Privacy Policy

**Last updated: 23rd May, 2022**

EpiSTEMas and Maria Braeuner (the “controller”, “I”, “us”, “we”, or “our”) operate the website address: https://www.epistemas.com (hereinafter referred to as the “Service”). María Braeuner can be contacted at maria@braeunerd.com.

This page informs you of our policies regarding the collection, type, scope, purpose, use, duration, and disclosure of personal data when you use our Service and the choices you have associated with the data. It also informs about the third-party components we use to optimize our website and improve the user experience which may result in said third parties also processing data they collect and control.

* **NOTE ON THE RESPONSIBLE BODY**

**The responsible party for data processing on this website is:**

**Maria Braeuner**

**An der Halde 22A**

**86807 Buchloe**

**maria@braeunerd.com**

**The data controller is the natural or legal person who alone or jointly with others determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data (e.g. names, email addresses, etc.)**

Please read the Privacy Policy carefully before you start to use the Website. By using the Website or by clicking to accept or agree to the Terms of Use if and when this option is made available to you, you accept and agree to be bound and abide by the Privacy Policy. If you do not want to agree to the Privacy Policy, you must not access or use the Website and leave this website.

We use your data to provide and improve the Service. By using the Service, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy. Data will only be processed by us to the extent necessary and for the purpose of providing a functional and user-friendly website, including its contents, products, and services offered there.

Per Art. 4 No. 1 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679, i.e the General Data Protection Regulation (hereinafter referred to as the “GDPR”), “processing” refers to any operation or set of operations such as collection, recording, organization, structuring, storage, adaptation, alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination, or otherwise making available, alignment, or combination, restriction, erasure, or destruction performed on personal data, whether by automated means or not.

**What personal data we collect**

We collect several different types of information for various purposes to provide and improve our Service to you.

**Types of Data Collected**

**Personal Data**

While using our Service, we may ask you to provide certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you (“Personal Data”). Personally, identifiable information may include, but it’s not limited to: email address, first name, and last name, phone number, address, state, province, ZIP/Postal code, City, transactional data, cookies, and usage data.

We may use your Personal Data to contact you with newsletters, marketing or promotional materials, and other information that may be of interest to you. You may opt-out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe link or the instructions provided in any email we send.

**Usage Data**

We may also collect information on how the Service is accessed and used (“Usage Data”). This Usage Data may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol address (e.g. IP address), server logs may include information regarding your browser type, browser version, the pages of our Service that you visit, the website from which you came (referrer URL), the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data. The data thus collected will be temporarily stored, but not in association with any other of your data. Our legitimate interest in this data lies in the improvement, stability, functionality, and security of our website.

**Tracking and Cookies Data**

We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on our Service and we hold certain information. Cookies are files with a small amount of data which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and stored on your device. Other tracking technologies are also used such as beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and to improve and analyze our Service. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Service.

**Examples of Cookies we use:**

**Session Cookies:** These cookies process certain specific information about you, such as your browser, location data, or IP address. This processing makes our website more user-friendly, efficient, and secure, allowing us, for example, to display our website in different languages or to offer a shopping cart function. These cookies are used to collect data to initiate or process contractual relationships. If the processing does not serve to initiate or process a contract, our legitimate interest lies in improving the functionality of our website. When you close your browser, these session cookies are deleted.

**Third-party Cookies:** If necessary, our website may also use cookies from companies with whom we cooperate for the purpose of advertising, analyzing, or improving the feature of our website. More details on these are below.

**Disabling Cookies:** You can refuse the use of cookies by changing the settings on your browser. Likewise, you can use the browser to delete cookies that have already been stored. However, the steps and measures required vary, depending on the browser you use. If you have any questions, please use the help function or consult the documentation for your browser or contact its maker for support. Browser settings cannot prevent so-called flash cookies from being set. Instead, you will need to change the setting of your Flash player. The steps and measures required for this also depend on the Flash player you are using. If you have any questions, please use the help function or consult the documentation for your Flash player or contact its maker for support.

If you prevent or restrict the installation of cookies, not all of the functions on our site may be fully usable.

**Other Collected Data, Why and How it is shared and protected**

Personal data is not just created by a user’s interactions with our site. Personal data is also generated from technical processes such as contact forms, comments, cookies, analytics, and third party embeds. By default WordPress does not collect any personal data about visitors, and only collects the data shown on the User Profile screen from registered users. However some of our plugins do collect personal data:

**Comments**

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

We may also offer you the opportunity to post questions, answers, opinions, and ratings on our website, hereinafter referred to jointly as “posts”. If you make use of this opportunity, we will process and publish your post, the date and time you submitted it, and any pseudonym you may have used. You may revoke your prior consent: all you have to do is inform us that you are revoking your consent. In addition, we will also process your IP address and email address. The IP address is processed because we might have a legitimate interest in taking or supporting further action if your post infringes the rights of third parties and/or is otherwise unlawful. In this case, the legal basis is Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. f) GDPR. Our legitimate interest lies in any legal defense we may have to mount.

If you make posts on our website, we also offer you the opportunity to subscribe to any subsequent follow-up comments made by third parties. In order to be able to inform you about these follow-up comments, we will need to process your email address. You may revoke your prior consent: all you have to do is inform us you are revoking your consent or click the unsubscribe link contained in each email.

Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms
If you contact the Service via email or the contact form, the data you provide will be used for the purpose of processing your request. We must have this data in order to process and answer your inquiry; otherwise we will not be able to answer it in full or at all. We keep contact form submissions for a certain period for customer service purposes, but we do not use the information submitted through them for marketing purposes. Your data will be deleted once we have fully answered your inquiry and there is no further legal obligation to store your data, such as if an order or contract resulted therefrom.

Newsletter
If you register for our free newsletter, the data requested from you for this purpose (i.e. your email address and the optional data) will be sent to us. We also store the IP address of your computers and the date and time of your registration. During the registration process, we will obtain your consent to receive this newsletter and the type of content it will offer, with reference made to this privacy policy. The data collected will be used exclusively to send the newsletter and will not be passed on to third parties. You may revoke your prior consent to receive this newsletter. All you have to do is inform us that you are revoking your consent or click on the unsubscribe link contained in each newsletter. The service used for delivery of email newsletters is Mailchimp and you can read MailChimp’s Privacy Policy here.

Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics on our website. This is a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 (hereinafter: Google). Google guarantees that it will follow the EU’s Data Protection Regulations when processing data in the United States.

The Google Analytics service is used to analyze how our website is used. Our legitimate interest lies in the analysis, optimization, and economic operation of our site. Usage and user-related information, such as IP address, place, time, or frequency of your visits to our website will be transmitted to a Google server in the United States and stored there. However, we use Google Analytics with the so-called anonymization function, whereby Google truncates the IP address within the EU or the EEA before it is transmitted to the US.

The data collected in the way is in turn used by Google to provide us with an evaluation of visits to our website and what visitors do once there. This data can also be used to provide other services related to the use of our website and of the internet in general.

Google states that it will not connect your IP address to other data. In addition, Google provides further information with regard to its data protection practices at https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners, including options you can exercise to prevent such use of your data. In addition, Google offers an opt-out add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en in addition with further information. This add-on can be installed on the most popular browsers and offers you further control over the data that Google collects when you visit our website. The add-on informs Google Analytics’ JavaScript (ga.js) that no information about the website visit should be transmitted to Google Analytics. However, this does not prevent information from being transmitted to us or to other web analytics services we may use as detailed herein.

Google’s use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to our users based on their visit to our Service and/or other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Ads Settings or by visiting www.aboutads.info

If you do not agree to this processing, you have the option of preventing the installation of cookies by making the appropriate settings in your browser. Further details can be found in the section about cookies above.

Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website. I do not have any control over those other websites. I cannot accept any liability for this third-party content. A permanent control of the content of the linked pages is not reasonable without concrete evidence of a violation. As soon as we become aware of legal violations, we will remove such links immediately.

**Advertising and Affiliate Partners**
Some of our advertising partners and/or affiliate programs may use cookies on our site. We have no access to or control over the cookies that are used by third-party advertisers and affiliates.

Some of the affiliate or referral programs we use operate by use of a referral link. When a link is clicked, any purchases made by a visitor can be tracked to this Service to track any sales for purposes of commissions for the referral. You can find referral links throughout this Service, for which I can receive compensation if you make a purchase of a product or service through the links on this page. This will at all times be stated in the page or post where affiliate links occur, and you have no obligation to use the links if you intend to make the purchase of said product or service. Our advertising partners and affiliate programs include:

ShareASale Affiliate Partner: This Service is a participant in the ShareASale affiliate program, an affiliate network that provides a means for us to earn commissions by linking to affiliated sites and products. For more information, please see ShareASale’s Privacy Policy.

Impact Affiliate Partner: This Service is a participant in the Impact affiliate program, an affiliate network that provides a means for us to earn commissions by linking to affiliated sites and products. For more information, please see Impact’s Privacy Policy.

This Service may also contain other types of Ads, currently powered by Google AdSense (https://www.google.com/adsense). Google uses cookies and serves ads suited to visitors of this Service. Google’s use of advertising cookies helps it and its partners show ads based on your visit to this website and other sites on the internet. You can opt-out of personalized adverts. Google provides further information with regard to its data protection practices at https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners, including options you can exercise to prevent such use of your data. In addition, Google offers an opt-out add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en in addition with further information. You can read more on How Google uses information from sites or apps. Occasionally these also serve you cookies, as explained above. We do not have control over cookies, beacons, or similar technologies served or placed by advertisers and they are subject to their own privacy policies, not ours, and we disclaim all liability in connection therewith.

California Residents: “Do Not Track” DNT Clause
We use a number of third party analytics and service providers to help us evaluate our users’ use of this page and improve and maintain the website and Service’s performance. Please note that this Service does not support “Do Not Track” browser settings and does not currently participate in DNT frameworks that would allow us to respond to signals or other mechanisms from your browser. We do not track your online browsing activity on other online services over time.

Behavioral Remarketing
We may use remarketing services to advertise on third party websites to you after you visited our Service. We and our third-party vendors may use cookies to inform, optimise, and serve ads based on your past visits to our Service.

**Use of Data**

This Service uses the collected data for various purposes:

* To provide and maintain our Service
* To notify you about changes to our Service
* To provide customer support
* To allow you to use all the available features of our Service when you choose to do so
* To monitor the usage of our Service
* To gather analysis or valuable information so that we can improve our Service
* To ship orders you have placed with us
* To detect, prevent, and address technical issues
* To provide you with news, special offers, and general information about other goods, services, and events which we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about unless you have opted out of receiving such information
* Your data processed when using this Service will be deleted or blocked as soon as the purpose for its storage ceases to apply, provided the deletion of the same is not in breach of any statutory storage obligations or unless otherwise stipulated below.

**The rights of users and data subjects**
With regard to data processing, users and data subjects have the right

* to access, update or delete the information we have on you
* to correct or complete incorrect or incomplete data
* to object to our processing of your Personal Data
* to the immediate deletion of data concerning them, or, alternatively, if further processing is necessary, to restrict said processing
* to confirmation of whether data concerning them is being processed, information about the data being processed, further information about the nature of the data processing, and copies of the data
* to receive copies of the data concerning them and/or provided by them and to have the same transmitted to other providers
* to file complaints with the supervisory authority if they believe that data concerning them is being processed by the Service in breach of data protection provisions
* to withdraw consent at any time where the Service relied on your consent
Additionally, this Service is obliged to inform all recipients to whom it discloses data of any such corrections, deletions, or restrictions places on processing. This obligation does not apply if such notification is impossible or involves a disproportionate effort. Nevertheless, users have a right to information about these recipients. Users and data subjects have the right to object to the Service’s future processing of their data. In particular, an objection to data processing for the purpose of direct advertising is permissible.

How long we retain your data
The Service will retain your Personal Data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. We will retain and use your Personal Data to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes, and enforce our legal agreements and policies.

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue. For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

Contact form entries are retained indefinitely, analytics records for 14 months, and customer purchase records for at least ten years. Usage Data is generally retained for a shorter period of time except when this data is used to strengthen the security or improve the functionality of our Service, or we are legally obligated to retain it for longer periods.

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Transfer of Data
Your information may be transferred to and maintained on computers located outside of your state, province, country, or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ from those of your jurisdiction. If you are located outside the United States and choose to provide information to us, please note that we transfer the data to United States and process it there (as explained for the Google services above). Your consent to this PRivacy Policy followed by your submission of such information represents your agreement to that transfer.

This Service will take all the steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and no transfer of your Personal Data will take place to an organisation or a country unless there are adequate controls in place including the security of your data and other personal information.

Disclosure of Data
Under certain circumstances, this Service may be required to disclose your Personal Data if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities (e.g. a court or a government agency).

Legal Requirements: this Service may disclose your Personal Data in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a legal obligation, protect and defend the rights or property of this Service, prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with the Service, protect the personal safety of users of the Service or the public, protect against legal liability.

Security of Data
The security of your data is important to us but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your Personal Data, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Payments
We may provide paid products and/or services within the Service. In that case, we use third-party services for payment processing (e.g. payment processors). We will not s tore or collect your payment card details. That information is provided directly to our third-party payment processors whose use of your personal information is governed by their Privacy Policy. These payment processors adhere to the standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council, which is a joint effort of brands like Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. PCI-DSS requirements help ensure the secure handling of payment information.

The payment processors we currently work with are:

Stripe Their Privacy Policy can be viewed at https://stripe.com/us/privacy
PayPal Their Privacy Policy can be viewed at https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full

Children’s Privacy
Our Service does not address anyone under the age of 18 (“Children”). We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your Child has provided us with Personal Data, please contact us. If we become aware that we have collected Personal Data from children without verification of parental consent, we take steps to remove that information from our servers.

Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page. We will let you know via email and/or a prominent notice on our Service, prior to the change becoming effective and update the “effective date” at the top of this Privacy Policy. You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective when they are posted on this page.

Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us by email maria@braeunerd.com