Legal Notice
Legal Notice
Based on Article 13 of the Swiss Federal Constitution and the Data Protection Act of the Confederation (DSG), every person has the right to protection of his or her privacy and to protection against the misuse of personal data.This document applies to personal information that we collect and process through our websites and other communication channels in the normal course of business, e.g. in connection with our recruitment, event and marketing activities.
1. Collection of Information
a. Information you provide to us on our websites or otherwise
Certain parts of our websites may ask you to provide personal data and other information voluntarily.
We will inform you before the collection whether the provision of the personal data collected by us is mandatory for the required service or can take place on a voluntary basis and what the consequences are in case the information is not provided. The data and information is used and stored for the corresponding services as long as this is necessary for our business relationship and required by law.
b. Information we collect automatically through the websites
When visiting our websites, we may also collect certain information automatically from your device. In some countries, including countries in the European Economic Area, this information may be considered personal information under applicable data protection laws.
Specifically, the information we collect automatically may include:
- Date and time of retrieval of web content
- Messages indicating whether the retrieval was successful
- Domain from which you access our websites and services
- Name of your internet service provider
- Your IP address
- Your operating system
- Your browser type and version
- Your browsing activity
- Transferred amount of data
- Other information about your system and data connection
- Details on your interaction with our websites and other websites
2. Use of Personal Information
We may use the information for various reasons, such as:
- To provide, operate, optimize, and maintain our websites
- To send you information for marketing purposes in accordance with your marketing preferences
- To respond to your online inquiries and other requests
- To provide you with information and access to resources or services that you have requested from us
- To personalize your sessions on our website to better serve your interests and present you customized content and relevant offers
- To compile aggregated statistics about website usage and to better understand the preferences of our visitors
- To help develop new services or improve existing ones
- To improve the navigation and content of our websites
- For recruitment purposes in case you have applied for a position with Wyss Academy for Nature
- To carry out other legitimate business as well as other lawful purposes
In addition, we may combine personal information with other information we obtain or collect about you (e.g. information we source from third-party partners) to serve you specifically, such as to deliver a product or service according to your preferences or restrictions in accordance with this privacy policy. In case we combine personal information with other information in this way, we treat it as and apply all of the safeguards in this privacy policy applicable to personal information.
3. Public Information and Third-Party Websites
a. Links to third-party websites
Our websites include links to other websites, whose privacy practices may differ from ours. If you submit personal information to any of those sites, your information is governed by their privacy policies. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy policy of any website you visit and may provide personal data to.
b. Newsletters, surveys and other online services
You may subscribe to our newsletters, participate from time to time in surveys or other promotions, communication and online services published on our websites, social media or other communication channels. Participation in these services is completely voluntary. Information requested for transmission may include personal information such as name, address, date of birth, telephone number, email address, user name and similar information that we use to administer and provide our services. We may also use the information provided by you to communicate with you or others unless prohibited by rules or laws. We may share this information with our subsidiaries and other companies or service providers under this data privacy policy and the rules set forth herein.
c. Website Hosting on Wix.com platform
The Wyss Academy for Nature website www.wyssacademy.org is hosted on the Wix.com platform. Your data may be stored on Wix.com data storage. For more insight, you may want to consult the Wix.com Privacy Policy: https://www.wix.com/about/privacy
4. Cookies and Tracking Technologies
In some cases, we may use cookies and other tracking technologies to collect and use personal information such as your IP address, browser type, and similar details, or to collect and use information that becomes personal information if we combine it with other information. For further information about the types of cookies and tracking technologies we use, and how you can control them, please see our Cookie Policy below.
5. Other Data Protection Rights
You can contact us directly at any time to obtain information about your personal data stored by us, to restrict its processing, to object to its use, to demand its deletion or to change your data or marketing settings.
You can also revoke your consent at any time if we have collected and processed your personal data with your consent. The revocation of your consent has no influence on the lawfulness of any processing which we have carried out before your revocation, as well as on the processing of your personal data which takes place in confidence in other lawful processing reasons than the consent.
6. How often will we update this Data Privacy Policy?
We may update this Data Privacy Policy from time to time in order to reflect the actual usage of our services, technical innovations, legal or regulatory reasons. Please, re-visit this Data Privacy Policy regularly to stay informed about our terms and conditions.
The date at the bottom of this Data Privacy Policy indicates its latest update.
7. Contact
We will respond to your request to exercise your privacy rights under applicable data protection laws and will respond promptly. Requests must be made in writing.
Responsible for processing:
Wyss Academy for Nature at the University of Berne
Attn. Data Protection Officer
Kochergasse 4
3011 Bern
Switzerland
Our Data Protection Officer can also be contacted at privacy@wyssacademy.org.
These Terms of Use are effective as of 10 December 2020.
Cookie Policy
We use cookies and similar tracking technologies for an optimal browsing experience.
1. Cookies and browser parameters
Cookies are often used to make websites or web services work, to enable users to work more efficiently and to provide reporting information. Cookies temporarily store information on your computer or mobile device, such as user preferences (e.g. language selected), displayed positions on the website, the identification of a visitor when returning to our website as well as across different websites, and analysis of website usage. We use our own cookies (first-party cookies) and cookies from external providers (third-party cookies).
First-party cookies are created directly from our web services and stored on your device. They allow us to collect analytics data, remember language settings, and perform other useful functions that help us provide a good user experience.
Third-party cookies are created and used by other web services and plug-in providers. They are used for cross-site tracking, retargeting, ad-serving etc. Persistent cookies are cookies saved on your device and are not deleted automatically when you quit your browser.
Session cookies are created dynamically when visiting a website and automatically deleted when you quit your browser.
The first time you visit Wyss Academy for Nature websites with a device or web browser never used before, you will be prompted by a cookie banner to accept or refuse our cookies. Your preferences will be stored accordingly.
2. How do we use cookies?
Wyss Academy for Nature websites mostly use first-party cookies for the following purposes:
- make our websites operational
- save visitor preferences
- collect analytics data (e.g. about user behaviour)
a. Preferential cookies
These persistent cookies are set by us, and only we can read and analyse them. They remember if you have agreed (or refused) to our cookie policy, the preferred language of the website content etc.
b. Operational cookies
There are cookies, which we have to include in order to make certain website functions work properly. For this reason, these session cookies do not require your consent. In particular:
- authentication cookies
- technical cookies required by certain website functions
c. Analytical cookies
We use these kinds of cookies solely for internal analyses on how we can improve the services provided to all our users.
These session cookies simply assess how you interact with our website as an anonymous user (the data collected does not identify you personally). However, you are free to refuse these types of cookies either via the cookie banner or by specific browser-settings.
d. Third-party cookies
Some of our pages display content from external providers, e.g. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
By viewing third-party content, you accept their specific terms and conditions. These include their cookie policies, which we have no control over. If you do not view third-party content, no third-party cookies will be installed on your device.
Third-party providers used on Wyss Academy for Nature websites:
- Google Maps
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- Microsoft
These third-party plug-ins and services are outside of the control of Wyss Academy for Nature. Providers may change their terms of service, purpose and use of cookies etc. at any time.
3. How can cookies be managed or removed from your device?
a. Deleting cookies
You can delete all cookies on your device by clearing the browsing history of your browser. This will remove all cookies from all websites (also from others than the Wyss Academy for Nature website) you have visited. Be aware though that you may also lose some saved information (e.g. saved login details for any other websites, site preferences etc.).
b. Managing site-specific cookies
For more detailed control and administration over site-specific cookies, check the data privacy and cookie settings in your preferred browser.
c. How to disable third-party cookies?
Third-party cookies are automatically blocked when a user does one or more of the following actions:
- Browsing the web in private or incognito mode
- Using Safari as preferred web browser on Apple mobile devices, as it blocks third-party cookies by default
- Changing the cookie and tracking settings in web browsers (detailed below)
- Installing ad-blockers or similar add-ons
Most browsers allow users to disable third-party cookies in the settings menu. Thereby, website content becomes less personalized and the optimization of their display may be impaired, but the browsing experience will not be affected.
d. How to see which cookies are created when you visit our websites?
You can do this by installing a dedicated cookie-management browser plug-in or by using the browser’s developer console.
4. Automatically Transferred Information by the Web Browser
Your web browser can pass various parameters to web servers. These include your location, operating system and processor type of your device, browser type and version, browser plug-ins, screen size, window size, colour depth and cookies. This data is primarily used to optimize the presentation of websites but can also be used in its entirety for identification and behavioural analysis.
In your browser settings, you can prevent the disclosure of this information, but you may not be able to use some features of the website. You can also control the disclosure of this information automatically with a browser plug-in.
Wyss Academy for Nature websites use part of this information, but we always endeavour to collect, analyse and pass on as little data as possible depending on the functions required. Below you find a list of external providers who may collect browser data when visiting wyssacademy.org:
a. Wix
The Wyss Academy website www.wyssacademy.org uses Wix.com as the hosting platform.
Wix collects, processes and analyses data on the behaviour of visitors on website. Wix uses cookies for important reasons, such as:
- To provide a great experience for website visitors.
- To identify registered members.
- To monitor and analyze the performance, operation and effectiveness of Wix's platform.
- To ensure our platform is secure and safe to use.
Further information can be found at https://www.wix.com/about/privacy
b. Embedded videos
We use the video-technology from Vimeo, Inc., and YouTube from Google Inc. to provide embedded videos on our website.
By using the technologies of these providers, we can ensure that video content works on different platforms and web browsers.
When you access or view the video content, the parameters provided by your web browser are transmitted to the respective provider.
For movies embedded by YouTube, we use the "advanced privacy mode".
Further information can be found at www.google.com/privacy/ and www.vimeo.com/
5. How often will we update this Cookie Statement?
We may update our Cookie Policy from time to time in order to reflect e.g. changes within the cookies we use or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons. Therefore, revisit the Cookie Policy regularly to stay informed about our use of cookies and related technologies.
The date at the bottom of the Cookie Policy indicates the latest update.
6. Where can I get further information?
If you have any questions about our use of cookies or related technologies, please email us at privacy@wyssacademy.org.
Further information about our Data Privacy Policy can be found here.
This Cookie Policy is effective as of 10 December 2020.