Datenschutz

Privacy Policy

13.11.2025

When you use a service offered by SWMH, Südwestdeutsche Medienholding GmbH processes your personal data. This privacy policy informs you about how and why we process your data and how we ensure that it remains confidential and protected.

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We take data protection seriously: as a matter of principle, we only process personal data if this is necessary for the provision of a service or offer or if it is provided voluntarily by the user. We also use technical and operational security measures to protect personal data against accidental or intentional manipulation, loss, destruction or access by unauthorised persons. We regularly review and modernise these precautions.

Privacy policy for applications

If you have applied for a job with us, you will find the necessary data protection information here.

Data protection at a glance

What data do we collect?

  • Bestandsdaten (z.B. Namen, Adressen)
  • Kontaktdaten (z.B. E-Mail, Telefonnummern)
  • Inhaltsdaten (z.B. Eingaben in Onlineformularen)
  • Nutzungsdaten (z.B. besuchte Webseiten, Interesse an Inhalten, Zugriffszeiten)
  • Meta-/Kommunikationsdaten (z.B. Geräte-Informationen, IP-Adressen, ID)

How do we collect the data?

We collect the data that is generated when you access our digital offers automatically. Otherwise, we collect data based on your entries or messages or through the use of cookies or similar technologies.

What do we use the data for?

  • Zur technischen Administration und zur Bereitstellung der Webseite
  • Im gesetzlich vorgesehenen Rahmen: Zur Missbrauchserkennung und Störungsbeseitigung
  • zur Nutzungsanalyse und Optimierung der Website

Do we share data?

If you have given your consent or we are otherwise legally authorized to do so, we will pass on your personal data to service providers (e.g., hosting, marketing, sales partners, payment service providers) for the above-mentioned purposes. In such cases, we comply with the legal requirements and, in particular, conclude appropriate contracts or agreements with the recipients of your data to protect your data.

We transfer personal data to other companies within our group of companies or grant them access to this data for administrative purposes. This transfer of data is based on our legitimate business and economic interests or takes place if it is necessary to fulfill our contractual obligations or if the consent of the data subjects or legal permission has been obtained.

Do we transfer data to third countries?

In order to use our digital services, it may be necessary to transfer certain personal data to third countries, i.e. countries where the GDPR does not apply. However, we only allow your data to be processed in a third country if the specific requirements of Art. 44 ff. GDPR are met and thus an adequate level of data protection is guaranteed in that country. This means that the third country must either have an adequacy decision by the European Commission or suitable safeguards in accordance with Art. 46 GDPR or one of the conditions of Art. 49 GDPR. Unless otherwise stated below, we use the currently valid [standard contractual clauses](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/DE/TXT/HTML/? uri=CELEX:32021D0914&from=DE “current version of the standard contractual clauses”) for the transfer of personal data to processors in third countries.

How do we secure the data?

In order to protect your privacy and ensure a level of protection appropriate to the risk, we take technical and organizational measures in accordance with legal requirements, taking into account the state of the art, implementation costs, and the nature, scope, circumstances, and purposes of processing, as well as the varying likelihood and severity of threats to the rights and freedoms of natural persons. These measures ensure the confidentiality, integrity, availability, and resilience of your data. This includes, among other things, the use of recognized encryption methods (SSL or TLS) and pseudonymization.

However, we would like to point out that, due to the structure of the Internet, it is possible that the rules of data protection and the above-mentioned security measures may not be observed by other persons or institutions outside our area of responsibility. In particular, unencrypted data disclosed, e.g., by email, may be read by third parties. We have no technical influence on this.

What rights do you have?

  • Information
  • Deletion
  • Correction
  • Objection

You can contact the data protection officer with your request by mail or by email at swmh-datenschutz@atarax.de.

This privacy policy is updated from time to time. The date of the last update can be found at the beginning of this information.

How we make our content available to you

Cookies and similar technologies

Wir verwenden Cookies und ähnliche Technologien, um das beste Erlebnis bei der Nutzung unserer digitalen Angebote zu bieten. Wir verwenden sie zur Sicherstellung der Funktionalität, zur IT-Sicherheit und Betrugsprävention sowie zur Nutzungsanalyse, um die Reichweite messen und die Produkte optimieren zu können.

Eine Übersicht über die verwendeten Technologien und Widerrufs- bzw. Widerspruchsmöglichkeiten finden Sie unter Datenschutzeinstellungen in der Fußzeile der von Ihnen besuchten Website.

Werden zur Verarbeitung Cookies, Gerätekennungen oder andere personenbezogene Daten auf Ihrem Endgerät gespeichert oder abgerufen, erfolgt dies auf einer der Rechtsgrundlagen von Art. 6 DSGVO.

Um den von Ihnen ausdrücklich gewünschten Telemediendienst erbringen zu können, berücksichtigen wir darüber hinaus die Regelungen des § 25 Telekommunikation-Digitale-Dienste-Datenschutz-Gesetz (TDDDG), insbesondere die Erforderlichkeit nach § 25 Abs. 2 Nr. 2 TDDDG.

Types and functions of cookies

Cookies are text files that contain data from visited websites or domains and are stored by a browser on users' devices. A cookie primarily serves to store information about a user during or after their visit to an online offering. The stored information may include, for example, language settings on a website, login status, a shopping cart, or video interactions. The term “cookies” also includes other technologies that perform the same functions as cookies (e.g., when user information is stored using pseudonymous online identifiers, also known as “user IDs”).

There are the following types of cookies and functions:

  • Temporary cookies (also known as session cookies): Temporary cookies are deleted at the latest after a user leaves an online offering and closes their browser.
  • Permanent cookies: Permanent cookies remain stored even after the browser is closed. This allows, for example, the login status to be saved or preferred content to be displayed directly when the user visits a website again. Similarly, the interests of users, which are used for reach measurement or marketing purposes, can be stored in such a cookie.
  • First-party cookies: First-party cookies are set and used by us to process user information.
  • Third-party cookies: Third-party cookies are mainly used by advertisers (so-called third parties) or other partners to process user information.
  • Strictly necessary (also: essential or necessary) cookies: These cookies ensure functions without which these digital offerings could not be used as desired. They may be absolutely necessary for the operation of a website, for example to store logins or other user entries, or for security reasons.
  • Analysis and statistics cookies: These cookies enable us to analyze the use of our digital offerings, in particular to measure reach—i.e., clicks, visits, and visitor numbers. The aim is to statistically determine the number of visits and visitors and their surfing behavior (duration, origin) and thus obtain market-wide comparable values. The information collected is evaluated in aggregate form in order to derive improvements and optimizations for our products.
  • Marketing and personalization cookies: Cookies are also used to store a user's interests or behavior (e.g., viewing certain content, using functions, etc.) in a user profile. Such profiles are used, for example, to display content to users that corresponds to their potential interests. This process is also referred to as “tracking,” i.e., tracking the potential interests of users. If we use cookies or tracking technologies, we will provide separate information about this in our privacy policy or when obtaining consent.

Technical provision and security

When our offer is used, we automatically employ essential technologies and process the following information:

  • Information about the accessing device and the software used
  • Date and time of access
  • Websites from which the user accesses our website or which the user visits via our website
  • IP address

The collection of these logs and their temporary storage and processing are necessary to ensure system security and integrity (in particular to ward off and defend against attempts at attack or damage) and are carried out in accordance with our legitimate interest (§ 25 (2) No. 2 TDDDG, Art. 6 (1) f GDPR).

The storage period for this log data is usually seven days; for reliable detection of AI bots, it is 30 days. From this point on, this specific server log data is anonymized based on our legitimate interest in statistical evaluation to assess AI bots and their impact on our content (Art. 6 (1) f GDPR).

Essential technology

The following tools and cookies are strictly necessary technologies, i.e., essential for providing our services as requested by the user.

The legal basis for the data processing described below is our legitimate interest pursuant to Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR.

Cookie Purpose Duration Type
consentUUID UniqueUserID to store the user's consent status 12 months Cookie
_sp_su Identification of users for sampling consent rates reporting 12 months Cookie
_sp_user_consent UniqueUserID to retrieve the user's consent status stored in our database if necessary Unlimited Local storage
_sp_local_state Determines whether a user has seen the consent banner so that it is only shown once unlimited local storage
_sp_non_keyed_local_state Information about the metadata and the user's UniqueUserID unlimited local storage

How we optimize our products

Further development of user-friendliness

We use cookies and tracking tools to optimize our digital offerings based on your usage. To do this, we measure the development of reach and the use of content and functions, and use A/B testing to determine which variants users prefer.

Usage analysis

We want to continuously develop and improve our products. To do this, we need to analyze usage. This serves to evaluate visitor traffic to our digital offerings and may include behavior, interests, or demographic information about visitors, such as age or gender, as pseudonymous values. With its help, we can see, for example, when our digital offerings are used most frequently or which functions are popular. This enables us to identify areas that need optimization.

In addition to usage analysis, we also use testing procedures to test different versions of our digital offerings or their components, for example, and to increase certain user actions or reactions if necessary.
For these purposes, profiles, i.e., data summarized for a usage process, are created and information is stored in a browser or on a terminal device and read from it. The information collected includes, in particular, websites visited and elements used there, as well as technical information such as the browser used, the computer system used, and information on usage times.

The IP addresses of users are also stored. We use an IP masking procedure (i.e., pseudonymization by shortening the IP address) for your protection. In general, no clear data of users (such as email addresses or names) is stored in the context of web analysis, A/B testing, and optimization, but rather pseudonyms, so that neither we nor the providers of the software used, who act as processors for us, know the actual identity of the users.

Invoicing to the SWMH Group

When capturing invoices, we use AI-based Optical Character Recognition, which checks whether a valid invoice in accordance with § 14 of the German VAT Act is present, extracts the key data and items, and automatically stores them in our system. The data is used for AI training based on the legitimate interest in optimizing and correcting AI results (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f) GDPR).

During scanning, personal data (such as names and email addresses of the business partners' contacts) may also be captured, which constitutes "unintentional collateral" of the invoice scan. These data are not processed for the purpose of booking the invoices.

When you contact us

Contacting us

When you contact us, we only collect personal data (e.g. name, e-mail address, telephone number) if you provide it to us voluntarily. This information is expressly provided on a voluntary basis. The purpose of processing your data is to process and respond to your enquiry. This is also our legitimate interest in data processing in accordance with Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. f) GDPR.

In the case of a telephone enquiry, your data will also be processed by telephone applications and in some cases also via a voice dialogue system in order to support us in the distribution and processing of enquiries.

We will delete your data that we have received in the course of contacting you as soon as your request has been fully processed and no further communication with you is required or requested by you.

What else you should know

Controller

Verantwortlicher im Sinne der DSGVO ist die

Südwestdeutsche Medienholding GmbH

Plieninger Str. 150
70567 Stuttgart

Data Protection Officer

atarax group of companies

Luitpold-Maier-Str. 7
D-91074 Herzogenaurach
Phone: 09132 79800
Email: swmh-datenschutz@atarax.de.

Your rights

  • In accordance with Art. 15 GDPR, you have the right to request information about your personal data processed by us. In this context, you also have the right to receive a copy of your personal data processed by us in accordance with Art. 15 para. 3-4 GDPR.
  • In accordance with Art. 16 GDPR, you can immediately request the correction of incorrect or the completion of your personal data stored by us.
  • In accordance with Art. 17 GDPR, you can request the erasure of your personal data stored by us.
  • In accordance with Art. 18 GDPR, you can request the restriction of the processing of your personal data.
  • In accordance with Art. 20 GDPR, you can request to receive your personal data that you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and you can request the transfer to another controller.
  • In accordance with Art. 7 para. 3 GDPR, you can revoke your consent once given to us at any time. This means that the processing carried out on the basis of the consent prior to the revocation was lawful and has the consequence that we may no longer continue the data processing based on this consent in the future.

Right to object

If your personal data is processed on the basis of legitimate interests in accordance with Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. f) GDPR or Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. e) GDPR, you have the right to object to the processing of your personal data in accordance with Art. 21 GDPR. In the event of such an objection, we will no longer process your personal data unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override the interests, rights and freedoms of the data subject or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.
In the case of direct marketing, you have the right to object at any time to the processing of personal data concerning you. If you object to processing for direct marketing purposes, the personal data will no longer be processed for these purposes.

Right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority

You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority against the processing of your personal data if you feel that your rights under the GDPR have been violated. As a rule, you can contact the supervisory authority of your usual place of residence, your workplace or our company headquarters.

Changes to the privacy policy

We reserve the right to change or adapt this privacy policy at any time in compliance with the applicable data protection regulations.