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Data Protection Declaration

WDR mediagroup GmbH (in the following, “we”/“us”) operates multiple services (in the following, “website ”) which can be accessed on the Internet, such as www.wdr-mediagroup.com and www.meinradiospot.de.

In the following, we would like to inform you in a comprehensible and concise manner about the collection and processing of your data, as well as about your rights in this regard.

I. Responsible party 

WDR mediagroup GmbH
Ludwigstraße 11
50667 Cologne
Germany
E-Mail: info@wdr-mediagroup.com

II. Data Protection Officer

WDR mediagroup GmbH
– Data Protection –
Ludwigstraße 11
50667 Cologne
Germany
E-Mail: datenschutz@wdr-mediagroup.com

III. General information on data processing

1. Scope and purpose of the processing of personal data

We process personal data

a) to fulfill contractual obligations (Art. 6 (1) lit. b) GDPR)

Data is processed in order to fulfill contracts or carry out precontractual measures that are taken in response to your inquiry.

b) on the basis of legitimate interest (Art. 6 (1) lit. f) GDPR)

To the extent required, your data is processed beyond the purposes stated above in order to safeguard legitimate interests:

  • Improvement and further development of our offerings
  • Measures for business management and further development
  • Guaranteeing the IT security and IT operation of the website 
  • Enforcement of claims, and defense in case of legal disputes
  • Measures for the security of our buildings and facilities (e.g., entry control) 
  • Measures for guaranteeing the right to determine who shall be allowed or denied access to premises 
  • Advertising or market and opinion research, provided that you have not revoked your consent to the use of your data

c) on the basis of your consent (Art. 6 (1) a) GDPR)

If you have consented to our processing of your personal data for certain purposes (e.g., newsletter distribution), this consent is the legal basis for data processing. You may revoke your consent at any time with effect from that date forward.

In addition, we process—to the extent required to perform our services—personal data that we permissibly obtain from publicly accessible sources (e.g., press, Internet), or that is transmitted to us by other companies in the WDR mediagroup GmbH or by other third parties in an authorized manner.

2. Data deletion and storage duration

The personal data of the concerned person is deleted or access to it is blocked as soon as it is no longer required for the purpose for which it has been stored. The data may be stored beyond this point if this is, for example, required by law, or to the extent that its further storage is necessary for the conclusion or fulfillment of a contract.

3. Disclosure of information (personal data) to third parties

In some cases, we contract with specialized service providers for the processing of your data. These companies receive from us only the personal data that they require for their specifically contracted activities. We carefully select and regularly monitor these service providers. They process the personal data provided by us only at our behest and strictly in accordance with our instructions, on the basis of corresponding contracts pertaining to the order processing.

If service providers (so-called data processors) that, at our behest and according to our instructions, process personal data for us in adherence to Art. 28 GDPR are based outside the EU/EEA, we ascertain prior to transmitting data to them that they have implemented an adequate level of data protection (as evidenced by, e.g., an adequacy decision of the European Commission or the conclusion of standard EU contract clauses).

IV. Processing of personal data

1. Information that is automatically collected when you visit our website

You may visit our website without providing personal information. Whenever you access the website, the web server automatically saves only a so-called server log file. This server log file contains, among other things, the name of the file you request, your IP address, the date and time that the website is accessed, the volume of data transmitted, and the inquiring provider (access data), and it documents the retrieval. The access data that is saved is:

  • Your IP address
  • Name of the website/file accessed
  • Date and time of the retrieval, volume of transmitted data
  • Report of successful retrieval
  • Browser type and version, operating system used
  • Terminal device used, incl. MAC address
  • Referrer URL (the website visited immediately prior)

This access data is analyzed exclusively for purposes of ensuring the error-free operation of the website and improving our offerings and our ability to recognize and trace attacks. This serves the safeguarding of our interests, as determined through a weighing of interests, in keeping with a prevailing legitimate interest in the correct presentation of our offerings in accordance with Art. 6 (1) lit. f) GDPR.

2. Data that you provide us with

You may contact us at any time using the means of contact provided (form, email, telephone). The data that you enter is transmitted to us, saved, and used to process your request. The data can be stored in a customer relationship management system or comparable system for handling user queries.

The data is deleted as soon as it is no longer required for the fulfillment of the purpose for which it was collected.

V. Cookies / Tracking

On our website, we employ cookies, tools, and similar technologies from third-party suppliers. Cookies are text files which are stored in the Internet browser or by the Internet browser on the terminal device of the user. By means of cookies, we automatically obtain certain data, such as the IP address of the browser used and the operating system.

A cookie generally contains the name of the domain from which the cookie data was sent, as well as information about the age of the cookie and an alphanumeric identifier. Among other purposes, cookies serve to make our offerings more user-friendly, effective, and secure. If cookies are deactivated for our website, certain functions of the website may not be usable to their full extent.

1. Technically necessary cookies

We employ cookies that are required for the proper operation of our website and to make our offerings available. These include, in particular, the cookie for obtaining the user’s consent for us to set cookies, which concerns the settings that you determine when you access our website or our app in the cookie consent tool, i.e., whether all categories of cookies or only specific categories of your choosing are accepted.

2. Cookies for analytical purposes—Google Analytics

If you give your consent in our cookie consent management tool for us to do so, we use the service Google Analytics, provided by the third-party supplier Google, on our website for purposes of analysis.

Google Analytics employs methods, e.g., cookies, which allow the analysis of your use of our website/app. The automatically collected information about your use of the website/app is normally transmitted to and stored on a Google server in the USA. By means of web analysis, we can recognize, for example, the times at which our online offerings or our content and the functions of our offerings are most frequently used. In addition, we can determine which areas might need to be optimized. The statistics obtained enable us to improve our services and formulate them in a way that is more interesting for the user.

Google employs the collected information to analyze, on our behalf, the use of our offerings by users, and to compile reports about activities within our online offerings in order to potentially provide additional services to us which are connected with the use of these online offerings and the use of the Internet. This can involve the creation of pseudonymous usage profiles of the users from the processed data.

The legal basis for the use of Google Analytics is your consent according to Art. 6 (1) lit. a) GDPR, or our legitimate interest according to Art. 6 (1) lit. f) GDPR.

Furthermore, you can prevent Google’s collecting and processing of the data that is generated by the cookie and related to your use of the website (including your IP address) by downloading and installing the opt-out plug-in https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=de. You will find Google’s data protection declaration here: https://policies.google.com/privacy.

3. Social media plug-ins

Our website uses plug-ins from social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, XING, LinkedIn, and YouTube). When you visit our website while simultaneously logged in to your account on a particular social media network, the information that you have visited our website from your IP address is shared with the social network via the respective plug-in. Furthermore, content from our website may be linked to your profile on the respective social media network. Please note that we, as the host of the website, are not definitively informed as to the content of the data that is transmitted to, or as to its use by, the respective social media platform. If you do not want your visit to our website to be associated with your respective social media user account, please log out of your respective user account. The plug-ins described here are used on the basis of Art. 6 (1) lit. f) GDPR. We as the website operator have a legitimate interest in our website being as broadly visible as possible. You will find further information in the data privacy statements of the respective operators to which we provide links here:  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, XING, LinkedIn, Youtube.

4. Changing your data protection settings

If, when you first accessed our website, you gave your express consent in our cookie consent tool that on our website the cookies/tools and technologies may be used in full or in part for purposes of analysis and advertising/marketing, you can revoke your consent at any time in the cookies settings with effect from that date forward.

Change Cookie Settings

If you use our services via our website, you can set your browser so that you are informed of the setting of cookies; that you allow cookies only in individual cases; that cookies are to be rejected in certain cases or generally; and that cookies are automatically deleted when the browser is closed.

VI. Automated decision-making/Profiling

When using our website/app, or our content, users will not be subjected to decisions which are based exclusively on automated processing (including profiling) and which have legal effects vis-à-vis the users or significantly impact them in a similar way.

VII. Your rights

You have the right, among others, to request information on the personal data that we have stored about you. Under certain conditions, you can additionally request the amendment or deletion of your data. Furthermore, you have the right to the restriction of the processing of your data as well as the right to receive the data that you have provided in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format.

For the processing of your data based on consent that you have provided, you may withdraw this consent at any time with effect for the future. For the processing of your data based on prevailing legitimate interest, you may withdraw your consent to this data processing if this is justified by your particular situation.

Anyone concerned additionally has the right to submit a complaint to a regulatory authority if they are of the view that there is a violation of data protection regulations.

The regulatory official responsible for us is

Rundfunkdatenschutzbeauftragter (Broadcasting Data Protection Officer)
Stephan Schwarze
Kantstr. 71-73
04275 Leipzig
Germany

VIII. Validity of and changes to this data protection declaration

This data protection declaration is currently in effect as of August 2023.

Changes to this data protection declaration may be necessitated by the ongoing development of our website and the offerings that we make via the website, or by changes in legal or regulatory provisions. The most recent version of the declaration can be called up here at any time.