Important legal notices and data protection

Important legal notices

Please read the following conditions carefully before continuing. By visiting the schweizerkaese.ch website by Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG, you are consenting to the following conditions.

Copyright and trademark rights

The entire contents of the website schweizerkaese.ch are protected by copyright. All rights belong to Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG or third parties. The elements on the schweizerkaese.ch website are only freely accessible for browsing purposes. Duplicating the material, either in full or in part, in any written or electronic form is only permitted with the express permission of schweizerkaese.ch. Reproducing, transferring, modifying, linking or using the schweizerkaese.ch website for public or commercial purposes is forbidden without obtaining written authorisation from Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG in advance.

The various names and logos on the schweizerkaese.ch website are generally registered trademarks. None of the components of the schweizerkaese.ch website have been designed such that they grant use of a licence or a right to use an image, a registered trademark or a logo. Downloading or copying the schweizerkaese.ch website or parts therefore does not constitute a transfer of rights in view of the software or elements of the schweizerkaese.ch website. Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG reserves all the rights in view of all the elements on the schweizerkaese.ch website, with the exception of third-party rights.

No guarantee

Although Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG has taken the utmost care to guarantee the reliability of the information contained on the schweizerkaese.ch website at the time of publication, neither Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG nor its contractual partners are able to make any promises or guarantees (including to third parties) regarding accuracy, reliability or completeness of the information presented on schweizerkaese.ch. Opinions and other information on the schweizerkaese.ch website may be changed at any time without notice.

Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG accepts no responsibility and provides no guarantees that the functions on the schweizerkaese.ch website are not interrupted nor that the schweizerkaese.ch website or the respective server is free from viruses or other harmful components.

Limitation of liability

Insofar as there is a contractual relationship between Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG and the user of the website or another third party of Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG, Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG is only liable for gross negligence or damage caused with wilful intent. Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG excludes liability for all damages caused by an auxiliary person. Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG is not liable for loss of profit, data losses or other direct, indirect or consequential damages resulting from accessing elements of the schweizerkaese.ch website or its usage or the lack of opportunity to access or use the website or due to links with other websites or for technical faults.

Links to other websites

The schweizerkaese.ch website contains links to third-party websites that may be of interest to you. By activating such links, you will under certain circumstances leave the schweizerkaese.ch website or extracts from third-party websites will be presented within the schweizerkaese.ch website environment. Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG has not inspected the third-party websites that are linked to the schweizerkaese.ch website and is in no way responsible or liable for the content or functioning of these third-party websites. This applies regardless of whether activating the link causes you to leave the schweizerkaese.ch website or whether the website is presented within the schweizerkaese.ch website environment and also, when in the latter case the provider of information on a third-party website is not made clear. Using these links or consulting third-party websites takes place solely at the risk and danger of the user.

Privacy policy

Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG (Brunnmattstrasse 21, 3001 Bern, Switzerland), a limited company in line with Swiss Obligationen Recht (CHE-140.749.178), represented by Dr David Escher (CEO), is the operator of the schweizerkaese.ch website and is, therefore, responsible for the collection, processing and use of your personal data and the consistency of this data processing with Swiss law.
We value your trust. We take the issue of data security very seriously and act appropriately. We adhere to the legal regulations set out in the Federal Privacy Act (Bundesgesetz über den Datenschutz, DSG), the Ordinance to the Federal Act on Data Protection (Verordnung zum Bundesgesetz über den Datenschutz, VDSG), the Telecommunications Act (Fernmeldegesetz, FMG) and other applicable data protection laws, in particular the EU General Data Protection Regulation (hereinafter GDPR).

Please read the following information to find out which personal data we collect and what we use it for.

1. Scope and purpose of collecting, processing and using personal data

a. When visiting www.schweizerkaese.ch
When visiting our website, our servers temporarily store every access in a log file. The following data is collected without any action on your part and is saved by us until it is automatically deleted up to twelve months later:

The IP address of the requesting computer
The data and time of the access
The name and URL of the file accessed
The website from which the access resulted
The operating system on your computer and the browser you used
The country from which you accessed our website and the language settings in your browser
The name of your internet service provider

This data is collected and processed for the purpose of being able to use our website (establishing a connection), to guarantee system security and stability over the long term and to allow us to optimise our website, as well as for internal statistical purposes. This represents a legitimate interest in compliance with Art. 6(1)(f) of the GDPR. The IP address is used to record the country in which the website visitor is located and to set the language of the website in accordance with this. Furthermore, in the case of attacks to the network infrastructure of www.schweizerkaese.ch, the IP address is analysed for statistical purposes.
In addition, when you visit our website, we use so-called Pixel and cookies to display personalised advertising and for the use of web analysis services. You can find further information on this under Points 2, 6 and 7 of this privacy policy.

b. When registering for our newsletter
Our website gives you the opportunity to subscribe to our newsletter. You need to register for this. The following information must be provided during this registration process:

Email address
Title
First name
Surname

The aforementioned data is required for the data processing. In addition, you can voluntarily provide further information (company and telephone). We only use this data to personalise the information and offers that we send you based on your interests.
By registering, you consent to the processing of the data provided for the regular sending of the newsletter to the address that you provided and for the statistical analysis of user behaviour and to optimise the newsletter. This consent represents our legal basis for processing your email address in compliance with Art. 6(1)(a) of the GDPR. We are authorised to commission third parties to manage the technical handling of advertising measures and we are authorised to pass your data on for this purpose (cf. Point 3).
Each newsletter contains a link at the end which you can use to unsubscribe. You can voluntarily provide a reason for unsubscribing during this process. Your personal data is deleted once you have unsubscribed. Further processing only takes place anonymously for the purpose of optimising our newsletter.
Here we refer specifically to the data analysis described within the framework of sending the newsletter (see Point 9).

c. Ordering with third parties
Our website provides various ways to access information and other services. Some of the respective services are provided by third parties. You will be notified that you are being passed onto our partners. Depending on the service, this will take place in conjunction with the collection of different data. Here are some examples of the information this may concern:

Title and/or company
First name and surname
Address (street, house number, postcode, town, country)
Other contact information (email address, telephone number)
Credit card details

We mark the required information: if this information is not provided, it may not be possible to provide the service. The provision of other information is optional and has no influence on the use of our website.

The data entered by you is generally directly collected by the service provider in question or, in the case of some services, will be forwarded to them by us. The further processing of this data is subject to the data protection regulations of the service provider in question. The legal basis for the processing of the aforementioned data is to fulfil a contract in compliance with Art. 6(1)(b) of the GDPR.

2. Use of your data for advertising purposes

a. Creation of anonymous user profiles
In order to provide personalised services and information on our website (on-site targeting) we use and analyse the data that we collect about you when you visit the website. So-called cookies may also be used for this processing (see Point 6). The analysis of your user behaviour may lead to the creation of a so-called user profile. User data is only collated with pseudonyms and never with non-anonymised personal data.
In order to facilitate personalised marketing in social networks, we have incorporated the so-called Remarketing Pixel from Facebook and Twitter into our website. Insofar as you have an account with one of the relevant social networks and are logged in when you visit the website, Pixel links your site visit with your account. Log out of your respective account before visiting the website to prevent this information being linked. You can adjust the advertising settings in your user profile in the respective social networks. The creation of pseudonymous user profiles for advertising and analysis purposes is based on a legitimate interest in compliance with Art. 6(1)(f) of the GDPR. This applies to all of the data processing steps listed in Point 2. The legitimate interest covers direct marketing and the analysis of the use of our website.

b. Re-targeting
We use re-targeting technologies on our website. This sees your user behaviour on our website being analysed so that you can be provided with customised advertising, including on partner websites. Your user behaviour is recorded using a pseudonym.
Most re-targeting technologies use cookies (see Point 6 below).
This website uses Google AdWords Remarketing and Doubleclick by Google, services provided by Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA (“Google”) to place advertisements that are based on your use of previously visited websites. Google uses the so-called DoubleClick cookie for this, which makes it possible to recognise your browser when you visit a different website. The information generated by the cookie concerning your visit to this website (including your IP address) is transferred to a Google server in the USA and stored there (you can find more information about the transfer of personal data to the USA under Point 10).
Google uses this information to analyse your use of the website in view of the placed advertisements, to compile reports about the website activities for the website operator, and to provide further services related to the use of the website and the internet in general. Google will also transfer this information to third parties in certain cases, insofar as this is legally prescribed or these third parties process this data on behalf of Google. Google will, however, never connect your IP address to other data from Google.
In addition, we use Google Tag Manager to manage user-based advertising services. The Tool Tag Manager is a cookie-less domain and does not record any personal data. Rather, this tool servers to trigger other tags, which may record data in certain circumstances (see above). If you have deactivated settings at domain or cookie level, it remains for all tracking tags insofar as these are implemented with the Google Tag Manager.
You can prevent re-targeting at any time by rejecting or switching off the relevant cookies in the menu of your web browser (see Point 6 below). Furthermore, you can visit the Digital Advertising Alliance at optout.aboutads.info to obtain an opt-out for the aforementioned advertising and re-targeting tools.

c. Twitter analytics
On our website, we use the visitor behaviour Pixel from Twitter Inc.,795 Folsom St., Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA( “Twitter”) for statistical purposes. The Pixel allows us to track the behaviour of users after they have been forwarded to our website by clicking on a Twitter advertisement. This procedure makes it possible to analyse the efficacy of Twitter ads for statistical and market research purposes and thus allows us to optimise our future advertising measures.

The data collected does not allow us to draw any conclusions regarding the identity of the user. Despite this, the data is saved and processed by Twitter. It is thus possible for it to be linked to the respective user profile and Twitter is able to use the data for its own advertising purposes. This data can allow Twitter and its partners to run advertisements both on and outside of Twitter. Furthermore, a cookie may be stored on your computer for this purpose.

3. Disclosure of data to third parties

We only pass on your personal data if you have explicitly agreed, if there is a legal obligation or if it is necessary to assert our rights, in particular to enforce claims resulting from the relationship between you and Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG.
Furthermore, we pass your data onto third parties insofar as this is required within the framework of using the website to provide the services you desire and to analyse your user behaviour. Insofar as this is required for the purposes cited in clause 1, the transfer may also be overseas. Insofar as the website contains links to the websites of third parties, once you have clicked on the link, Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG has no influence on the collection, processing, storage or use of personal data by third parties and assumes no responsibility.

4. Transferring personal data abroad

Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG is authorised to transfer your personal data to third-party companies (contracted service providers) abroad, insofar as this is necessary for the data processing described in this privacy policy. These third-party companies have the same data protection obligations as we have. If the level of data protection does not correspond with that in Switzerland or in Europe, we use a contract to ensure that your personal data is always subject to the same level of protection as is the case in Switzerland or in the EU.

5. Data security

We take suitable technical and organisational security measures to protect the personal data that we store about you against manipulation, partial or complete loss and against the unauthorised access by third parties. Our security measures are constantly improved in line with technological developments.
Always treat your payment information with strict confidentiality and close browser windows when you have finished communicating with us; especially if you share your computer with others.
We also take data security within the company very seriously. Our members of staff and contracted service providers have a duty of confidentiality agreement and must adhere to data protection regulations.

6. Cookies

In many cases, cookies help to make your visit to our website simpler, more pleasant and more useful. Cookies are information files that your web browser automatically stores on your computer hard drive when you visit our website. Cookies do not damage your computer hard drive and they do not supply us with personal data about the user.
We use cookies to better tailor the information, offers and advertising that we show to you to your individual needs, for example. This usage does not lead to us obtaining new personal data about you as an online visitor. Most internet browsers automatically accept cookies. You can, however, configure your browser so that cookies are not stored on your computer or so that you always see a warning message before a new cookie is saved.
Deactivating cookies may mean that you cannot use all of the features on our website.

7. Tracking tools

We use various so-called tracking tools on our website. These tracking tools observe your surfing behaviour on our website. This data is used for the purposes of designing our website to suit your needs and for its continuous optimisation. Anonymous user profiles are created as part of this process and small text files, which are stored on your computer (“Cookies”) are used.

8. Social media plugins

The social plugins described below are used on our website. The plugins are deactivated as standard on our website and thus do not send any data. You can activate the plugins by clicking on the respective social media button.
When these plugins are activated, your browser establishes a direct connection with the servers of the social network in question as soon as you access one of our web pages. The content of the plugin will be transferred by the social network directly to your browser and integrated into the website. The plugins can be deactivated with one click.
For more information, please see the privacy policies of Facebook, Twitter and Google.

a. Social plugins from Facebook
This website uses social plugins from Facebook to make our website more personal. We use the “LIKE” or “SHARE” buttons for this. This is a service provided by the American company Facebook Inc., 1601 S. California Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA.
Through the integration of the plugins, Facebook receives the information that your browser has accessed from the respective page on our website; even if you do not have a Facebook profile or are not currently logged in. The information (including your IP address) is transferred from your browser directly to a Facebook server in the USA and stored there.
If you are logged into Facebook, Facebook can directly associate this visit to our website with your Facebook account. If you interact with the plugins, for example by pressing the “LIKE” or “SHARE” buttons, the relevant information will also be transferred directly to a Facebook server and stored there. The information is also published by Facebook and shown to your Facebook friends.
Facebook can use this information for the purposes of advertising, market research and appropriate design of the Facebook pages. For this purpose, Facebook creates profiles regarding usage, interests and relationships, e.g. to evaluate your use of our website with regard to the advertisements displayed to you on Facebook, to inform other Facebook users about your activities on our website and to provide further services related to the use of Facebook.
If you do not want Facebook to save information about you via our website, you must log out of Facebook before visiting our website.
For more information on the purpose and scope of the data collection and on the further processing and usage of your data by Facebook, as well as on your rights regarding this and the settings to protect your privacy, please read the Facebook privacy policy.

a. Social plugins from Twitter
Our website features plugins from the short-messaging network Twitter Inc., 795 Folsom St., Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA. The Twitter plugins (tweet button) on our website can be identified by the Twitter logo. You can find an overview of the tweet button here. If you have activated social plugins, a direct connection is established between your browser and the Twitter server. This connection provides Twitter with information stating that you have visited our website with your IP address. If you click on the Twitter "tweet" button while you are logged into your Twitter account, you can link the contents of our website to your Twitter profile. As such, Twitter can assign your visit to our website with your user account. We would like to point out that, as the provider of the web pages, we have no knowledge of the contents of the data transferred or their usage by Twitter. For more information, please see the Twitter privacy policy.

If you do not want Twitter to be able to assign your visit to our pages, please log out of your Twitter account before visiting our pages.

c. Social plugins from Google Plus
Our website uses the “+1” button for the social network Google Plus, which is operated by Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. The button can be identified by the “+1” symbol on a white or coloured background.
If you access a page of our website containing this button, your browser will establish a direct connection to the servers of Google, insofar as you have activated social plugins. The content of the “+1” button will be transferred by Google directly to your browser and integrated into the website. We do not have any influence over the scope of the data that Google collates with the help of this plugin. According to Google, no personal data is collected unless you click on the button. Data, including the IP address, is only collected and processed in the case of logged-in users.
For more information on the purpose and scope of the data collection and on the further processing and usage of your data by Google, as well as on your rights regarding this and the settings to protect your privacy, please read the Google privacy policy.
If you are a member of Google Plus and do not want Google to collect data about you from our website and to link this with your membership data stored by Google, you need to log out of Google Plus prior to visiting our website.

9. Analysing newsletter use

In order to send our newsletter, we use the email marketing services provided by “MailChimp” – a newsletter platform from US company Rocket Science Group, LLC, 675 Ponce De Leon Ave NE #5000, Atlanta, GA 30308, USA. The email addresses of our newsletter recipients, as well as their data described in the notes, is stored on MailChimp’s servers in the USA. MailChimp uses this information to send and to evaluate the newsletter on our behalf. Furthermore, according to the information provided by the newsletter service provider, it can use this data in anonymous form – i.e. without being assigned to a user – to optimise or improve its own service, e.g. for the technical optimisation of the sending and the presentation of the newspaper or for statistical purposes in order to determine in which countries the recipients live. However, the newsletter service provider does not use the data of our newsletter subscribers to write to them or to pass this data on to third parties. We have faith in the reliability and the IT and data security of MailChimp. MailChimp is certified under the Privacy Shield agreement and thus guarantees to adhere to the European level of data protection . Furthermore, we have concluded a “data processing agreement” with MailChimp. This is a contract that obligates MailChimp to protect our users’ data, to process it in accordance with the data protection regulations on our behalf and to not pass it on to third parties. For more information, please see the data protection regulations from MailChimp.

10. Information concerning data transfer to the USA

For reasons of completeness, we would like to point out to users living in Switzerland that in the USA there are monitoring measures undertaken by US authorities, which generally make it possible to store all personal data for all persons, whose data is transferred from Switzerland to the USA. This occurs without differentiation, limitation or exception based on the objective pursued and without an objective criterion that makes it possible to limit the access of the US authorities to the data and its later use for specific, strictly limited purposes, which may justify interference associated both with the access to this data and with its usage. Furthermore, we would like to point out that people affected in Switzerland have no right of appeal in the USA that would allow them to retain access to the data in question and to affect its rectification or deletion, and no effective judicial protection against the general access rights of the US authorities. We explicitly point out this legal situation and these circumstances so that those affected can make an informed decision about agreeing to the use of their data.
We would like to point out to users living within an EU member state that the European Union does not believe that the USA has a sufficient level of data protection – partly due to the issues addressed in this section. Insofar as we have stated in this privacy policy that recipients of data (e.g. Google, Facebook and Twitter) are based in the USA, we will ensure, either through contractual arrangements with these companies or through ensuring that these companies are certified in line with the EU-US Privacy Shield, that your data is protected to an appropriate level by these partners.

11. Right to information, rectification, deletion and restriction of processing; right to data portability

You have a permanent right of information regarding the personal data that we save about you. In addition, you have a right to the rectification of incorrect data and the right to deletion of your personal data, insofar as no legal archiving obligations exist or there is no permission for use that allows us to process the data. In addition, according to Art. 18 and 21 of the GDPR, you have the right to demand a restriction of processing and to veto the data processing.
You also have the right to demand that the data that you transferred to us be returned (right to data portability). We can pass this data on to a third party of your choice on request. You have the right to receive the data in a standard file format.
Please email us on info@schweizerkaese.ch for the aforementioned purpose. In order to process your request, we may need to request proof of ID.
You can also inform us what should happen to your data upon your death by instructing us accordingly.

12. Data storage

We only store personal data for as long as is necessary:

To use the aforementioned tracking, advertising and analysis services within the framework of our legitimate interest
To carry out the services that you have requested or have consented to (e.g. the newsletter as described under Point 9) in the aforementioned scope
To fulfil our legal obligations

We retain contractual data for longer as it is subject to statutory retention obligations. Retention obligations, which oblige us to store data arise from accounting and tax laws. According to these regulations, business communications, concluded contracts and accounting records must be retained for up to ten years or, for users living in France, for up to five years. The data is blocked in cases where the data is no longer needed to carry out services for you. This means that the data is only permitted for use for accounting and tax purposes.

13. Right to complain to a data protection authority

If you live in an EU member state you have the right to complain to a data protection authority at any time.

General information

This website was last changed on 24th May 2018. If you have any questions or comments concerning our legal information or data protection, please contact us on info(at)schweizerkaese.ch.

Netiquette

We do not want to read any statements or discussions that infringe the rights of others, that are offensive or that are liable to prosecution on our website. If users, our organisation or third parties are defamed, we reserve the right to delete these messages without comment, as they do not adhere to this netiquette.

Bern, 25th March 2019