Dear Customer,

These data protection regulations give you an overview of the personal data that Ringier Advertising or Ringier AG (hereinafter either ‘Ringier’ or ‘we’) and companies affiliated with Ringier (hereinafter the ‘Ringier Group’) collect about you, how this personal data is processed and with whom it may be shared, if necessary. They also detail the rights you have concerning data protection and how you may exercise them. 

Through your use of the Ringier Advertising website, you consent to the processing of your personal and non-personal data in accordance with these data protection regulations and accept these data protection regulations.

You will find information about the processing of data by Ringier Advertising in the context of targeted advertising on the websites and apps of our publishers under ‘About our advertising’.

Please re-read these data protection regulations at regular intervals to ensure that you always remain up to date about what happens to your personal data and how you can exercise your rights.

Einiges Wissenswertes über uns:

1. Who is Ringier?

We are legally obliged to inform you about the identity of the data controller. The data controller for Ringier Advertising is Ringier AG, Brühlstrasse 5, 4800 Zofingen, Switzerland.

Ringier is an independent Swiss family business that was founded in 1833. Today, Ringier is a diversified media company with over 7,000 employees across 19 countries. Throughout its more than 180-year history, Ringier has always stood for innovation, individuality and independence, as well as freedom of expression and diversity of information. 

You can find out more about Ringier here: http://www.ringier.ch/en/about-ringier-1

2. Who is part of the Ringier Group?

The Ringier Group includes companies that are affiliated with Ringier. For example: Geschenkidee.ch GmbH, DeinDeal AG, Swissprinters AG, Scout24 Schweiz AG, JobCloud AG, Ringier Axel Springer Schweiz AG and many more.

If you would like to find out more about the companies affiliated with Ringier and also about other Ringier subsidiaries in Europe, Asia and Africa, please click here: http://www.ringier.ch/en/participations-europe

3. What does the Ringier Group do?

Ringier now manages leading brands in print, TV, radio, online and mobile media and runs successful print, entertainment and internet businesses. Publications produced within the Ringier Group include Blick, Sonntagsblick, Schweizer Illustrierte, Schweizer Landliebe, Handelszeitung, Beobachter, etc. To see the full portfolio, please click here: https://www.ringier.ch/en/portfolio#

4. In principle, what data does Ringier and the affiliated companies in the Ringier Group process?

Basically, two categories of data are processed when you contact us: personal data (4.1) and non-personal data (4.2.).

4.1. What is personal data and what does ‘process’ mean?

Personal data is any information that relates to you and tells us something about you. This includes, for example, your name, postal address, email address, date of birth, phone number and similar details.

Information that cannot be directly linked to you personally or to your identity is classed as non-personal data.

Processing means all handling of your personal data. This includes, amongst other things, the recording, collection, anonymisation, storage, management, use, transmission, disclosure or deletion of your personal data.

4.1.1. How and on what legal basis do we process your personal data?

The trust that you place in us to protect your personal data and thereby your privacy is important to us. We therefore want to you to know the following:

We comply with the principles imposed on us by Swiss data protection legislation and – where applicable – that of the European Union. This means that we must be transparent with you about which personal data we process and for what purpose. We only process personal data that we have obtained lawfully and – in cases where we need to – for which we have a legal basis permitting us to process it. A legal basis may be a contract, your consent, a law or a public interest that allows us to process it or a legitimate interest on our part. 

Whenever we process your personal data, we will inform you what we are doing with it. If we no longer need your personal data and are also no longer legally obliged to retain it, or you no longer want us to have and process it, we will no longer do so.

In section 5 below, you can find out more about the rights you have in relation to your personal data and how you can exercise them.

4.1.2. Which personal data is processed by Ringier Advertising when and why (purpose)?

In principle, we always process your personal data when you contact us. This is the case when you: 

• Visit our websites;
• Use our Toolbox account;
• Subscribe to our newsletter;
• Use our contact form;
• Receive our advertising; 
• Visit us. 

a.) Visiting the website

When you visit our website, your data is processed via log files, cookies, analytical tools, contact forms and plug-ins for social media and other providers. 

We process this data for the following purposes:

• Provision and optimisation of online content (e.g. market research and measurement of reach). 
• Personalisation of online content for users

You can read more about this in section 4.2.2.

b.) Toolbox account

We offer you a Toolbox account for the purpose of planning campaigns. To enable us to do this, we process the following personal data about you:

• Company
•  First name and last name
• Address
• Country
• Telephone number
• Email
• Customer number

We process this personal data for the following purposes:

• Creation and operation of your Toolbox account
• Conclusion and performance of contracts
• Maintenance of the business relationship with you

We delete any data that you send to us via your Toolbox account as soon as its storage is no longer required.

c.) Email newsletter

If you give your consent for us to use your email address for advertising purposes, we will send you a regular newsletter of your choice to inform you about other products and services offered by Ringier Advertising. You can object to the processing of your email address at any time in the respective newsletter itself by clicking on the link at the end of the newsletter to unsubscribe.

To enable us to tailor the newsletter more to your individual interests, clicks on the articles in our newsletters are measured, stored and assigned to the particular user. If you do not want this to happen, you can cancel your newsletter registration at any time as described above. If you want any data that was stored prior to the cancellation to be deleted, please send an email to advertising@ringier.ch. 

d.) Contact form

We offer you the option of contacting us directly via our contact form to send us questions and feedback about our online content. When you fill out the contact form, the following personal data is processed exclusively to respond to your enquiry:

• First name and surname
• Email address

e.) Advertising via our media products and services (direct marketing)

We also process your personal data for marketing purposes to enable us to provide you with additional offers for products and services from Ringier Advertising. This means that we will send you advertisements for other products and services by post, phone and email or by text message.

We also obtain personal data (addresses) from publicly accessible sources and also from professional third-party providers for the purpose of gaining new customers.

You have the option to object to the processing of your personal data for this purpose at any time, either generally or in relation to a specific product or a specific service (see section 5.5).

f.) Video monitoring

When you move around our publicly accessible spaces, you will be filmed while in the entrance/exit areas of the building and in the garage.

This video recording is for your protection and for the protection of our employees, as well as for evidence if any incidents occur. The recording is stored for a maximum of one week and is not passed on to any third parties. This notwithstanding, Ringier may disclose the video recording for legal reasons; for example, to a law enforcement authority or for the prosecution or exposure of unlawful activities.

4.1.3. Sharing of personal data with third parties

All personal data that is collected when you contact Ringier Advertising is shared within the Ringier Group and may be used for the purposes outlined above, in particular for marketing purposes. You may object to this transfer and processing at any time (see section 5.5).

Your personal data may also be shared with third parties outside the Ringier Group that perform technical or organisational services on behalf of Ringier Advertising or with one of the companies in the Ringier Group that we require for the above-mentioned purposes or general business activities. This could be a hosting partner, a printer or a delivery organisation, for example. We contractually oblige these service providers to process your personal data exclusively on our behalf and in accordance with our specifications, and to ensure the protection of your personal data by means of appropriate security measures of a technical or organisational nature.

These service providers are mainly located in Switzerland and in the European Union, where adequate protection of personal data is provided. If a service provider is located in a country where the data protection laws do not guarantee protection of personal data comparable to that provided in Switzerland, we will contractually oblige them to comply with the Swiss level of data protection.

Your personal data will not otherwise be passed on, transmitted or sold to third parties outside the Ringier Group unless required in order to complete a contract that you have concluded with Ringier or a company in the Ringier Group or unless you have expressly consented to it.

This notwithstanding, Ringier may disclose the personal data for legal reasons; for example, to a law enforcement authority or for the prosecution or exposure of unlawful activities.

4.2. Non-personal data

When you contact us, non-personal data is collected by us and third parties on our website and in our applications using various technologies.

4.2.1. What is non-personal data and why do we process it?

Non-personal data is information that cannot be directly linked to you personally or to your identity. As a matter of principle, we do not link this data with your personal data so that this data remains anonymous for us.

We collect and process this data to enable us to continuously improve our products and services and tailor them to your needs, identify trends and compile and evaluate statistics about the use of our digital services. 

You may prevent the processing of non-personal data at any time. You can find out how to do this in section 4.3. In the following sections, you will find the relevant links to deactivate the different technologies.

4.2.2. Which technologies do we use and why are they used by Ringier Advertising?

We use the following technologies:

a.) Cookies

Cookies are used by us and by third parties on our websites. A cookie is a short text file that is saved on your device when you use our websites.

Cookies are divided into session cookies and permanent cookies.

Session cookies can be used to track the websites that you visit as well as the options that you use. A session cookie is only stored for the duration of your visit, i.e. during a single internet session. When you close your internet browser, the session ends and the cookie is deleted.

Permanent cookies can be used, among other things, to recognise you on a subsequent visit to our websites and to identify your reading preferences. A permanent cookie is stored for longer than an individual session.

Cookies can also be divided into functional and non-functional cookies. Ringier uses both functional and non-functional cookies on the Blick websites. Functional cookies are needed to ensure the functionality of our websites or services. Non-functional cookies are not strictly necessary for the functionality of the websites. This type of cookie is used to collect and analyse data about website usage or the use of our mobile applications (language preferences, duration of a user session, etc.) so that we can improve your reading and advertising experience.

The following cookies, for example, are used to analyse your behaviour in order to provide you with customised direct marketing and enable you to avoid unwanted advertising, as well as to tailor our products and service to your interests:

Site Kit (Google Analytics, https://sitekit.withgoogle.com/), a web analysis service by Google Inc. (Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland), is used on our website. Its use includes the ‘Universal Analytics’ operating mode. When the user is logged into a Google service, this makes it possible to assign data, sessions and interactions via several devices to a pseudonymous user ID and then analyse the user’s activities across all devices. Google Analytics uses cookies. The non-personal information generated by the cookies regarding your use of our website is usually sent to a Google server in the USA and stored there. However, the IP addresses are anonymised first using IP-anonymisation. The anonymised IP address transmitted by your browser in the context of Google Analytics will not be merged with other Google data. Google uses this information on our behalf to analyse the way in which you use our websites, compile reports on website activities and provide us with additional services associated with website and internet use. Further information about the terms of use and about data protection can be found at https://toolsiehegoogle.com/dlpage/gaoptout/. You can also prevent the storage of cookies by selecting the appropriate setting in your browser software (see section 4.3).

Other technologies that are used on our website:

Cloudflare is used as a web application firewall for website security and for performance caching to speed up the website and improve the end user’s experience by providing static content from the edge node that is closest to the end user. More information: https://www.cloudflare.com/gdpr/introduction/

WP Engine (web server)

WP Engine is a specialised WordPress hosting service that hosts web applications. More information:https://wpengine.com/legal/dpa/

Amazon Web Services (media/asset storage)

Amazon AWS is a cloud service provider that offers a range of different services. AWS is used to store static website assets such as PDF files and images. More information: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/gdpr-center/

b.) Logfiles

When websites are used, the web server records non-personal usage data known as log files. Log files provide information about your IP address, the operating system being used, websites that you visit, the browser type and version, the date, time and the requested file. This information is technically necessary in order to deliver the website content that you request correctly and is mandatory when using the internet. This anonymous data is stored separately from any personal data you may have provided and cannot be traced back to you personally.

We use this non-personal usage data for statistical analysis in order to optimise our internet presence and the underlying technology, identify trends and improve products and services or better align them to your needs.

c.) Elements from other websites, e.g. plug-ins

Elements from third-party providers (e.g. social networks like Facebook, Apple, Twitter and YouTube) may be used on our websites. If you click on an element from a third-party provider (e.g. the Like plug-in from Facebook), a connection to the servers of that third-party provider may be established automatically. This may result in transmission of information about your visit to our websites or a mobile application to the third-party provider. In some cases, it may be possible to associate this data with your user account with the third party (e.g. your Facebook or Twitter account). Furthermore, the third-party provider may share personal data (surname, first name, customer ID and email address) from your user account with Ringier, insofar as you have authorised the third-party provider to carry out this function. Information about the collection and use of your data by third-party providers can be found in the data protection information of the relevant third-party provider.

4.3. How can I deactivate cookies?

a.) Cookie settings

By using our websites and applications, you consent to the processing of your data in the manner and for the purposes described above. You can, however, control and/or delete cookies at any time by using the opt-out links indicated above.

Most internet browsers are set to automatically accept cookies. However, you are free to change the settings in your browser so that cookies are rejected in general by selecting ‘do not accept cookies’, or so that you are asked each time before a cookie is accepted for a website you visit.

You also have the option to delete the cookies on your computer or your mobile device by selecting the appropriate function in your browser. However, be aware that you need to deactivate or delete the cookies on all your devices.

Please note that deleting cookies in your browser will also result in opt-out cookies being deleted, i.e. if you want an opt-out cookie to remain activated but you have deleted all cookies, the opt-out cookie will need to be reactivated when you next visit this website or you will be identified as a new user and your data will be recorded again. Also be aware that you need to deactivate the cookies on all your devices.

If you choose one of the described options, you may not be able to use all the functions of this website. At this point, we would also like to point out that it is not possible to object to general advertising on our websites or in our applications.

5. What are your rights in relation to your personal data?

You can determine yourself what should happen with your personal data. This means that you are entitled to determine what happens to your personal data and to know what is happening to it at any time. 

According to the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP), you have the following rights:

5.1. Right to information

According to the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection, you have the right to request free information on whether Ringier is processing personal data about you and, if so, which data. You must submit any requests for information to us in writing, together with a copy of a proof of identity. You can do this by email (datenschutz@ringier.ch) by scanning the copy or send it by post to the following address: Ringier AG, Customer Service Center, Brühlstrasse 5, 4800 Zofingen, Switzerland.

5.2. Right to rectification of your personal data

Under the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection, you are entitled at any time to have your personal data rectified if you notice that the data we are processing is incorrect. 

If you would like to have your personal data rectified, please send us an email at datenschutz@ringier.ch or write to the following address: Ringier AG, Customer Service Center, Brühlstrasse 5, 4800 Zofingen, Switzerland. Don’t forget to include a copy of your proof of identity.

5.3. Recht auf Löschung Ihrer Personendaten

If the processing of your personal data is no longer necessary because, for example, you no longer have a contractual relationship with Ringier or you no longer agree to your personal data being processed, you may request that it is deleted. We will delete your data provided that we are not obliged to retain it for any other reason, such as a legal retention obligation.

You can request deletion of your data as follows: send an email to datenschutz@ringier.ch or write to Ringier AG, Customer Service Center, Brühlstrasse 5, 4800 Zofingen, Switzerland. Please enclose a copy of your identity card or the name page of your passport with the request for deletion.

5.4. Right to restriction of processing of your personal data

You have the right to restrict the processing of your personal data at any time provided that we are not obliged to retain it for any other reason, such as a legal retention obligation. 

If you would like to restrict the processing of your personal data, please send us an email at datenschutz@ringier.ch or write to the following address: Ringier AG, Customer Service Center, Brühlstrasse 5, 4800 Zofingen, Switzerland. Don’t forget to include a copy of your proof of identity.

5.5. Right to object

Where we have your consent to process your personal data, you are entitled to withdraw or refuse that consent at any time. If your personal data is processed for marketing or advertising purposes, you may withdraw your consent to the processing in general or in relation to specific products or specific services.

You also have the option to lodge an objection at any point to the receipt of advertising and to the processing or sharing of your personal data for marketing and advertising purposes, where we do this based on our legitimate interest in the continuous improvement of our range of products and services. In this case, your personal will not be obtained, processed or shared for this purpose in future. 

You can exercise your right to object by sending an email to datenschutz@ringier.ch or by writing to Ringier AG, Customer Service Center, Brühlstrasse 5, 4800 Zofingen, Switzerland. Don’t forget to include a copy of your proof of identity.

If objecting to the processing of non-personal data, the information in section 4.3 prevails. 

5.6. Right to lodge a complaint

You have the right to notify or lodge a complaint with the responsible supervisory authority if you believe that the processing of your personal data does not conform with data protection requirements. You may do this with the supervisory authority in the country in which you reside or work, or in the place or country in which the alleged data breach has taken place.

5.7. How you can protect your children

Together, we need to ensure that the next generations become responsible digital citizens.

As children are less aware of the risks and consequences involved with the processing of their personal data and also may not understand their rights in this regard, special protection should be provided when it comes to their personal data. Of course, this particularly applies to the use of this personal data for advertising purposes. You will therefore find appropriate age limits and information about the age of consent in all our terms and conditions of participation.

You will find information and tips for the use of media: https://www.jugendundmedien.ch/en/home.html.

6. Data security

Ringier operates secure data networks that meet the relevant technical standards. All necessary and reasonable technical and organisational precautions are taken to protect your data against loss, destruction, falsification, manipulation and unauthorised access.

Although Ringier takes all necessary steps to prevent the data from being disclosed through data transfer errors and/or unauthorised access by third parties, it cannot accept any liability for such unwanted incidents.

7. Who can you contact?

There are various ways that to contact us:

If you have a question relating to data protection, you can send an email to datenschutz@ringier.ch. Naturally, you are also welcome to write to our Data Protection Officer at: Ringier AG, Datenschutz, Dufourstrasse 23, 8008 Zurich, Switzerland.

8. Legal grounds

When processing your personal data, we not only take the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection and its Ordinance into consideration, but also – if and insofar as it is applicable – the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.

9. Amendments and consent to these data protection regulations

Ringier modifies these data protection regulations as appropriate according to new or changing requirements. The latest version will be made available in an appropriate place.

The current data protection regulations published by us shall apply. By continuing to use the Ringier Advertising website, you consent to the applicable data protection regulations.

Version 1.0 / 01.01.2021