Privacy policy

Legal bases

We process personal data only where the law permits it. Depending on the processing, we rely on:

• Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR — your consent, for example when you load the map on the contact page.
• Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR — entering into or performing a contract, for example when you enquire about a course or advice.
• Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR — our legitimate interest in the secure and stable operation of this website.

Hosting and server logs

This website is hosted with Vercel. When you open a page, the server processes technically necessary connection data: your IP address, the date and time of the request, the address requested, and the browser type and operating system your browser reports.

This processing is technically necessary in order to deliver the pages and serves secure operation. The legal basis is Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR. We do not analyse this data in order to identify you personally and do not combine it with other data.

Cookies

This website sets no cookies for analytics or advertising. The only cookie set is called NEXT_LOCALE and stores the language you have chosen. It contains nothing but the language code and no identifier that points to you.

If you open the website without a language in the address, we read the language setting sent by your browser once, in order to take you to the right language version. You can delete the cookie in your browser at any time.

Getting in touch

If you contact us by email, telephone or messenger, we process what you tell us in order to answer your enquiry. The legal basis is Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR where a contract is being prepared, and otherwise Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR.

We keep your enquiry for as long as is needed to deal with it and delete it once it has been dealt with, unless statutory retention periods require otherwise.

Enrolment and advice form

The form on the enrolment page transmits nothing to us. What you enter stays in your browser; submitting opens a prepared email in your own mail program, which you send yourself. No form data is stored on our server.

This section will be replaced as soon as the form is connected to a delivery service.

Study assistant

The study assistant answers questions about courses, dates and examinations. Nothing you write is transmitted until you send a message; opening the panel only fetches the computational task described below from our server.

What you write goes to our server and from there to a language-model service that composes the reply; fal.ai is currently used for this. Your message leaves our infrastructure in the process, and a transfer to a third country is possible. Please do not write sensitive data to the assistant — for personal matters the office can be reached by telephone or email.

The conversation is held in memory only, expires by itself after a short time and is not stored permanently. The legal basis is Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR — our interest in answering common questions immediately.

To prevent abuse and excessive cost, we limit the number of requests. To do so we evaluate technical features of the request, in particular an identifier derived from the IP address, and set your browser a small computational task. These details serve only that limit and are not combined into a profile.

Where the institute's messenger connections are active, the same assistant also answers messages you write via WhatsApp or Telegram. What is described above then applies to your message, and in addition the messenger provider concerned processes your message and your telephone number.

The map on the contact page

The contact page initially shows only a placeholder panel. The map is loaded from Google only when you click "Load map". Doing so transmits your IP address and device data to Google; a transfer to a third country is possible.

The legal basis is your consent under Art. 6 (1) (a) GDPR, which you give with that click and can withdraw with effect for the future. Without the click, nothing is sent to Google.

Fonts

All fonts are served from our own server. There is no connection to Google Fonts or any other font network, and no IP address is passed to a third party.

Features that run in your browser

Two features of this website run in your browser rather than on our server:

• The placement test runs entirely in your browser. Your answers and your result are not transmitted to us and not stored.
• The language parrot uses your browser's speech output. Which voices are available depends on your browser and operating system; some of them generate the voice not on the device but at the browser vendor, which receives the text in order to do so. Nothing is transmitted to us.

Links to other services

The website links to Google Maps, WhatsApp and Instagram. These are ordinary links: they transmit nothing until you follow them. After that, the privacy terms of the provider concerned apply, over which we have no influence.

If you write to us via WhatsApp or another messenger, that provider also processes your message and your telephone number.

Retention

We keep personal data only for as long as is necessary for the purpose concerned or as statutory retention periods require. Technical connection data arises at the host and is retained there only for a limited period; study assistant conversations expire automatically and are not archived.

Your rights

You have the following rights in respect of your personal data. To exercise them, please write to the address given above:

• Access to the data processed (Art. 15 GDPR)
• Rectification of inaccurate data (Art. 16 GDPR)
• Erasure (Art. 17 GDPR)
• Restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR)
• Data portability (Art. 20 GDPR)
• Objection to processing based on a legitimate interest (Art. 21 GDPR)
• Withdrawal of consent with effect for the future (Art. 7 (3) GDPR)
• Complaint to a data protection supervisory authority (Art. 77 GDPR)