Data privacy statement

Part 1:

Information on data protection regarding our processing under Articles 13, 14 and 21 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

We take data protection very seriously and inform you herein how we process your data and what claims and rights you are entitled to under data protection regulations. Applicable from 25 May 2018.

1. Office responsible for data processing and contact data

 

responsible office in the meaning of data-protection law

BLS Energieplan GmbH EUREF-Campus, Haus 12 Torgauer Straße 12-15 10829 Berlin

info@bls-energieplan.de

Contact data of our data-protection officer:

BLS Energieplan GmbH Datenschutzbeauftragter

Harald Eul EUREF-Campus, Haus 12 Torgauer Straße 12-15 10829 Berlin datenschutz@bls-energieplan.de

 

2. Purposes and legal foundations upon which we process your data

We process personal data in accordance with the stipulations of the General Data-Protection Regulation (GDPR), the German Federal Data-Protection Act (Bundesdatenschutzgesetz - BDSG) and other applicable data-protection provisions (details are provided in the following). The details of which data are processed and how they are used depends largely on the services requested or agreed in each case. Further details or additions for the purposes of data processing can be found in the respective contract documents, forms, a declaration of consent and/or other information provided to you (e. g. in the context of the use of our website or our terms and conditions). In addition, this data protection information may be updated from time to time, as you may find out from our website.

2.1 Purposes pursuant to fulfilment of an agreement or pre-contractual measures (Art. 6, section 1 b of the GDPR)

The processing of personal data is carried out in order to carry out our contracts with you and the execution of your orders as well as to carry out measures and activities within the framework of pre-contractual relations, e. g. with interested parties. In particular, the processing thus serves especially in the context of projects of efficient use of energy according to your orders and wishes and include the necessary services, measures and activities. This essentially includes contract-related communication with you, the verifiability of transactions, orders and other agreements as well as quality control by means of appropriate documentation, goodwill procedures, measures to control and optimize business processes as well as the fulfilment of general duties of care, control and supervision by affiliated companies (e. g. Parent company); statistical evaluations for corporate management, cost recording and controlling, reporting, internal and external communication, emergency management, accounting and tax assessment of operational services, risk management, assertion of legal claims and defence in the event of legal disputes; ensuring IT security ((inter alia system and plausibility tests) and general security, including building and plant security, securing and exercising domestic authority (e. g. by means of access controls); guaranteeing the integrity, authenticity and availability of data, preventing and investigating criminal offences; control by supervisory bodies or supervisory authorities (e. g. auditing).

2.2 Purposes within the framework of a legitimate interest on our part or of third parties (Art. 6, section 1 f of the GDPR)

Above and beyond the actual fulfilment of the (pre-) agreement, we process your data whenever this is necessary to protect legitimate interests of our own or of third parties, in particular for the following purposes:

2.3 Purposes within the framework of your consent (Art. 6, section 1 a of the GDPR)

Your personal data can also be processed for certain purposes (e.g. use of company communication systems for private purposes; photographs/videos of you for publication in the Intranet/Internet) including as a result of your consent. As a rule, you can revoke this consent at any time. This also applies to the revoking of declarations of consent that were issued to us before the GDPR went into effect, i.e. prior to 25 May 2018. You shall be separately informed about the consequences of revocation or refusal to provide consent in the respective text of the consent.
Generally speaking, revocation of consent only applies to the future. Processing that takes place prior to consent being issued is not affected by such and remains lawful

 

2.4 Purposes relating to adherence to statutory requirements (Art. 6, section 1 c of the GDPR) or in the public interest (Art. 6, section 1 e of the GDPR)

Just like any actor which takes part in business life, we are also subject to a large number of legal obligations. These are primarily statutory requirements (e.g. commercial and tax laws), but also if applicable supervisory law or other requirements set out by government authorities. The purposes of processing may also include identity and age checks, prevention of fraud and money laundering (e.g. comparisons with European and international anti-terror lists),  compliance with control and notification obligations under tax law as well as the archiving of data for the purposes of data protection and data security as well as for purposes of audits by tax advisors/auditors, fiscal and other government authorities. In addition, it may be necessary to disclose personal data within the framework of official government/court measures for the purposes of collecting evidence, law enforcement and criminal prosecution or the satisfaction of civil law claims.

  • you have not objected to the use of your data;
  • obtaining information and exchanging data with credit agencies where this goes beyond our economic risk;
  • the examination and optimization of processes for needs analysis;
  • the further development of services and products as well as existing systems and processes;
  • the disclosure of personal data within the framework of due diligence in the course of company sale negotiations;
  • for comparison with European and international anti-terrorist lists, insofar as this goes beyond the legal obligations;
  • the enrichment of our data, e. g. by using or researching publicly accessible data;
  • statistical evaluations or market analysis;
  • of benchmarking;
  • the assertion of legal claims and defence in legal disputes which are not directly attributable to the contractual relationship;
  • the restricted processing of data, if a deletion is not possible or only possible with disproportionately high effort due to the special type of storage;
  • the development of scoring systems or automated decision-making processes;
  • the prevention and investigation of criminal offences, if not exclusively for the fulfilment of legal requirements;
  • building and plant security (e. g. by means of access control and video surveillance), insofar as this goes beyond the general duties of care;
  • internal and external investigations, safety reviews;
  • any monitoring or recording of telephone conversations for quality control and training purposes;
  • Preservation and maintenance of certifications of a private-law or official government nature;
  • the seizure and exercise of domestic authority by means of appropriate measures as well as video surveillance for the protection of our customers and employees as well as for securing evidence in the event of criminal offences and their prevention.

3. The categories of data that we process as long as we do not receive data directly from you, and its origin

If necessary for the contractual relationship with you and the activities performed by you, we may process data which we lawfully receive from other offices or other third parties (e.g. quality assessment or complaints by customers/suppliers/consumers). In addition, we process personal data that we have lawfully collected, received or acquired from publicly accessible sources (such as, for example, commercial registers and association registers, civil registers, the press, Internet and other media) if such is necessary and we are allowed to process this data in accordance with statutory provisions.

Relevant personal data categories may in particular be:

  • personal data (name, date of birth, place of birth, nationality, marital status, occupation/trade and comparable data)
  • contact data (address, e-mail address, telephone number and similar data)
  • Address data (population register data and comparable data)
  • payment confirmation/confirmation of cover for bank and credit cards
  • information about your financial situation (creditworthiness data including scoring, i. e. data for assessing the economic risk)
  • customer history
  • data about your use of the telemedia offered by us (e. g. time of access to our websites, apps or newsletter, clicked pages/links of us or entries and comparable data)
  • Video data

 

4. Recipients or categories of recipients of your data

At our company, your data is received by those internal offices or organisational units that need such to fulfil our contractual and statutory obligations or that require such data within the framework of processing and implementing our legitimate interests.
Your data is disclosed/passed on to external offices and persons solely

  • im Zusammenhang mit der Vertragsabwicklung;
  • zu Zwecken der Erfüllung gesetzlicher Vorgaben, nach denen wir zur Auskunft, Meldung oder Weitergabe von Daten verpflichtet sind oder die Datenweitergabe im öffentlichen Interesse liegt (vgl. Ziffer 2.4);
  • soweit externe Dienstleistungsunternehmen Daten in unserem Auftrag als Auftragsverarbeiter oder Funktionsübernehmer verarbeiten (z. B. externe Rechenzentren, Unterstützung/Wartung von EDV-/IT-Anwendungen, Archivierung, Belegbearbeitung, Call-Center-Services, Compliance-Services, Controlling, Datenscreening für Anti-Geldwäsche-Zwecke, Datenvalidierung bzw. -plausibilitätsprüfung, Datenvernichtung, Einkauf/Beschaffung, Kundenverwaltung, Lettershops, Marketing, Medientechnik, Research, Risikocontrolling, Abrechnung, Telefonie, Webseitenmanagement, Wirtschaftsprüfungsdienstleistung, Kreditinstitute, Druckereien oder Unternehmen für Datenentsorgung, Kurierdienste, Logistik);
  • aufgrund unseres berechtigten Interesses oder des berechtigten Interesses des Dritten für im Rahmen der unter Ziffer 2.2 genannten Zwecke (z. B. an Behörden, Auskunfteien, Inkasso, Rechtsanwälte, Gerichte, Gutachter, konzernangehörige Unternehmen und Gremien und Kontrollinstanzen);
  • wenn Sie uns eine Einwilligung zur Übermittlung an Dritte gegeben haben.

We shall moreover refrain from transmitting your data to third parties if we have not informed you of such separately. If we commission service providers within the framework of processing an order, your data will be subject there to the security standards stipulated by us in order to adequately protect your data. In all other cases, recipients may only use the data for purposes for which the data has been sent to them.

5. Length of time your data is stored

We process and store your data for the duration of our business relationship. This also includes the initiation of a contract (pre-contractual legal relationship) and the execution of a contract.

Above and beyond this, we are subject to various retention and documentation obligations that emanate inter alia from the German Commercial Code (HGB) and the German Tax Code (AO). The periods and deadlines for retention and/or documentation stipulated therein are up to ten years beyond the end of the contractual relationship or the pre-contractual legal relationship.

Furthermore, special statutory provisions may require longer retention such as for example the preservation of evidence in connection with statutory time-barring provisions (statute of limitations). Under §§ 195 ff. of the German Civil Code (BGB), the regular time-barred period is three years, but time-barred periods of up to 30 years may also be applicable.

If the data is no longer required to meet contractual or statutory obligations and rights, it is regularly deleted unless its further processing - for a limited period - is necessary to fulfil the purposes listed under number 2.2 due to an overriding legitimate interest. Such an overriding legitimate interest is deemed to be the case, for example, if it is not possible to delete the data as a result of the special type of storage or such is only possible at an unreasonably great expense and processing for other purposes is excluded by appropriate technical and organisational measures.

6. Processing of your data in a third country or through an international organisation

Data is transmitted to offices in countries outside the European Economic Area EU/EEA (so-called third states) whenever such is necessary to meet a contractual obligation towards you (e.g. if you are despatched to another country), such is required by law (e.g. notification obligations under tax law), such is in the legitimate interest of us or a third party or you have issued us your consent to such.

At the same time, your data may be processed in a third country including in connection with the involvement of service providers within the framework of the processing of the order. If no decision has been issued by the EU Commission regarding the presence of a reasonable level of data protection for the respective country, we warrant that your rights and freedoms will be reasonably protected and guarantied in accordance with EU data-protection requirements through contractual agreements to this effect. We will provide you with detailed information on request.

You can request information on the suitable or reasonable guarantees and the possibility, how and where to receive a copy of these from the company data-protection officer or the human resources department in charge of you.

7. Your data-protection rights

If certain conditions are met, you can assert your data-protection rights against us

  • Thus, you have the right to receive information from us on the data stored on you in accordance with the rules of Art. 15 of the GDPR (if applicable with restrictions in accordance with § 34 of the German Federal Data-Protection Act (BDSG))
  • If you so request, we shall correct data stored on you in accordance with Art. 16 of the GDPR if such data is incorrect or flawed.
  • If you so desire, we shall delete your data in accordance with the principles of Art. 17 of the GDPR if such is not prevented by other statutory provisions (e.g. statutory retention obligations or the restrictions laid down in § 35 of the German Federal Data-Protection Act (BDSG)) or an overriding interest on our part (for example, to defend our rights and claims)
  • Taking into account the preconditions laid down in Art. 18 of the GDPR, you can demand that we restrict the processing of your data .
  • Furthermore, you can file an objection to the processing of your data in accordance with Art. 21 of the GDPR, as a result of which we have to stop processing your data. This right of objection only applies, however, if very special circumstances characterise your personal situation, whereby the rights of our company may run counter to your right of objection.
  • You also have the right to receive your data in accordance with the arrangements laid down in Art. 20 of the GDPR in a structured, commonplace and machine-readable format or transmit such data to a third party.
  • You furthermore have the right to revoke consent that has been issued to us to process personal data at any time effective into the future (see number 2.3).
  • You are in addition entitled to file a complaint with a data-protection supervisory authority (Art. 77 of the GDPR). We recommend, however, to first always send a complaint to our data-protection officer.

Whenever possible, your applications for the exercise of your rights should be sent in writing to the address stated above or addressed directly to our data-protection officer.

8. Scope of your obligations to provide us your data

You only need to provide data that is necessary for the commencement and performance of the business relationship or for a pre-contractual relationship with us or the collection of which we are required by law. Without this data, we are generally not able to conclude the agreement or continue to perform such. This may also relate to data that is required later within the framework of the contractual relationship. If we request data from you above and beyond this, you shall be informed about the voluntary nature of the information separately.

9. Presence of an automated decision made in individual cases (including profiling)

We do not use any purely automated decision-making procedure as set out in Article 22 of the GDPR. If we do institute such a procedure in individual cases in the future, we shall inform you pursuant hereto separately if this is required by law.

Under certain circumstances, we may process your data in part with the aim of evaluating certain personal aspects (profiling).

In order to provide you with targeted information and advice on products, we may use evaluation tools. These enable a needs-oriented product design, communication and advertising including market and opinion research.

Such procedures can also be used to assess your solvency and creditworthiness as well as to combat money laundering and fraud. "Score values" can be used to assess your creditworthiness and creditworthiness. In the case of scoring, the probability is calculated using mathematical methods with which a customer will meet his payment obligations in accordance with the contract. Such score values thus support us, for example, in assessing our creditworthiness, decision-making in the context of product deals and are incorporated into our risk management. The calculation is based on mathematically and statistically recognised and proven methods and is based on your data, in particular income, expenditure, existing liabilities, profession, employer, length of service, experience from the previous business relationship, repayment of previous loans in accordance with the contract and information from credit agencies.

Information on nationality and special categories of personal data according to Art. 9 GDPR are not processed.

Information on your right of objection under Art. 21 of the GDPR

  1. You have the right to file an objection at any time against processing of your data which is performed on the basis of Art. 6, section 1 f of the GDPR (data-processing on the basis of a weighing out of interests) or Art. 6, section 1 e of the GDPR (data-processing in the public interest). The precondition for this, however, is that there are grounds for your objection emanating from your special personal situation. This also applies to profiling that is based on this purpose in the meaning of Art. 4, no. 4 of the GDPR.

    If you file an objection, we shall no longer process your personal data unless we can demonstrate compelling reasons warranting protection for the processing that outweigh your interests, rights and freedoms, or the processing serves the purpose of asserting, exercising or defending legal claims.
  2. We will also use your personal data in order to perform direct advertising. If you do not want to receive any advertising, you have the right to file an objection to such at any time. This also applies to the profiling to the extent that it is connected with such direct advertising. We shall respect this objection with effect into the future.

    We shall no longer process your data for the purpose of direct advertising if you object to processing for this purpose.

The objection can be filed without adhering to any form requirements and should if possible be sent to

BLS Energieplan GmbH
EUREF-Campus, Haus 12
Torgauer Straße 12-15
10829 Berlin

 

 

Part 2:

Supplemental Data privacy statement for the contact form useour Website

Personal data are only collected and stored on German/European servers, if you communicate them voluntarily through our contact form.

We use the data you provide without your express permission to process your request. We do not share your personal data with third parties.

Right to information

According to the Federal Data Protection Act you have the right to free information about your stored data, and the right to edit, block or delete the data. A contact person can be reached at the following address:

Should you wish to contact us by email, please note that the content of unencrypted emails can be viewed by third parties. We therefore recommend encrypting confidential information or sending it by post.

Anonymous data collection

You can visit our website without disclosing any personal information.

We collect and store only access data without personal reference in log files transmitted to us by your browser automatically, namely:

  • Browser type/version
  • Operating system used
  • Referrer URL
  • Host name of the accessing computer (IP-address)
  • Server request time

These data serve for user behavior analysis and only used to improve our offer. They do not allow us to deduce information concerning your person. Combination of these data with other data sources will not be made.

Integration of services and third party content

It may happen that within this online offer third-party content, e.g. YouTube videos, map data from Google Maps, RSS feeds or graphics will be linked with other websites. It is always assumed that the provider of such content (hereinafter referred to as the "third-party") would safeguard the user's IP address. Without the IP address, no content could be sent to the relevant user's browser. The IP address is thus necessary to view this content. We make every effort to use the content from those providers, who only use IP addresses for delivery of the same. However, we have no control on whether or not the third-party content provider use IP address e.g. for statistical purposes. As far as it is known to us, we inform the users thereof. Our data privacy statement does not extend to the websites of other providers.

Cookies.

Our website uses cookies. A cookie is a text file that is sent when you visit a website and temporarily cached on your hard drive as a user of the website. If the corresponding server of our website is called again from you as a user of the website, the browser of your computer sends back the cookie previously received to the server. The server can then evaluate the information obtained through this procedure in different ways. Cookies e.g. may be used to manage advertising banners or facilitate navigation on the website.

If you want to prevent use of the cookies as a website user, you can do so by making local changes to settings of the internet browser used on your computer, i.e. the program for opening and displaying web pages (e.g. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera or Safari).

Data privacy statement for use of Google Analytics.

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. In case of activation of the IP anonymization, Google will truncate/anonymize the last octet of the IP address for Member States of the European Union as well as for other parties to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases, the full IP address is sent to and shortened by Google servers in the USA. On behalf of the website provider Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage to the website provider. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. However, please note that if you do this, you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. Furthermore you can prevent Google’s collection and use of data (cookies and IP address) by downloading and installing the browser plug-in available under https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en-GB.
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:
deactivate Google Analytics.

Further information concerning the terms and conditions of use and data privacy can be found at http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/gb.html or at https://www.google.de/intl/en_uk/policies/. Please note that on this website, Google Analytics code is supplemented by “anonymizeIp” to ensure an anonymized collection of IP addresses (so called IP-masking).

Changes to the data protection provisions

Our privacy policy and the information on data protection about our data processing according to article 13, 14 and 21 GDPR may change from time to time. All changes will be published on this page.

 

Data protection information 25 May, 2018