General data protection declaration:

Who we are

We are the Vienna Citizens' Energy Cooperative, or https://begwien.at. Websites with subdomains, e.g., https://abc.begwien.at, may(!) be maintained by other natural or legal persons or organizations and therefore have a different privacy policy.

Comments

When visitors write comments on the website, we collect the data shown in the comment form, as well as the visitor's IP address and user-agent string (which identifies the browser) to help spam detection.

An anonymized string (also called a hash) can be created from your email address and sent to the Gravatar service to check if you are using it. You can find the Gravatar service's privacy policy here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. Once your comment is approved, your profile picture will be publicly visible in the context of your comment.

media

If you are a registered user and upload photos to this website, you should avoid uploading photos with embedded EXIF GPS location data. Visitors to this website could download photos stored here and extract their location information.

Cookies

When you leave a comment on our website, you may opt-in to saving your name, email address, and website in cookies. This is a convenience feature so that you don't have to re-enter all this information when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and log in to this website, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will set several cookies to save your login information and display preferences. Login cookies expire after two days, and display option cookies expire after one year. If you select "Remember me" when logging in, your login will be maintained for two weeks. Logging out of your account will delete the login cookies.

When you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie is stored in your browser. This cookie contains no personal data and only references the post ID of the article you just edited. The cookie expires after one day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this website may include embedded content (e.g., videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves exactly as if the visitor had visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking services, and record your interaction with this embedded content, including your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Who we share your data with

If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.

How long we store your data

When you write a comment, it, along with its metadata, is stored indefinitely. This allows us to automatically recognize and approve follow-up comments instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users who register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profiles. All users can view, modify, or delete their personal information at any time (the username cannot be changed). Website administrators can also view and modify this information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this website or have left comments, you can request an export of your personal data from us, including all data you have provided. You can also request the deletion of all personal data we hold about you. This does not include data we are required to retain for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where your data is sent

Visitor comments may be checked by an automated spam detection service.

What to do

You don't need to do anything else. By visiting this website, you agree to this privacy policy.

Additional privacy policy for our security plugin:

What personal data we collect and why it is collected:

Cookies

A cookie is created to track a user's login process and thus implement enhanced security features.

Security protocols

The IP address of visitors, the user ID of logged-in users, and the username during login attempts are logged under certain conditions to detect malicious activity and protect the website from specific attacks. Examples of conditions under which logging occurs include login attempts, logout requests, requests to suspicious URLs, changes to website content, and password updates. This information is stored for 60 days.

Who we share your data with

For users who have set up two-factor authentication for this website, a QR code will be generated. This QR code is generated using an API hosted by the developer of our security plugin. Your username will be sent to the API in the process. This data is not logged.

This website is scanned for potential malware and vulnerabilities by the developer of our security plugin. We do not send any personal data to the scanner. However, the scanner may find publicly available personal data (e.g., in comments) during the scan.

How long do we store your data?

Security logs are stored for 60 days.

Where do we send your data?

This website is part of a network of websites that protect against distributed brute-force attacks. To ensure this protection, the IP address of visitors logging into the website is transmitted to a service provided by the manufacturer of our security plugin.

Additional privacy policy for our statistics plugin:

We use a statistics plugin to analyze the traffic on our website.

This statistics plugin stores the data on our own server and does not share it with third parties. Below, we describe what information we collect with this statistics plugin, why we collect it, and how it is processed.

We do not collect or store any information that can personally identify you. This means:

No cookies:

We do not place tracking cookies or similar identifiers in your browser.

Anonymized IP address:

Your IP address will be anonymized and processed securely (e.g. hashed) so that it cannot be traced back to identify you.

Aggregated statistics:

We only collect general activity data such as page views or the country of access.

Local storage:

All data is stored locally on our server; we never share it with third parties.