Data protection at Trusted Shops

The following sections provide detailed information about Trusted Shops use of your personal information and data. These basic security principles will be modified, if required, e.g. in case of amendments to existing laws.

General Principles

Trusted Shops GmbH commits itself to protecting the privacy of all consumers utilising our guarantee, and to handle their personal data in a strictly confidential manner. Our staff members are regularly sworn to uphold data secrecy. The main principles of Trusted Shops privacy policy are based on the relevant laws in force, such as the Federal Data Protection Law and the Law on Communication and Information Services.

What kind of data is stored and processed while visiting the website?

You can visit our website without having to reveal any personal Data. We solely store your access Data that has no personal references. When visiting our pages data is collected and stored through the technologies of etracker GmbH (www.etracker.de) in an anonymous form for marketing and optimisation purposes, such as for example the name of your Internet Service Provider, the page you visit from, the name of the file requested as well as the first two figures of your IP address. E-tracker is a leading European provider of solutions for the analysis of visitor behaviour on web pages. The data protection commissioner of Hamburg has certified that e-tracker is 100 percent secure and legally impeccable, and meets the requirements of the strict German Data Protection Act.

From the data collected, a user profile is created under an alias for the purposes of advertising, market research and demand-oriented designing of our offer (e.g. so-called clickstream analysis). Cookies can be used here, which however collect and store data solely in an alias form. The data is not used to personally identify you, i.e. under no circumstances are the user profiles brought together with data about the bearer of the alias.

You can protest against the creation of the alias user profile at any time.

What kind of data is stored and processed when getting in contact with us or applying for membership?

When getting in contact with us or applying for membership, you will be asked to provide us with certain personal data, such as your e-mail address, name, address and address of your online shop. On the respective pages you will be able to recognise which information is obligatory and which is voluntary. We need the data to answer your query or for checking your membership application. If a membership relationship is established, at your request, your data will be blocked for any further processing after the processing of this contract relationship has been completed and will be deleted after the tax and commercial law retention period has expired. When contact has been made without the conclusion of a membership contract, your data will be deleted from our customer database, if requested.

What kind of data is collected when I sign up for the newsletter?

When you sign up for our newsletter we will use the given data to provide you with our newsletter. Your email address is required to sign up. All other information is given voluntarily. The newsletter contains our current information posts as well as offers of the Trusted Shops GmbH and third-party offers. It is possible to unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time.

Is my personal information transferred to third-parties?

For purposes of estimating liability risk and checking creditworthiness, we transmit your address data, if necessary, to business credit reference agencies. No transmission of credit data or passing on of your personal data to other third parties occurs.

How is my personal Data protected against misuse?

We protect our website and our system from unauthorised access through the latest technical and organisational measures available to protect your data from getting manipulated, destroyed or accessed by any unauthorised person. Whenever any personal Data is transferred, we use sophisticated encryption technologies to ensure the strictly confidential transfer of personal data/information such as terms of registration and guarantee.

In addition to that, your personal data is protected by password, so it is only accessible to you. Our servers employ various security and authorisation technologies in order to prevent unauthorised access. When sharing your computer with others, please keep your password and other relevant information strictly confidential and always close your browser window after you are finished communicating with Trusted Shops to avoid any unauthorised access to your personal data.

How can I have my personal Data corrected, blocked or deleted?

You have the right to be informed of which of your data and information is stored additionally you have the right to have your data corrected, blocked or deleted. In a case like that, please contact our data protection officer.

Data protection officer

Should you have questions or complaints regarding data protection at Trusted Shops, please contact our operational data protection officer directly:

Lars Klatte
Trusted Shops GmbH
Colonius Carré
Subbelrather Straße 15c
50823 Cologne, Germany

In addition to the internal data protection controls by the operational data protection officer, the German Federal Data Protection Act provides control authorities that will help you to enforce your rights. The regulatory agency of North Rhine-Westphalia responsible for Trusted Shops is:

The data protection commissioner of North Rhine-Westphalia
Bettina Sokol
Reichsstr. 43,
40217 Duesseldorf, Germany
Phone: +49-(0)211 38424-0
Fax: +49-(0)211 38424-10
E-Mail: datenschutz [at] mail.lfd.nrw.de