Privacy and Cookie Policy

The protection of your personal data is a firm commitment for us.

Based on legal requirement within the European Union, the usage of all functions of our website can only be ensured, when you agree to the content of our privacy policy which is outlined in this document.

This privacy policy describes how we handle data that is accumulated by the usage of this website, including any processing and saving. This document also describes how we handle personal data that has been sent to us voluntarily - still, the usage of this website is also possible without submitting any personal data.

With your consent, as indicated by click on the check box shown here on the left, you agree to the full content of our privacy and cookie policy and every condition described in it. Your consent is only valid for the device and browser you are using at the moment and will be saved with a cookie (see below) on your device. Without your consent, you will get a notification about our privacy and cookie policy after accessing our website for the first time. This notification will be shown again from time to time until you accept the conditions by click.

Also without your consent by click, you accept that by using this website continously non-personalized data that has been anonymized can be saved and processed. This data processing can be disabled at any time (opt-out) - see below.

Personal Data

When using our website, it is not needed at any time to transfer any of your personal data to us. All sections work without personal data. If personal data is transferred to us, that happens voluntarily based on your decision - for instance when sending a message to us through our contact form or when you send an email to us. It is your decision on what information is contained in such messages.

If your active sending of personal information to us by any means of communication requires us to transfer data to a third party such as a shipping company (for instance if we send a spare part to you), it is possible and required that we transfer data from you to such third parties. It might also be required and helpful to forward information to one of our official distribution partners when it would allow us to handle your request more efficiently to your benefit. If that happens, we only involve companies that are known to us and that also follow the rules of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). A list of our official distribution partners can be found here: http://www.esi-audio.com/company/distributors/

When contacing us via our contact form or by email or even by phone and via social media sites, it is possible that we save your data in a database system that is operating within our private company network. Our comany network is protected with several firewall systems and is checked and updated regularly for safety on a technical level - which is reducing the risk of theft of sensitive data.

Any question in relation to our handling of personal data as well as any other content of this privacy policy document, can be requested from the responsible person for data security inside our company. Contact information is provided on our legal information page: http://www.esi-audio.com/company/legal/

Hosting

This website can be opened through a webserver that is hosted incl. server space, computing power and security features, at an external hosting company. This means that we and/or the hosting provider processes (for technical reasons) data that is generated by the webserver software based on the access of each single page from our website. Such data contains information about which page has been accessed, the IP address from where the access was attempted, the time this access occured as well as information on the used device and web browser incl the so-called "referrer" (the previous visited website). It is not possible for us to use this data to to identify a specific individual. Such data is saved fully automatically, also due to security, for a period of max. 7 days and after that gets deleted automatically. When we are required to save data in special cases (for instance in case of a security breach), we keep the data until the issue has been resolved.

The connection between your web browser and our website is possible using the "SSL" protocol. Whenever a website is accessed via SSL (which can be recognized from the "https://" at the beginning of an address or the green symbol at the beginning of the address field in many web browsers), no sensitive data can be transferred without being encrypted first - this ensures that no data that is transferred between your device and our website can be read illegally by any third party. Those pages on our website that allow you to transfer data via a contact form, can only be accessed with SSL encryption.

Cookies

Our website is using so-called "cookies" to ensure that all functions are working as intended. Cookies are extremely small amount of data that your browser saves on your device. With that we make it possible to ensure that what you can see on our website gets optimized.

As our website is using different addresses for different areas and functions (for instance, product information can be found under "www.esi-audio.com" while the download area is hosted under "download.esi-audio.com"), cookies are required to ensure the design of the page is matching on each page. Such session cookies will get deleted automatically when you stop using your browser.

Beside that, there are also cookies that are stored on your device for longer periods. Our website uses this type of cookies to save if you have agreed to the conditions of our privacy and cookie policy. For that, if you agree, we save one cookie with the name "confirm" each for "esi-audio.com" and "esi-audio.de". That means that the check box in the section above saves this cookie or removes it, based on your action. We also use a cookie called "noanalytics" that saves whether you have disagreed to anonymously track your visit to our website.

Neither the so-called session cookies, that are deleted automatically after each session, nor the cookies we might store on your device, allow us in any way or form to learn about your idendity as an individual. It is not possible for us to read any personal information from your device via cookies - the only functionality is that we know at a later time when you visit our website again, what settings have been made by you previously.

If you do not want that your browser saves cookies like that, you can disable it in the settings of your browser. You can also delete cookies that your browser has saved already. More information about that can be found in the manual of your browser. Please note however that when you disable this functionality, it might be possible that our website gets displayed incorrectly, also some functions are not available then.

Beside those mentioned cookies, it is possible that based on your actions, other companies such as Google, Facebook or Twitter might be adding cookies to your device, by accessing our website - for instance by sharing content of our website on social media sites. Below we inform you about situations where this might happen; in each case you are in control of that.

Google Analytics

Our website uses the "Google Analytics" service from Google Inc., located in Mountain View, CA (USA). This makes it possible for us to check how popular certain sections of our website are, also we can identify issues with the navigation and how our visitors use the website. Ultimately we can improve our website based on that step by step. Google Analytics also uses cookies. The tracking data from the usage of our website will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. We have activated the IP-anonymization that ensures that your IP address will be truncated within the area of member states of the European Union or other parties to the agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases the whole IP address will be first transfered to a Google server in the USA and truncated there. Google will use this information on behalf of us for the purpose of evaluating use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for us as website operator and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. The anonymized IP-address, that your Browser conveys within the scope of Google Analytics, will not be associated with any other data held by Google, a connection to a possible Google account will not be made (which means that we are not using the so-called "Universal Analytics" service from Google).

By clicking on the check box on the left and removing the check mark, you can disable the tracking of website data through Google Analytics for our website (opt-out). This stores a cookie on your device to save the information. In case this cookie gets removed, you will need to click and remove the check mark again. If your browser does not support cookies, this option to disable the tracking is not supported.

You can also opt-out from being tracked by Google Analytics with effect for the future by downloading and installing Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Addon for your current web browser. This does not only disable tracking and the data transfer (incl. your IP-address) for our website but also for all other websites using this Google service. Here you can download the Addon: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en

YouTube

Our website has embedded videos hosted by "YouTube", located in San Bruno, CA (USA), which belongs to Google Inc., located in Mountain View, CA (USA). As soon as you visit a page of our website that has an embedded YouTube video, a connection to the YouTube servers will be made. During that process, YouTube gets informed about which page of our website you are viewing. If you are logged in at that time with the same browser on the same device to an existing YouTube and/or Google account, it is possible that YouTube and Google will be able to add your visit to the personal profile data they have saved about you. To prevent that, you can logout from the account on the YouTube website.

Even without a YouTube and/or Google account, you are able to watch the embedded videos on our website after you have confirmed your agreement to this privacy policy. This makes it possible that the YouTube website can save a cookie on your device.

In relation to that, we refer you to the YouTube terms & conditions: https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms, as well as to the Google privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

AddToAny | Social Media

To provide a convenient tool to share content of our website on social media sites, we are using the "AddToAny" service from a corporation based on San Francisco, CA (USA). AddToAny makes it possible to share content quickly and conventiently not only via the most common social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, but also via many other platforms. As AddToAny works as a proxy between our website and other social media sites, in relation to data processing, it is important to look at the policies of both AddToAny and also of the involved social media sites.

Sharing content via AddToAny is done in several steps:

1. You need to accept the content of our privacy policy via click first - only then the sharing buttons appear at the end of relevant pages (for instance on product pages or on support related articles of our Knowledge Base) initially in gray color. At this moment, no data is transferred to AddToAny and/or to any social media site.
2. In a second separate step, you need to click on these gray buttons. They will then be displayed in color and the AddToAny service gets activiated. At this time, AddToAny creates a cookie and with the activtion you agree that data will be sent to AddToAny for further processing.
3. After that in another step, you can select the corresponding icon for the social media site you want to share content with. After that, data gets transferred to the social media site.

When you are activating and using AddToAny, the URL (address) of the current page, your IP address in anonymized form (which means without the last digits and without the possibility to make a specific connection to the individual using our website), information about the used browser as well as date and time will be processed by AddToAny following the rules of their privacy policy: https://www.addtoany.com/privacy - AddToAny ensures on that page that the processing is done in compliance with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Facebook

Once the AddToAny buttons have been activated, content can be shared via "Facebook", operated by Facebook Inc., located in Palo Alto, CA (USA). By using this function, you make it possible that Facebook is aware of your visit to our website and they could posibly add information about it to the user data Facebook stores about you. There is no direct integration of the "Like" buttons provided by Facebook on our website. Additional information about the motivation and the extend of data collection and how such data could be used by Facebook as well as privacy related settings and options you have regarding the collection, processing and usage of your data can be found on the privacy policy pages of Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/privacy/explanation

Twitter

Once the AddToAny buttons have been activated, content can be shared via "Twitter", operated by Twitter Inc., located in San Francisco, CA (USA). By using this function, you make it possible that Twitter is aware of your visit to our website and they could posibly add information about it to the user data Twitter stores about you. There is no direct integration of the "Tweet" buttons provided by Twitter on our website. Additional information about the motivation and the extend of data collection and how such data could be used by Twirtter as well as privacy related settings and options you have regarding the collection, processing and usage of your data can be found on the privacy policy pages of Twitter: https://twitter.com/privacy

Pinterest

Once the AddToAny buttons have been activated, content can be shared via "Pinterest", operated by Pinterest Inc., located in San Francisco, CA (USA). By using this function, you make it possible that Pinterest is aware of your visit to our website and they could posibly add information about it to the user data Pinterest stores about you. There is no direct integration of the "Pin It" buttons provided by Pinterest on our website. Additional information about the motivation and the extend of data collection and how such data could be used by Pinterest as well as privacy related settings and options you have regarding the collection, processing and usage of your data can be found on the privacy policy pages of Pinterest: https://policy.pinterest.com/en/privacy-policy

LinkedIn

Once the AddToAny buttons have been activated, content can be shared via "LinkedIn", operated by LinkedIn Corporation, located in Mountain View, CA (USA). By using this function, you make it possible that LinkedIn is aware of your visit to our website and they could posibly add information about it to the user data LinkedIn stores about you. There is no direct integration of the "Recommend" buttons provided by LinkedIn on our website. Additional information about the motivation and the extend of data collection and how such data could be used by LinkedIn as well as privacy related settings and options you have regarding the collection, processing and usage of your data can be found on the privacy policy pages of LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy

Other social media sites

Once the AddToAny buttons have been activated, content can be shared via other social media sites. By using that functionality, you make it possible that the operator of that specific site to receive the information that you have been visiting our website and it will be possible for them to add that information to the data profile they might have saved about you. Beside AddToAny, there is no other embedded code from other social media sites on our website. Additional information about the motivation and the extend of data collection and how such data could be used as well as possible privacy related settings will be explained on the policy pages of such social media sites. The policy of AddToAny ensures that data is only forwarded to sites of companies that follow the rules of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Bing Maps

Our website features maps provided by "Bing Maps" from Microsoft Corporation, located in Redmond, WA (USA). As soon as you visit a page of our website that has an embedded map, a connection to the Microsoft servers will be made. During that process, Microsoft gets informed about which page of our website you are viewing and Microsoft could set a cookie to support the functionality of "Bing Maps". This cookie normally is not deleted when you exit the browser and expires later, unless you delete it manually.

In relation to that, we refer you to the "Bing Maps" terms from Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/maps/product/enduserterms - the Microsoft privacy statement applies as well.

Rights of affected individuals

As visitor of our website and as an individual affected by the content of this privacy policy and being in contact with our company, you have the right to get a confirmation from us, if and how any of your data has been processed. You have the right to request copies of this data. Also you have the right to complete such data and -if required- ask us to fix any incorrect data. In addition you have the right to request the immediate deletion of this data or alternatively request a limitation of the data processing. Not affected by this are documents that we are required to save or store based on other laws and regulations (for instance an invoice copy). You also have the right in reference to the data that is related to you, to file a complain via the responsible authorities.

You have the right to withdraw any already provided confirmations (for instance, you can remove already given consent to this privacy policy content on the top of this page). You can object to the future processing of data reated to you at any time.

Legal basis

The content of this document and our privacy policy is in compliance with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). As our company is based in Germany, the localized version that is part of German law is valid for us as the legal basis, the so-called "Datenschutz-Grundverordnung" (DSGVO). In addition to that, other German laws and regulations are important regarding handling and processing of data, such as the "Telemediengesetz" (TMG), the "Handelsgesetzbuch" (HBG) and the "Abgabenordnung" (AO). The legally binding version of this document in German language can be found here.

Based on the definition of art. 4 DSGVO, we are "responsible" and the users of our website, in particular our customers, are seen as affected individuals. The DSGVO provides rules for the "processing" (which is essentially any, also automatic, handling of data), in particular of "personal data" (any information that refers to an identified individual or to an individual that could possibly be identified).

This document informs you about its legal basis based on art. 13 DSGVO. The legal basis for the consent to our privacy policy is art. 6 sec. 1 DSGVO and art. 7 DSGVO. The legal basis for any processing of data is listed in art. 6 DSGVO. In case of the eventual transfer of any data into other countries, the special preconditions of art. 44 ff. DSGVO are given.

Our website integrates services from third parties based on our valid interest (i.e. analysis, optimization of our business operations) as described in art. 6 sec. 1 lit f. DSGVO. This automatically means that those third parties get the IP address from the visitor of our website. We are working to reduce the third party services to a minimum and only make use of them, when there is an obvious benefit for our visitors by improving our services. We are comitted to check in regular invervals if these third parties follow the required regulations. The hosting of this website is handled based on our valid interest via a hosting service provider which is based on a contract with us (art. 28 DSGVO).

The transfer of data in any contact form is handled only with a valid known encryption based on § 13 sec. 7 TMG.

The conditions to save and store as well as the limitation for processing are based on art. 17 and 18 DSGVO. Storage of data is handled for 6 years based on § 257 sec. 1 HBG and 10 years based on § 147 sec. 1 AO.

The rights of affected individuals are based on art. 15 to 18 DSGVO, also art. 20 DSGVO and art. 77 DSGVO apply. Your rights to withdraw and object are based on art. 7 sec. 3 DSGVO and on art. 21 DSGVO.

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