Privacy policy

Grant Thornton AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft (hereinafter “Grant Thornton Germany”, www.grantthornton.de, datenschutzbeauftragter@de.gt.com, +49 (0)211 222 183 - 0), welcomes you on its website. We consider the protection of personal your data when using our website a very important matter. This Privacy Policy therefore sets out what kind of personal data may be collected during your visit of our website and which purposes we use it for. Since legislative changes or changes in our internal company processes may necessitate amendments to this data privacy policy, we invite you to read this data protection information as amended from time to time. The Privacy Policy can be accessed, saved and printed out at any time under Data Privacy Policy.

1. Scope of application

This Privacy Policy is valid for the website of Grant Thornton Germany and for Grant Thornton GmbH & Co. KG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft as well as Grant Thornton Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH (hereinafter “Grant Thornton Germany Companies”) which can be accessed at the domain www.grantthornton.de and its various subdomains (hereinafter referred to as “our website”).

KINAST Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH

Rechtsanwälte

External data protection officer

Hohenzollernring 54

D-50672 Köln

T +49 221 – 222 183 0

E Datenschutzbeauftragter@de.gt.com

2. What is personal data?

Personal data means any information which can be used to learn personal or factual circumstances about you (e.g. name, address, telephone number, date of birth or e-mail address).  Data not allowing us to deduce information concerning your person (or only with a disproportional effort), e.g. anonymised data, is not personal data.

The processing of personal data (e.g. collection, recording, consultation, use, storage or transmission) must always be justified by legal grounds or your consent. Any processed personal data will be deleted as soon as the purpose of its processing has been reached, subject to legal retention obligations. If we process your personal data for the submission of specific proposals, we will inform you about the specific processes, the scope and purposes of their processing, the legal basis and the duration of their storage.

3. Which personal data is collected/processed and used?

You can use a major part of our website without the need to disclose personal data.

We do store log files which include the following information:

• name of the file accessed,
• time (date and time) you visited our site,
• data volume transmitted,
• notification of successful access,
• the browser used to visit, operating system and the enquiring domain, as well as
• the IP address.

This data will be used exclusively for the purposes of improving our services and does not allow any conclusions to be made about you personally.

If you would like to use any of the services we offer on our site, e.g. order a newsletter etc., however, additional information needs to be provided, i.e. the information required for processing the request, such as your email- address when subscribing to a newsletter.

We use the data we collected about you for providing the products and services we offer, for answering your questions and responding to your enquiries, as well as for the operation and constant improvement of our websites and applications.

We use your personal data exclusively to be able to provide you with an extensive service, or – if you use our contact form – to provide the requested service.

Grant Thornton Germany Companies are no third parties in this connection.

Your personal data will not be used for any other purpose. Your personal data will not be forwarded to third parties or used for marketing purposes without your consent (except as shown below) unless we are required by law to disclose data (information to criminal prosecution authorities and courts; information to public authorities receiving data based on legal provisions, e.g. social insurance agencies, tax authorities etc.), or unless we engage third parties that are subject to professional secrecy for the enforcement of our claims.

In particular, we use personal data for the following purposes:

a) Newsletter subscriptions and registrations for events

In order to subscribe to our e-mail newsletter service we need at least your e-mail-address to which the newsletter or the confirmation of your registration should be sent, in addition to your consent.

Additional information for registering for an event or subscribing to a newsletter may be required to contact you personally or to personalise contents and to provide clarification on questions as necessary. 

It is your free decision whether or not you provide us with this information. However, without this information we cannot send you our newsletter or register you for an event.

When subscribing to a newsletter, your email address will be used for marketing purposes until you unsubscribe. You can unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of the newsletter.

b) Contact form

If you use of the contact form to send us enquiries, we will ask for your first name and last name, the company you work for and your email-address or telephone number. You can leave your individual message to us in the message text box.

It is your free decision whether or not you provide us with this information.  On request, the data transfer can be encrypted.

c) Advertising and market research

If you give your consent to advertising and market research, we will not only use your information for processing the services you requested, but we will also use it to provide you with a website geared to your interests. We will also, by post or email (in the form of our newsletter), occasionally send you interesting news and tips relating to our company or our services of interest to you based on your data, and we will use your data for the analysis required therefor and for and market research purposes.

For this purpose, it is technically necessary for us to combine your data and the data you provide into user profiles and to analyse them for the aforementioned purposes. This will be done internally only, and only for the purposes referred to above.

You may withdraw your consent at any time atDatenschutzbeauftragter@de.gt.com, or by telephone  +49 (0)221 – 222 183 – 0. If you have not given your consent or if you withdraw it, no data will be used according to the preceding paragraph, while you will still be able to use the services of Grant Thornton Germany.

4. Use of cookies

When you request the information from our sites, only anonymised data will be stored on our servers for providing our various services or for purposes of analyses. General information will be logged during your session, e.g. the service contents accessed or the sites frequently visited.

We set “cookies” (small text files containing configuration information). Cookies are small text files that our webserver sends to your browser and that are stored on your device when you visit our websites for future page views.

The main purpose of the cookies used is to track how many times our website was visited and to be able to identify your device when you visit our website and when you move from one of our websites to another and to be able to determine the end of your session. This is how we learn which part of our website you visited and what other websites our users visited. However, the user data does not permit any conclusions to be made about who the user is. None of this anonymised user information will be combined with your personal data in accordance with Section 3 of this Privacy Policy and will be deleted immediately after the end of the statistical analysis.

When you visit our website, technical cookies are stored on your device. Their purpose is to make our website user-friendly and to guarantee simple and quick access to it. Non-technical cookies require your active consent (opt-in). The cookie banner gives you the option to set your cookie preferences. Any cookie settings may be disabled manually by removing cookies from your browser - please see the help pages of the browser you are using.

All cookies used or their providers are listed in the next sections of this document:

Technically necessary cookies

Cookie/name of provider	Description:
ARRAffinitySameSite	Technical cookie: ARRAffinity will be set by the Azure app service and ensures that all user sessions will be linked to the same server.
ASP.NET_SessionId	This cookie saves anonymised data during your current session. The cookie stores an option you enabled or the preceding site you visited.
EPi_NumberOfVisits - EPISERVER	This cookie counts the number of sessions of a user to identity what pages of the website are of particular interest.
gtm_isp_lookup	This cookie, executed by the Google Tag Manager, helps identify spam and bots. The cookie expires after the browser has been closed.
optimizelyEndUserId	Saves a user ID consisting of a time stamp and a random number. No additional data will be collected.
_evidon_suppress_notification_ cookie  - Evidon	Evidon is the provider of the software which permits users to enable their preferred cookie settings.
Google Tag Manager	The Google Tag Manager tracks data on websites and links them to tools in which they can be stored and analysed. The Google Tag Manager as such does not store and process any data.
_gcl_aw	This cookie is set if a user visits a website via Google ad clicks. Contains information about the ads clicked to be able to measure successes, e.g. orders or contact requests with the ad.

Optional Cookies:

Cloud Flare	Website optimisation, blocking of threats, bots and crawlers for a safe operation of the website
.EPiForm_BID .EPiForm_VisitorIdentifier __epiXSRF -  Episerver	Platform for the operation of the website (content management/SaaS). Episerver holds information about the browser, cookie data, hardware/software type, page views and IP address of the visitor. If you register or use the contact form, your address, e-mail address, EU IP address, name and telephone number are also collected.
_gcl_aw	This cookie is set if a user visits a website via Google ad clicks. Contains information about the ads clicked to be able to measure successes, e.g. orders or contact requests with the ad.
Linkedin Marketing Solutions	The cookie tracks URL, referrer URL, device and browser properties and IP address and is used to show you relevant content about products, services or topics you may be interested in.
Adform	The cookie tracks URL, referrer URL, device and browser properties and IP address, interactions data and advertising views.
Google Adwords	The cookie tracks URL, referrer URL, device and browser properties and IP address, interactions data, internet-serverprovider and service domain and advertising views.

For the sites:

https://digital-advisory.grantthornton.de/startseite   

Technically necessary cookies

Klaro	Cookie that allows users to select which data (cookies) may be executed.
fe_typo_user	This cookie is a standard TYPO3 session cookie. It saves the access data entered when a user logs in to a closed area.

Optional cookies

-gcl_aw	This cookie is set by the Google Tag Manager if a user visits a website via Google ad clicks. Contains information about the ads clicked to be able to measure successes, e.g. orders or contact requests with the ad.
Linkedin	The cookie tracks URL, referrer URL, device and browser properties and IP address and is used to show you relevant content about products, services or topics you may be interested in.
Matomo	Tracking data from visitors to the site for statistical purposes and optimisation.

https://eventanmeldung.grantthornton.de/

Technically necessary cookies

Laravel Cross Script – XSRF-Token

This cookie is provided by the Laravel Framework to prevent cross-scripting attacks.

Optional cookies

-gcl_aw	This cookie is set by the Google Tag Manager if a user visits a website via Google ad clicks. Contains information about the ads clicked to be able to measure successes, e.g. orders or contact requests with the ad.
Linkedin	The cookie tracks URL, referrer URL, device and browser properties and IP address and is used to show you relevant content about products, services or topics you may be interested in.
Matomo	Tracking data from visitors to the site for statistical purposes and optimisation.

5. Social Media

Our websites also contain buttons linking to social media. The buttons shown on our website are not plug-ins. Clicking the button opens an external link to our page on the relevant platforms. No cookies will be stored on your computer and no data will be transferred. Currently, the website contains links to the following social networks:

• “Twitter” (Twitter, Inc. 1355 Market St, Suite 900, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA),
• “LinkedIn“ (LinkedIn Corporation, 2029 Stierlin Court, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA),
• “Xing” (XING AG, Dammtorstraße 30, 20354 Hamburg, Germany) 

These are exclusively operated by the relevant provider. The links to our company profiles on the relevant platforms are identified by the button on our website relating to these services.

When you visit our websites which contain such a button, your browser will not connect with the server of the relevant service unless you click on the related button. Therefore, the information about your visit to our website will not be linked to the related provider.
If, during the visit of our website, you are also logged into your personal user account on the provider’s website (e.g. in another browser session), and then click the button, your visit to our website can be attributed to your user account.

If you wish to prevent such data transfer, either log out of your user account of the relevant platform before visiting our website or do not use the links. For the scope and purpose of data tracked by those services and their further processing and use of your data, please see the data privacy information on the websites of the relevant service. There you can also obtain more information about your data privacy rights and options enabled for the protection of your privacy.

a) Xing

We would like to inform you about the personal data processed by XING, which is linked to our website.  Clicking the link briefly connects to the servers of XING through your browser. You can read the current XING Privacy Policy and additional information on this website:
https://www.xing.com/app/share?op=data_protection und www.xing.com/privacy.

b) LinkedIN

Our website also links to the social network LinkedIn. Clicking the link when visiting our websites directly connects your browser to the LinkedIn server and informs LinkedIn that you visited our site using your IP address. By clicking the LinkedIn link while signed in to your LinkedIn account you can link the content of our website to your LinkedIn profile. This enables LinkedIn to link the visit of our websites to your user account. Please note that we as the provider of the website do not know the content of the data transferred and how they are used by LinkedIn.

The LinkedIn Privacy Policy at http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=privacy_policy&trk=hb_ft_priv contains the details of data tracked (purpose, scope, further processing, use) and your rights and setting options.

c) Twitter

Our website includes a link to Twitter. Clicking the link redirects you to Twitter and stores a cookie on your device. Twitter can use this cookie to establish a connection between you and your account. If you do not have a Twitter account or have never visited the Twitter website, Twitter will assign you an identifier to log your visits to our Twitter feed. 

The Twitter Privacy Policy provides additional information about data protection: https://twitter.com/privacy?lang=de.

6. Matomo web analytics

This website uses Matomo, an advertising analytics service provided by Matomo.org, a service of InnoCraft Ltd, 150 Willis St, 6011 Wellington, New Zealand, NZBN 6106769, (“Matomo”).
EU Representative: ePrivacy Holding GmbH, Große Bleichen 21, 20354 Hamburg, Germany; Website: https://matomo.org. 

The service does not set any cookies requiring consent and can only access to the cut-off and anonymised IP addresses of the website visitors. With the software settings the IP addresses are not stored completely, but two bytes of the IP address are masked (e.g.: 192.168.xxx.xxx). It is therefore not possible to assign the cut-off IP address to the requesting computer.

The tracking code is only used for a single website and exclusively for the purposes of analysing usage and improving our website.

Under an agreement on commissioned data processing entered into between us as the website operator and Matomo, Matomo uses the tracked information to analyse website use and website activity and provides services associated with internet use.

For more information relating to the terms of use of Matomo and its Privacy Police see: https://matomo.org/matomo-cloud-privacy-policy.

If you do not agree to the storage and analysis of this data from your session, you can object to its storage and use at any time by clicking on the following link.

Then an opt-out cookie will be stored in your browser and consequently Matomo will not track any session data. Please note that the opt-out cookie will also be deleted and you may have to enable it again.

(EINBINDUNG iFrame  OPT OUT)

 7. Google Maps

Google Maps, a map service provided by Google Inc. (“Google“), is also embedded in our website. Google Maps uses “cookies“ – these are text files which are stored on your device when you use the map function on our website.

Clicking the link directly connects your browser to the Google server and informs Google that you visited our site using your IP address. If you click the Google Maps link while signed in to your Google account, Google will be able to allocate your visit to our sites to your user account. Please note that we as the provider of the website do not know the content of the data transferred and how they are used by Google. The Google Privacy Policy at https://www.google.de/intl/de/policies/privacy/?fg=1 contains the details of data tracked (purpose, scope, further processing, use) and your rights and setting options.

8. Use of YouTube Videos

We use embedded YouTube videos. YouTube is a service provided by Google Inc., Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.

The IP address will be transmitted while visiting the website and for embedding the videos. It cannot be attributed to a person unless you have signed in to YouTube or another Google service before visiting the website or if you are logged in permanently.

As soon as you click on an embedded video to start it, YouTube stores only cookies without any personal data on your device. No such cookies will be set with the appropriate browser settings and extensions (source: YouTube "Enable privacy-enhanced mode for embedded videos").

For more information on embedding YouTube videos please see the information pages of YouTube: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/171780?hl=de.

9. Security precautions for the protection of data stored with us

We agree to protect your privacy and to treat your personal data as confidential. To prevent loss or misuse of the data stored with us, we take extensive technical and organisational security precautions, which are reviewed periodically and adapted to technological progress.

However, please note that, due to the structure of the Internet, the rules of data protection and the security precautions referred to above may not be observed by other persons or institutions that are outside our area of responsibility.

10. Hyperlinks to external websites

Our website contains hyperlinks to websites of third-party providers. When clicking these hyperlinks, you will be redirected from our website to the website of the third-party providers. You will notice this e.g. when the URL changes. We do not accept any responsibility for the confidential handling of your data on these third-party websites, as we do not have any influence on the compliance with data privacy regulations of those companies. Please visit these websites directly to find out how your personal data is handled by these companies.

11. Revocation / objection

Please note that you can revoke your consent at any time with effect for the future and also object to the processing and use of your data at any time. A revocation/objection option is provided in the services for which you have your consent (e.g. "Unsubscribe" link in the newsletter). Alternatively, please contact Datenschutzbeauftragter@de.gt.com or call +49 (0)221 – 222 183 – 0. Such revocation shall not affect the lawfulness of any processing on the basis of the consent before revocation and shall not affect the use of the services.

12. Your rights related to the personal data we store / storage period

We store your personal data only for the period permitted by law. Personal data will be deleted if users withdraw their consent to the storage or when storage is not necessary any longer for the pursued purpose, in particular if the user account is deleted or if storage of such data is not permitted by law.

We will be pleased to provide information as to which data we store about you if you request us to do so.  If any inaccurate data was stored despite our efforts to keep it correct and up-to-date, we will rectify these immediately. In addition, you can receive the personal data concerning you, the processing of which you have consented to, in a structured, common and machine-readable format and transmit it to another person responsible either personally or through us.

You can at any time review, change, or delete the data which you have provided us with by writing an e-mail to Datenschutzbeauftragter@de.gt.com. 
If you want us to delete the stored data, we will delete them immediately after having been requested to do so. Where data cannot be deleted for legal reasons, we will restrict (block) the relevant data instead. Please note, however, that if your data is deleted, we will no longer be able to offer you the services described here.

If you believe that the processing of your data constitutes an infringement of law you may exercise your right to complain to a supervisory authority.

For details on information to be provided under Article 13 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) please see: Informationspflichten nach Art. 13 DS-GVO | Grant Thornton.

13. External data protection officer

If you have any other questions or suggestions regarding data protection at our company or relating to this Privacy Policy, please directly contact our external data protection officer KINAST Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH.

http://www.kinast-partner.de/externer-datenschutzbeauftragter/ 

E Datenschutzbeauftragter@de.gt.com 
T +49 (0)221 – 222 183 – 0