Personal data are data which may be used to learn about your personal or factual circumstances (e.g. name, telephone number, date of birth or email address). Information which we are able to process with no reference to your personal details (or only with a disproportionate amount of time and/or energy), e.g. through anonymisation of information, is not personal data.

The processing of personal data (for example the collection, consultation, use, storage or transmission) always requires a legal basis or your permission. Processed personal data are always erased as soon as the purpose of the processing has been achieved and legally prescribed storage obligations are no longer to be complied with. Insofar as we process your personal data for making available specific offers, we shall inform you below about the specific processes, the scope and purpose of the data processing, the legal basis for processing and the duration of storage.

You can use a large part of our website without disclosing your personal data.
Log files containing the following information are stored:

• the name of the file retrieved,
• the time (date and time of day) of your retrieval,
• the volume of data transmitted
• a message concerning successful retrieval
• your web browser, operating system and the requesting domain
• the IP address.

These data are evaluated solely to improve our offering and provide no inferences whatsoever about your individual circumstances.
On the other hand, if you wish to take advantage of our services offered on our website, such as ordering a newsletter, etc., you will have to provide additional data. These are data that are necessary to process a particular order, for example your email address when ordering a newsletter.

We use the data about you which we have collected to make available our offering of products and services, to answer your questions for the operation and improvement of our websites and applications.

We use your personal data solely to enable us to offer you a comprehensive service via our website or, if you use our contact form, to provide you with the requested service.

We shall not pass on to outside third parties your personal data transmitted online, unless you have expressly consented to this beforehand. All transmissions are currently encrypted, thus preventing access by third parties. The network companies within Grant Thornton Switzerland / Liechtenstein are not third parties in this connection.

However, we reserve the right to pass on your personal data to external service providers for the purpose of order processing. We refer in particular to the use of Google Analytics, unless you have objected to this.

No additional use of your personal data takes place. With the exception of the cases described below, there shall be no transmission of your personal data to third parties or use of your data for advertising purposes without your consent, unless we are under a legal obligation to release data (disclosure to criminal prosecution authorities and courts; disclosure to public authorities, which receive data on the basis of statutory provisions; e.g. social insurance institutions, revenue authorities, etc.), or unless, to enforce our claims, unless we engage third parties who are bound to observe professional secrecy.

In particular, personal data are used as follows:

We use no personal user profiles except in the cases described above. In connection with the retrieval of the information requested by you, only data in anonymised form to provide our various services or for evaluation purposes are stored on our servers. In this respect general information is logged, for example when certain content is retrieved from our offering or certain pages are visited the most frequently.

We use “cookies” (small text files with configuration information). During the course of your visit to our web pages, these small text files are sent from our webserver to your browser and held by this browser on your computer for subsequent retrieval.

In particular, the cookies used serve to calculate user frequency and the number of users of our website, and to continue to identify your computer during a visit to our website on changing to one of our websites to another of our websites, and then to enable the end of your visit to be ascertained. In this way we learn which area of our websites and which other websites our users have visited.

However, these user data do not provide any information about the user. None of these anonymously collected user data are amalgamated with your personal data and are erased immediately after the statistical evaluation.

On visiting our website, cookies are permanently stored on your computer. This serves to optimise user friendliness and simple and fast access to the websites.

Most browsers are pre-set to automatically accept cookies. They can, however, deactivate the storage of cookies or adjust your browser to notify you before cookies are stored.

You can likewise prevent an installation of cookies through an appropriate adjustment to your browser software. However, we should point out to you that in this case you may possibly not be able to fully use all functions of our website. You can find more information about cookies on https://www.allaboutcookies.org/ge/.

Our websites also contain Social Media Buttons. The buttons illustrated on our website are not plug-ins. Behind the buttons is an external link to our page on the respective platforms. Cookies are neither stored on your computer nor are your data transmitted. There are currently links to the following social networks:

• “YouTube” (YouTube, LLC, 901herry Avenue, San Bruno, CA 94066, USA),
• “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 operated exclusively by the respective provider. In connection with our online presence the links to our company profiles on the relevant platforms are identified by the respective button belonging to the service.

On visiting our websites containing such a button, your browser establishes no connection with the servers of the respective service, unless you click onto the relevant button. Thus the information concerning the visit to our website is not passed on to the respective service.

Insofar as during the visit to our website you are also simultaneously registered with the respective service via your personal user account (e.g. via an additional browser session) and you click onto the button, your visit can be attributed to your account on our website.

Should you wish to prevent such a data transmission, you must, prior to visiting our websites, log off from your user account with the relevant service or not use the links. Regarding the scope and purpose of the data recording through the relevant service as well as the processing and use of your data there, please consult the data protection advice directly from the website of that service. There you can also obtain further information about your relevant data protection rights and setting options to protect your privacy.

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analysis service of Google Inc. which has its headquarters at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA (“Google”). Google Analytics uses cookies – text data which are stored on your computer and which enable an analysis of your use of the website. The information produced by the cookie about your use of this website is as a rule transmitted to a Google server in the USA and stored there. Google will possibly also transmit this information to third parties, insofar as this is prescribed by law or insofar as third parties process these data on behalf of Google.

If the IP anonymisation is activated on this website, your IP address will, however, be abbreviated beforehand within Member States of the European Union or in other contracting parties to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases will the full IP address be transmitted to a Google server in the USA and abbreviated there. We should point out to you that on this website Google Analytics has been extended by the code “gat._anonymizelp();” in order to guarantee the anonymised recording of IP addresses (so-called IP masking).

Google will use this information on behalf of the operator of this website in order to evaluate your use of the website, to prepare reports on the website activities and to provide additional services to the website operator in connection with the use of the website and the internet. The IP address transmitted by your browser in connection with Google Analytics will not be amalgamated with other data from Google.

You can prevent the storage of cookies through a relevant setting in your browser software; however, we should point out to you that in this case you may possibly not be able to fully use all functions of this website. Furthermore, you can prevent the recording of the data produced by the cookie and data relating to your use of the website through Google by downloading and installing the browser plug-in available under the following link: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=de.

As an alternative to this browser plug-in or within browsers on mobile equipment, you can also prevent data recording by Google Analytics. In this case an opt-out cookie is installed which prevents the future recording of your data when visiting this website.

Further information on this subject can be found under http://tools.google/dlpage/gaoptout@hl=de or under http://www.google.com/intl/de/analytics/learn/privacy.htmt (general information on Google Analytics and data protection).

Google Maps, a map service of Google Inc. (“Google”), is also incorporated on this website. Google maps uses cookies – text files which are stored on your computer, insofar as you use the map function on our website.

If you click onto the link a direct connection between your browser and the Google server is created. Google thereby obtains the information that you have visited our site with your IP address. If you click onto the Google Maps link while you are logged into your Google account, Google can correlate the visit to our websites with your user account. We should point out that as website provider we obtain no knowledge relating to the content of the data transmitted or to their use by Google. You can find details about data collection (purpose, scope, further processing, use) as well as your rights and setting options from Google’s notes on data protection, which are accessible on https://www.google.de/intl/de/policies/privacy/?fg=1.

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

Your IP address is transmitted on accessing the website and to embed the videos. This cannot be correlated unless you are logged onto YouTube or another Google service and/or are permanently logged on prior to viewing the web pages.

As soon as you start playing an embedded video by clicking on, YouTube only stores cookies on your computer which do not contain any personally identifiable data. These cookies can be prevented through relevant browser settings and extensions (source: YouTube “Activation of expanded data protection mode for embedded videos”).

Further information on the integration of YouTube videos can be found on YouTube’s information page: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/171780?hl=de.

We engage to protect your privacy and to treat your personal data confidentially. To prevent a loss or misuse of the data stored by us, we take comprehensive technical and organisational security precautions which are regularly reviewed and adapted to technological progress. However, we should point out that due to the structure of the internet, it is possible that the data protection regulations and the security measures of other persons or institutions which are not within our sphere of responsibility, may not be complied with.

On our website there are hyperlinks to websites of other providers. When activating these hyperlinks you are transferred from our website directly onto the website of the other providers. You can recognise this, amongst other indicators, in the change to the URL. We are unable to accept any responsibility for the confidential treatment of your data on these external websites, as we have no influence over whether these companies comply with the data protection provisions. For information on treatment of your personal data by these companies, please consult these websites directly.

By using our website and possible additional services based thereon (newsletter, for example), you (expressly) consent to the appurtenant processing of your personal data. We should like to point out that you can as a matter of principle at any time revoke such consent with effect for the future and also object at any time to the processing and use of your data: Please inform the contact person named above. Until such revocation is undertaken, this shall not affect the legitimacy of processing carried out on the basis of consent prior to the revocation.

We shall only store your personal data for as long as this is permissible by law. The stored data shall be erased if the user withdraws his consent or if knowledge of this data is no longer necessary to fulfil the purpose pursued through such storage, in particular if the user account is cancelled or if the data storage is not permissible for other legal reasons.

We shall be pleased to inform you on request about what data we have stored relating to your personal details. Should, despite our endeavours to store accurate and updated data, incorrect data be stored by us, we shall rectify these without delay. Furthermore, you have the opportunity to receive the personal data relating to you and to the processing of which you have consented, in a structured, customary and machine-readable format and to transmit these data yourself or via us to an additional controller.

You have the right at any time to examine, amend or erase the personal data made available to us by informing the contact person named above.

Should you require the erasure of the data stored, such erasure shall likewise be carried out without delay at your request. If this erasure of data is not possible for legal reasons, there shall instead be a restriction (blocking) of the relevant data. However, please note that in the event of an erasure of your data we will no longer be able to offer you the services described here.

Should you consider that the processing of the data relating to you is in contravention of legal provisions, you have the right of appeal to a supervisory authority to file your objection.