefore, you will never be asked for personal information. As a result, disclosure of any personally identifiable information through Contact Form is expressly done on a voluntary basis.

Non-Personal Information Collected Automatically

Because of the nature of Internet data transfers, some visitor information is collected automatically by the web server hosting LearnGermanOnline.org and is saved in a so-called server log-file. However, this information is non-personal (including such data as your IP address, time of visit, landing page, referring website or type of browser and operating system) and is used in aggregated (that is, completely anonymised) form for routine administrator tasks and for statistical purposes. Such information cannot be used to personally identify a visitor and, therefore, does not need to be protected in a way that the personally identifiable information normally is. Nonetheless, server log-files are not stored on the web server or elsewhere but are overwritten with fresh data every 24 hours, unless further retention is required for security reasons.

Tracking Technologies

LearnGermanOnline.org utilizes passive tracking technology in the form of cookies. To learn more about how cookies are used by this website and your choices in relation to these tracking mechanisms, please refer to the “Google Analytics 4” section below and particularly to the Cookie Policy of LearnGermanOnline.org.

Google Analytics 4

This website employs Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to measure visitor traffic. An essential component of GA4’s functionality is the use of cookies. These are small data files that are stored in the web browser to distinguish unique visitors as well as unique sessions from a single visitor. GA4 is at LearnGermanOnline.org configured to a bare minimum to ensure the maximum privacy of visitors. The aim is to record visits to the site rather than to track visitor behavior. Please note that GA4 by principle does not collect any personally identifiable information such as individual visitors’ IP-addresses.

Use of GA4 Cookies

GA4 relies on the use of first-party cookies to track visitor sessions. For more information on the use of cookies by this website and your choices regarding cookies, please refer to the “Cookie Policy” section below.

Type of Data Collected

GA4 collects information such as device and browser type, operating system, page views, time spent on site and geographic location based on an IP-address of a visitor. However, the individual IP-addresses cannot be read as they are neither logged nor stored.

GA4 Data Privacy

GA4 does not log or store individual IP-addresses. The obtained data is anonymized immediately upon collection and aggregated and used only briefly to understand traffic patterns such as visitor location (city/country). The GA4 data is not used to identify visitors personally or merged with other personally identifiable information. This process is automatic and cannot be disabled. The aim of this approach is to help ensure the GA4’s compliance with international privacy regulations such as GDPR.

For information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google’s Privacy Policy page.

Transferring of GA4 Data

GA4 transfers the collected visitor data to Google’s servers that are often located in the US. That is, as a US-owned company, Google processes and stores most GA4 data in the US. However, such transfers are based on appropriate safeguards in accordance with Art. 46 of the GDPR. For increased privacy, GA4 removes IP-addresses of EU users before logging the data on EU servers (in fact the IP anonymization is applied in all geographic locations). Therefore, the IP-addresses of the EU users cannot be transferred to the US.

GA4 Data Sharing

Consented visitor data is used by GA4 and is not shared with any other service. For information on cookie consents and consented data please refer to the “Cookie Policy” section.

Retention of Visitor Data by Google

Under our current GA4 configuration, which is set to default, Google retains GA4 user-level data for fourteen months and event data for two months before automatically deleting them.

Cookie Policy

LearnGermanOnline.org uses cookies to measure visitor traffic and to store visitors’ cookie consents. Those two sets of cookies function in conjunction with each other. Cookies are small text files that the website places in your web browser to remember you. The key to measuring traffic is the use of cookies by Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Consent cookies, on the other hand, are needed for compliance with privacy regulations such as GDPR.

Types of Cookies by Function

It is important to mention that this website only serves first-party cookies that do not collect any personally identifiable information. By functionality, the cookies we use can be divided into two categories:

  • Functional cookies (necessary) are required to enable the basic features of this website. In our particular case they manage user consent preferences (accept/deny) for analytics, ensuring compliance with global privacy laws. They store these choices to prevent repetitive prompts during a session, allowing the website to legally load non-essential cookies only after receiving explicit permission from the visitor.
  • Statistics cookies are, as their name suggests, used for statistical and analytical purposes. An equivalent term is “analytics cookies”. Statistics cookies help us learn about our sources of traffic and understand how our visitors interact with the website. They collect and report information anonymously.

Placed Cookies and their Expiration

The only cookies set by this website are GA4 cookies and consent banner cookies by complianz. GA4 places two cookies in your web browser, namely _ga and _ga_#, which have an expiration of two years. The expiration date resets every time you return to the site. However, some browsers, e.g., Chrome or Safari, may enforce shorter expiration of first-party cookies such as a maximum of 400 days or just seven days, respectively. The GA4 cookies are statistics cookies.

In conjunction with GA4, complianz consent banner cookies are set to store the visitor’s consent for GA4 cookies to comply with GDPR regulations. They include: cmplz_banner_status, cmplz_preferences, cmplz_policy_id, cmplz_statistics, cmplz_marketing, cmplz_functional and cmplz_consented_services. This prevents the cookie banner (once you have agreed to or rejected the cookies) from reappearing on every subsequent page load. These cookies have an expiration of twelve months. The consent banner cookies are functional cookies.

Other than mentioned above, no other cookies, such as for example third-party advertisements, are served on this site that would allow third parties to monitor your behavior at LearnGermanOnline.org.

Managing Cookies

You can refuse the use of GA4 cookies by installing the official Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on which is available for Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. Moreover, you can adjust your browser settings to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. For detailed information on how to adjust settings to manage and delete cookies in major web browsers check out this page.

Cookie Consent

Depending on the applicable law in the region where the website visitors come from, they are on their first visit to LearnGermanOnline.org shown a consent banner at the bottom of the landing page which either asks them to accept all cookies, or gives them control over refusing or accepting all cookies or allowing only certain categories of cookies through preferences. Likewise, they may withdraw or change their consent at any time via the cookie settings available on this website (under “Manage Consent” at the page bottom).

Hence, unless your browser is set up to block cookies or, where applicable, you refuse cookies by hitting the “Deny” button on the cookie banner, the cookies may be placed into your browser. Whether you accept some or all cookies, the data derived from the use of accepted cookies is regarded as consented data.

Contact Details

If you have any queries or concerns regarding the use of cookies at LearnGermanOnline.org, why not get in touch by using the contact details found at the bottom of this page.

* This Cookie Policy is an integral part of the Privacy Policy of LearnGermanOnline.org that focuses specifically on tracking technologies. By accepting the Privacy Policy you acknowledge that you have also read, understood and agreed to the Cookie Policy of LearnGermanOnline.org.

Your Rights regarding Personal Data

This website does not sell anything neither it provides individual advice upon request. Therefore, it does not collect any personally identifiable information from its visitors. The only way to obtain information about you is when you submit it voluntarily via the Contact Form or send it to us by email. Keep in mind that prevention is always better than cure. If you do not provide any personally identifiable information to us, you will not have to worry about how it is treated. Nonetheless, if you have already done so internationally or by error, you have the undermentioned rights under applicable data protection laws, in particular the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Depending on the applicable law, you may have a right to access and rectify or erase your personal data or receive a copy of your personal data, restrict or object to the processing of your data, ask us to transfer your personal information to another entity and withdraw any consent you provided to us to process your data.

To exercise your rights, you may contact us using the contact details provided at the bottom of this Privacy Policy. We will respond to your request within the legally required time frame.

If you believe that processing of your personal information violates applicable data protection law, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with a competent data protection supervisory authority.

Information Disclosure

LearnGermanOnline.org respects and protects the privacy of its visitors. The basic rule it follows is not to exchange or disclose to third parties any information about its visitors and that particularly applies to personally identifiable information submitted through Contact Form as this is the only personal data this website ever obtains. Since LearnGermanOnline.org does not automatically collect any personal or personally identifiable data, no such data is stored on its server or shared with anybody else.

Policy Changes and Effective Date

These policy terms may change at any time and at the sole discretion of the webmaster of LearnGermanOnline.org. When published here on this webpage, the changes become effective immediately. It is your responsibility to make yourself familiar with current privacy policy terms as well as cookie policy terms while visiting this website. Hence, you are encouraged to review this policy statement on every visit to LearnGermanOnline.org before accessing the rest of the website so that you know what and how information is collected and how it is treated.

Agreeing to Policy Terms

If you do not agree to the Privacy Policy of LearnGermanOnline.org as presented here on this page, please do not use this website and leave it immediately. Otherwise, your use of LearnGermanOnline.org indicates your full acceptance of its Privacy Policy as well as its Cookie Policy that represents an important part of the Privacy Policy.

The Privacy Policy forms an integral part of the Terms & Conditions of LearnGermanOnline.org and, therefore, by agreeing to the Terms & Conditions of LearnGermanOnline.org you are automatically also accepting its Privacy Policy.

How to Get in Touch

If you have any questions regarding this Policy, you can get in touch by sending a message through Contact Form with a subject “Privacy Policy” or “Cookie Policy”. Alternatively, send an email to email address.