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 German Data Protection Act and the German Act for Telemedia 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 registering for the Trusted Shops guarantee?

When registering for the Trusted Shops guarantee by Atradius, you will be requested to agree to the storage, processing and use of your data by the Trusted Shops GmbH. Please note: We cannot offer the Trusted Shops guarantee without this agreement.

In order to handle possible claims arising from the Trusted Shops guarantee, we require that you provide your name, address, e-mail adress, the total purchase price, the name of the online shop concerned and the date of delivery agreed upon. While registering for the Trusted Shops guarantee, we do not require any information on the description of the goods purchased, payment method, credit card number or bank account. We will store your data for a maximum of six months for handling possible claims. Your data will be automatically erased from our database after this period of time.

Of course, you can have your data deleted at any time; for this purpose please contact our data protection officer. However, the Trusted Shops guarantee will expire thereafter. Your data will be used exclusively for handling matters pertaining to the Trusted Shops guarantee, this means we will store and process only information and data, required to process reimbursement claims.

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 voluntary. 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?

Your personal data will not be transferred to third parties. You will receive relevant e-mails only from the Trusted Shops GmbH.

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, 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 have 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?

After registration in Trusted Shops protected area by entering your e-mail address and your personal password, you will be able to check and edit your stored personal information at any time. Please contact us if you forgot your password or having problems while registering.

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