We use messenger services for communication purposes and therefore ask you to observe the following information regarding the functionality of the messenger services, encryption, use of the metadata of the communication and your objection options.

You can also contact us by alternative means, e.g. telephone or e-mail. Please use the contact options provided to you or use the contact options provided within our online services.

In the case of encryption of content (i.e. the content of your message and attachments), we point out that the communication content (i.e. the content of the message and attachments) is encrypted end-to-end. This means that the content of the messages is not visible, not even by the messenger service providers themselves. You should always use a current version of the messenger service with activated encryption, so that the encryption of the message contents is guaranteed.

However, we would like to point out to our communication partners that although messenger service providers do not see the content, they can find out that and when communication partners communicate with us and process technical information on the communication partner's device used and, depending on the settings of their device, also location information (so-called metadata).

Information on Legal basis: If we ask communication partners for permission before communicating with them via messenger services, the legal basis of our processing of their data is their consent. Otherwise, if we do not request consent and you contact us, for example, voluntarily, we use messenger services in our dealings with our contractual partners and as part of the contract initiation process as a contractual measure and in the case of other interested parties and communication partners on the basis of our legitimate interests in fast and efficient communication and meeting the needs of our communication partners for communication via messenger services. We would also like to point out that we do not transmit the contact data provided to us to the messenger service providers for the first time without your consent.

Withdrawal, objection and deletion: You can withdraw your consent or object to communication with us via messenger services at any time. In the case of communication via messenger services, we delete the messages in accordance with our general data retention policy (i.e. as described above after the end of contractual relationships, archiving requirements, etc.) and otherwise as soon as we can assume that we have answered any information provided by the communication partners, if no reference to a previous conversation is to be expected and there are no legal obligations to store the messages to prevent their deletion.

Reservation of reference to other means of communication: Finally, we would like to point out that we reserve the right, for reasons of your safety, not to answer inquiries about messenger services. This is the case if, for example, internal contractual matters require special secrecy or if an answer via the messenger services does not meet the formal requirements. In such cases we refer you to more appropriate communication channels.

• Processed data types: Contact data (e.g. e-mail, telephone numbers); Usage data (e.g. websites visited, interest in content, access times); Meta, communication and process data (e.g. IP addresses, time information, identification numbers, consent status); Content data (e.g. text input, photographs, videos).

• Data subjects: Communication partner (Recipients of e-mails, letters, etc.).

• Purposes of Processing: Contact requests and communication; Direct marketing (e.g. by e-mail or postal).

• Legal Basis: Consent (Article 6 (1) (a) GDPR); Legitimate Interests (Article 6 (1) (f) GDPR).

Further information on processing methods, procedures and services used:

• Mastodon instance: Own Mastodon instance (no end-to-end encryption) - We offer a so-called instance, i.e. a server, through which participants of the Mastodon network can communicate. We would like to point out that we process the metadata, i.e. the communication partners, the time of communication and the IP addresses, insofar as this is necessary for the operation of the instance, for the implementation of the message transmission and security, within the framework of the performance of our contractual obligations. Unless otherwise specified, Mastodon users should assume that their messages and the users they follow are public. This does not apply to direct messages sent between Mastodon users. All messages are stored in plain text (i.e. not end-to-end encrypted) on our server and are only processed for running the Mastodon instance. In this context, the administrators of the instance can view the following information about each account: Profile name, display name, authorization level on the instance, stored e-mail address, last IP address when the instance was called, time of last access to the instance and size of the file attachments. Cookies of a duration of one year are stored to automatically recognize the users of the instance. Furthermore, please note that we are only responsible for our mastodon instances, but not for other mastodon instances;
  Legal Basis: Legitimate Interests (Article 6 (1) (f) GDPR).