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Privacy policy

Whether you are a conference participant, customer, interested party or even just a visitor to our website: We respect and protect your privacy. In accordance with article 13 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU-GDPR), we inform you here about the way in which we collect, process and use your personal data. In particular, our focus is on the fair and transparent use of your data by the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE).
In the following we give you an overview on the personal data we collect from you and what we are using it for. We will also inform you of your rights under the applicable data protection law and whom to contact if you have any further questions.

WHO ARE WE?

The EFCE is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation ("the CIO").
The principal office of the CIO is in England.

Responsible controller as defined by EU-GDPR

European Federation of Chemical Engineering
General Secretariat Frankfurt
Theodor-Heuss-Allee 25
60486 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Phone:  +49 69 7564-0
E-Mail:  Contact

Charity Number: 1159541
General Secretary, Frankfurt Secretariat: Dr. Andreas Förster

DATA PROCESSING

a) What kind of personal data are processed?

We collect your personal data if you use our services, e.g. if you attend one of our events, committee meetings or training courses, have registered for one of our newsletters or have contacted us by telephone, e-mail or as part of a personal contact (e.g. at a trade fair or other event).

In detail the following types of data are processed:

  • Name, E-Mail address
  • Private address, company address, postal address
  • Profile of interests, Working Party, Section and committee memberships
  • Attended congresses, events and committee meetings
  • IT usage data (IP-address, visited websites, date and time of connection)
b)  Where does this data come from?
  • You yourself inform us about these data, when you register to use our services.
  • If you are an EFCE member organisation and its representative(s): from your membership application
  • If you are nominated, appointed or elected for a Working Party or committee
  • If you apply for a Section membership
  • If you apply for or if you are nominated for an EFCE award
  • If you attend at one of our congresses, events or committee meetings
  • If you submit an entry for an event organized by us
  • If you have registered for our newsletter via e-mail or online form
  • In some cases we also receive your contact data from external cooperation partners or from publicly accessible directories.
  • When you are using our internet services, a pseudonym associated with your IP‑address is generated to protect your privacy.
c) What do we use this data for and what is the legal basis for this?

Performance of a contract (Art. 6.1b of the EU-GDPR):
Usually you have a business relationship with us (current contract) or data processing is necessary on your request to carry out pre-contractual actions, for example:

  • For execution of contractual relationships, e.g. booked conferences and for invoicing the services received
  • To collect your annual membership fee

Due to legal requirements (Art. 6.1c of the EU-GDPR):
We are subject to numerous tax and commercial law regulations. To comply with these regulations, we must process and store your data.

On the basis of your informed consent (Art. 6.1a of the EU-GDPR):
In some cases you have given us your informed consent to process your data, e.g. if you have subscribed to our newsletter. You can revoke this consent at any time. This also applies to consents that you gave us before the EU-GDPR came into force, i.e. before 25th of May 2018.

To fulfill your wishes and to improve our offers based on a balance of interests (Art. 6.1f of the EU-GDPR):

  • For information on events or publications of the EFCE which are thematically related to you profile of interest.
  • For the distribution of publications or journals that match your profile of interest.       
  • To ensure orderly operation and to optimize our services: We monitor the use of our services to ensure capacity utilization and IT security. This is done on the basis of IP addresses. We do not match IP addresses to your user account.
d) How long do we store your data?

For the storage duration of your data different time limits apply:

  • Data having fiscal relevance are usually stored for 10 years
  • Data with commercial law relevance are usually stored for 6 years
  • Conference history: as long as you maintain your account to use our services or at least 10 years
  • Usage data such as connection history (pseudonymized over IP address): 1 year

DO WE CARRY OUT PROFILING?

If you have not created an interest profile within your account, we will try to determine your interest profile from the events you have attended. This is done by thematically categorizing the respective event and comparing it with your automatically created interest profile. You can help us a great deal by comparing the interest profile associated with your account with your personal areas of interest.

DO WE PASS YOUR DATA TO THIRD PARTIES?

Within EFCE we use your data to inform you about services and products that fit your needs. We guarantee that we will always process your personal data in accordance with the provisions of the applicable data protection laws. You should be aware of the fact that you can object to the analysis or use of your personal data for these purposes at any time.

External service providers:

We are using a number of external service providers and also cloud service providers to help us to deliver our event and IT services. These are for example the Lombego Systems GmbH with the conference management system Converia or the Newsletter2Go GmbH with its newsletter tool of the same name. All of these service providers have been carefully selected by us and contractually committed to the careful observance of all relevant data protection regulations. At the same time, of course, we only pass on the minimum amount of data required to use these services.

Passing to other event organizers:

If we perform an event together with an external organizer, we pass all relevant data to the external organizer in order to carry out the event. If you take part in an event from a series of events with (in most cases international) changing organizers, we will normally pass your contact data to the next organizer of this event series, except you have objected to the disclosure of your data when registering for this event.

Usage of forums and/or catalogs:

In some places of our website you can contribute within forums or register into catalogs. These contributions to our forums and/or catalogs are accessible for everyone. Therefore one should examine a contribution carefully before the publication whether it not contains data, which are not intended for the public. One must assume that Internet search machines view those contributions. Therefore this contribution may be world-wide accessible without visiting the DECHEMA website initially. In case of foreign operators the deletion or correction of such entries often cannot be accomplished.

Member lists:

If you are a member of an EFCE Working Party or Section or a member of one of our committees, the Chair and other members of your committee can view your contact details in order to get in touch with you personally. This corresponds to EFCE’s statutory purpose to promote the exchange of information and experience at all levels.

Conference calls, web seminars:

We use various software tools and thus service providers to conduct telephone conferences, online meetings, video conferences and/or web seminars (hereinafter: "Online Meetings"). These can be, for example, Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
Note: If you access the Internet site of the respective service provider, the respective service provider is responsible for data processing. In most cases, it is only necessary to call up the service provider's website in order to download the respective online meeting software. You can also use the online meeting software if you enter the respective meeting ID and, if necessary, additional access data for the meeting directly in the software. If you do not want to or cannot use the respective software, the basic functions can usually also be used via a browser version, which you can usually also find on the service provider's website.
The service provider of the online meeting software used in each case necessarily obtains knowledge of the meeting and any meta-data that may arise.

Conference calls, web seminars, online meetings

a) Scope of the data processed

In addition to the types of data already mentioned above, the following data may be generated during online meetings:

  • For recordings (optional): file of all video, audio and presentation recordings, file of all audio recordings, text file of the online meeting chat.
  • When dialing in by phone: information on incoming and outgoing phone number, country name, start and end time. If necessary, further connection data such as the IP address of the device can be saved.
  • Text-, Audio- and video data: You may be able to use chat, question or survey functions in an "online meeting". To this extent, the text entries you make are processed in order to display and, if necessary, log them in the "online meeting". In order to enable the display of video and the playback of audio, the data from the microphone of your terminal device and from any video camera of the terminal device will be processed for the duration of the meeting. You can turn off or mute the camera or microphone yourself at any time using the online meeting software.
b) Scope of processing

If we want to record "online meetings", we will inform you transparently in advance and - if necessary - ask for your consent. The fact of the recording will also be displayed in the online meeting software. Please note that a recording of any other kind by other participants or third parties can neither be technically prevented nor excluded during online meetings.
If it is necessary for the purpose of logging the results of an online meeting, we will log the chat content. However, this will usually not be the case.
In the case of web seminars, we may also process the questions asked by web seminar participants for the purposes of recording and follow-up of web seminars.
If you are registered as a user with the respective service provider of the online meeting software, reports on "online meetings" (meeting meta data, telephone dial-in data, questions and answers in web seminars, survey function in web seminars) can be stored for longer periods of time with the respective service provider. Such storage is subject to the privacy policy of the respective service provider.
The possibility of software-based "attention tracking", which is partly available in "online meeting" tools, is not used by us and is deactivated.

USAGE OF COOKIES, Web analytics

a) General remarks

Cookies are small text files that are sent to your computer when you use our website. We use cookies exclusively to implement special user functions (so-called session cookies). In some cases, therefore, you may not be able to use our websites as intended without cookies. However, we do not use cookies to create user profiles.
When visiting our pages for the first time, you must either agree to the use of cookies once or you can refuse the use of cookies. You can change your decision at any time by clicking on the "Cookies" button at the bottom right.

b) Google Tag Manager

To manage all embedded services or cookies, we use the so-called "Google Tag Manager". However, this is only activated if you agree to the use of cookies.

c) Google Analytics / Processing of your user date by Google

Our websites are using Google Analytics, a web analysis service from Google Inc. ("Google"). Google Analytics uses "cookies", text files that are saved on your computer and enable your use of the website to be analysed. The information that is generated by the cookie regarding your use of this website is usually transmitted to one of Google's servers in the USA where it is saved. Google may combine this data with other data such as your search history, your personal Google account, usage data from other devices, and other data that Google holds about you. Google may also grant state authorities access to this data.
Further information and data protection regulations you find in Google's Privacy Policy under support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245

IP Anonymisation
IP anonymisation is activated on our websites, therefore your IP address will be abbreviated be-forehand by Google within the member states of the European Union or in other countries that are parties to the agreement on the European Economic Area. In exceptional circumstances only, the full IP address will be transmitted to one of Google's servers in the USA and abbreviated there. On behalf of this website's operator, Google will use this information to evaluate your use of the website in order to compile reports on website activities, and so that it can provide additional services associated with the use of the website and the Internet to the website operator. The IP address that is transmitted by Google Analytics by your browser will not be combined with any other data from Google.

Browser Plugin
You can prevent the storage of cookies by means of a corresponding setting in your browser soft-ware. However, we would like to point out that in this case, you may not be able to use all of this website's functions to their full extent. Furthermore, you can prevent the recording of the data that is generated by the cookie regarding your use of the website (including your IP address) at Google, and the processing of this data by Google, by using the link tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout to download and install the available browser plug-in.

Contradiction against data collection
You can refuse the use of Google Analytics by clicking on the following link. An opt-out cookie will be set on the computer, which prevents the future collection of your data when visiting this website: Disable Google Analytics.

Content integration

Google Web Fonts

On some of our web pages we use so-called web fonts provided by Google to display fonts. When you enter such a page, your browser loads the required Web fonts into your browser cache to display texts and fonts correctly. If your browser does not support web fonts, a default font is used by your computer. For more information about Google Web Fonts, visit: http://developers.google.com/fonts/faq

WHAT OTHER RIGHTS DO YOU HAVE?

a) Rights of access, rectification, deletion and objection
In accordance with articles 14-17 of the EU-GDPR, we hereby inform you that you have the right to access, rectify, delete or restrict the processing of your data at any time.

b) Right of withdrawal
You have the right to withdraw a given consent based on EU-GDPR Art. 6.1.a at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before the withdrawal.

c) Right of withdrawal to the use of your data for direct marketing purposes
Based on a balance of interests, we may use your data for our marketing measures or direct advertising. You have the right to object at any time. The objection can be made informally by e-mail, fax or letter and should be addressed to our office. The easiest way to cancel your subscription to our newsletter is to use the unsubscribe link provided in the newsletter.

d) Right of appeal
Lodge a complaint with a competent supervisory authority is always possible.

FURTHER INFORMATION

You can always contact us for further questions or comments. The best way to contact us is by e‑mail via the contact form: Contact .

Version: July 2020