Privacy Policy

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

What rights you have over your data

If you have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Mediavine Programmatic Advertising

The Website works with Mediavine to manage third-party interest-based advertising appearing on the Website. Mediavine serves content and advertisements when you visit the Website, which may use first and third-party cookies. A cookie is a small text file which is sent to your computer or mobile device (referred to in this policy as a “device”) by the web server so that a website can remember some information about your browsing activity on the Website.

First party cookies are created by the website that you are visiting. A third-party cookie is frequently used in behavioral advertising and analytics and is created by a domain other than the website you are visiting. Third-party cookies, tags, pixels, beacons and other similar technologies (collectively, “Tags”) may be placed on the Website to monitor interaction with advertising content and to target and optimize advertising. Each internet browser has functionality so that you can block both first and third-party cookies and clear your browser’s cache. The “help” feature of the menu bar on most browsers will tell you how to stop accepting new cookies, how to receive notification of new cookies, how to disable existing cookies and how to clear your browser’s cache. For more information about cookies and how to disable them, you can consult the information at All About Cookies.

Without cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of the Website content and features. Please note that rejecting cookies does not mean that you will no longer see ads when you visit our Site. In the event you opt-out, you will still see non-personalized advertisements on the Website.

The Website collects the following data using a cookie when serving personalized ads:

IP Address
Operating System type
Operating System version
Device Type
Language of the website
Web browser type
Email (in hashed form)

Mediavine Partners (companies listed below with whom Mediavine shares data) may also use this data to link to other end user information the partner has independently collected to deliver targeted advertisements. Mediavine Partners may also separately collect data about end users from other sources, such as advertising IDs or pixels, and link that data to data collected from Mediavine publishers in order to provide interest-based advertising across your online experience, including devices, browsers and apps. This data includes usage data, cookie information, device information, information about interactions between users and advertisements and websites, geolocation data, traffic data, and information about a visitor’s referral source to a particular website. Mediavine Partners may also create unique IDs to create audience segments, which are used to provide targeted advertising.

If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices to opt-in or opt-out of this data collection, please visit National Advertising Initiative opt out page. You may also visit Digital Advertising Alliance website and Network Advertising Initiative website to learn more information about interest-based advertising. You may download the AppChoices app at Digital Advertising Alliance’s AppChoices app to opt out in connection with mobile apps, or use the platform controls on your mobile device to opt out.

For specific information about Mediavine Partners, the data each collects and their data collection and privacy policies, please visit Mediavine Partners.

Cookie policy

With this cookie policy, we would like to explain what cookies and cookie-like technologies are, how we and other service provider use them on this website, what information they collect, for how long and for what purposes we use them.

Addition to the privacy policy

This cookie policy is a supplement to this website’s privacy policy. The cookie policy specifies how a website uses cookies and what data it collects through them, while the privacy policy is a more comprehensive overview of all data processing activities on the website and beyond.

Cookies are small pieces of information similar to text files that can be stored and read on the end device. They serve various purposes, including maintaining basic functionalities of the website, security and privacy, providing optional functions of the website, collecting statistic data on visitor flows and providing marketing systems. Practical examples of what can be stored in cookies are the storage of login status in user accounts, the content of shopping baskets in e-commerce platforms, or a user ID for tracking behavior on the website.

The information can technically be stored in various ways. The best-known examples of this are HTTP cookies and cookie-like technologies like local storage, session storage or IndexedDB. Each type of storage has different properties, which determine the technical handling, accessibility and controllers authorized to access the information. All these types of storage are usually summarized under the term “cookies” and are therefore called as such in this cookie policy.

What is the legal basis for setting/reading cookies?

The setting and reading of cookies in the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA) is in accordance with Art. 5 (3) ePrivacy Directive and Recital 66 ePrivacy Directive only permitted if a user has given his consent on the basis of comprehensive information about the purposes of the processing. The website operator may also set cookies if they are strictly necessary to provide you as a user with the expressly requested service, e.g. the basic content of this website or other strictly necessary cookies for basic functionality of the website to be displayed to you without your consent.

What rights does the website visitor have?

Services and their cookies can be set and read on the legal basis of your consent or a legitimate interest. When you first visited this website, you were asked for your consent and you had the opportunity to object to the use of certain services. We explained which legal basis is used for which service in our consent dialog.

You have the right to view the history of your decisions, change your privacy settings, object to the use of services and revoke your consent at any time. Below you find possibilities to exercise your rights:

How to manage cookies in a browser?

How to remove cookies in a browser: To remove cookies from your device, you can clear the browsing data in the settings of your browser. This action will remove all cookies from all websites you’ve visited, potentially including saved login details and site preferences. In some browsers, you can just delete the cookies and similar data without deleting the whole browsing history.
How to control cookies in a browser: For more granular control over cookies specific to certain websites, navigate to the privacy and cookie settings within your used browser. Here, you can adjust preferences related to individual sites’ cookie usage.
How to block cookies in a browser: It’s possible to configure most modern browsers in their settings to block all cookies from being placed on your device. But blocking cookies could lead to certain services and functionalities not functioning correctly, e.g. logins as a user. You can also use extensions for many browsers which can block the setting of cookies on websites.
How to manage cookies on this website: To tailor your preferences regarding cookies on this website, you can change your preferences at any time by clicking on the link in the section “Rights of the website visitor”.

You can find more information on the handling of cookies devowl.io/rcb/cookie-handling/.

What types of cookies exist?

Essential cookies are indispensable for the basic functionality of a website and enable functions such as saving login information or access to secure areas of the site. These include, for example, security cookies, which can identify a bot that is not wanted on the website by storing an authentication key in a cookie.
Functional cookies improve the user experience by storing information and preferences such as language settings or appearance settings of the website to provide personalized. This includes, for example, preference cookies that store the user’s preferred video quality on a website.
Statistics cookies collect data about the use of a website to gain insights into user behavior and optimize the performance of the site. This includes, for example, a randomly assigned user ID that makes it possible to attribute whether you have visited a subpage of the website.
Marketing cookies are used to track user behavior across different websites and to display personalized advertising based on the interests and surfing behavior of users. This includes, for example, advertising cookies that store an interaction with an advertisement on the website and pass it on to advertisers or a chat system for pre-sale questions and customer support.

Who can set cookies on this website?

On this website, both the operator of the website and third-party services which are used on this website may set cookies and access its content. Who can access which cookies and their content differs between first-party and third-party cookies. First-party cookies are created by the visited website and can only be read by the website operator and integrated third-party services on this website. Third-party cookies are set by usually third-party services on other domains, can be read on all websites on which the service that controls the domain is embedded and, for example, used by advertising networks to track user behavior across different websites and offer personalized advertising.