This is the privacy policy (“policy”) for the website iversity.org which is run and provided by iversity Learning Solutions GmbH, c/o Springer-Verlag GmbH, Heidelberger Platz 3, 14197 Berlin.
We will only use the personal data gathered over this website as set out in this policy. Below you will find information on how we use your personal data, for which purposes your personal data is used, with whom it is shared and what control and information rights you may have.
The following summary provides you with a quick overview of the processing activities that are undertaken on our website. You will find more detailed information under the indicated sections below.
When you visit our website for informational reasons, i.e. without registering for any of our provided services listed under IV and without providing us with personal data in any other form, we may automatically collect additional information about you which will contain personal data only in limited cases and which is automatically recognized by our server, such as:
We use such information only to assist us in providing an effective service (e.g. to adapt our website to the needs of your device or to allow you to log in to our website), and to collect broad demographic information for anonymized, aggregated use.
The personal data automatically collected is necessary for us to provide the website, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b GDPR, and for our legitimate interest to guarantee the website’s stability and security, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR.
Personal data that is collected automatically is anonymized immediately and properly erased afterwards.
Our website offers an access to learning content including a broad variety with its interaction. In order to use the aforementioned services you have to set up an account.
With regard to the registration of an account and its subsequent use, we process:
For this, the legal basis is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b GDPR.
The use of your personal data for behavioural advertising and profiling is done for the legitimate interest to improve your experience while using the website, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR.
You can object to the use of your personal data for direct marketing at any time. We will then refrain from any processing to the extent it is related to such purposes. You can inform us about your objection by contacting us at datenschutz@iversity.org.
For our services we offer a notification service. If you chose this service while setting up your user account or posting your comment, you will receive a notification email when another user replies to the same topic or article. This service is provided by means of a double-opt-in. Thus, you will receive an email containing a link by which you can confirm that you are the owner of the email address and wish to be notified via our email service. You can end this service by opting out via the link provided in each notification email. This notification service is based on your consent, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a GDPR.
Your personal data is, in the absence of exceptions within the specific services mentioned below, retained for as long as your user account is used. After deletion of your account, your personal data will be erased immediately. Statutory storage obligations or the need for legal actions that may arise from misconduct within the services or payment problems can lead to a longer retention of your personal data. In this case, we will inform you accordingly.
For the use of the following services you have to set up an account as described under IV. Your customer account retains your personal data for future purchases and other activity. You can delete the personal data as well as the account in your account’s settings. This processing is based on Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b.]
1. Use of our discussion forum
Our forum can be accessed and read without registration. Anything you post on the discussion forum will be available to a broader public; you can delete your posts at any point in time. In order to provide content to the forum, you will have to register as described in IV.
You can delete your user account by clicking “Delete” within “Account settings” . In case you decide to delete your user account, all your account data, including all communication will be deleted. Information posted by you into our discussion forum will remain visible, but any link to your person will be deleted. The unique username you selected during signup process will become available to other users upon deletion.
We reserve the right to delete comments that are off-topic, spam, abusive, use excessive foul language, include ad hominem attacks or offend against legal regulations.
2. Notification service
We offer a notification service for interactions with learning content. If you choose to use this service when you create your account or post your comment, you will receive an email notification when another user replies to the same topic or article. The service is carried out using the so-called "double opt-in" procedure. In this process, you will receive an e-mail with a link that you can use to confirm that you are the owner of the e-mail address and wish to be notified via our e-mail service. You can opt out of this by clicking on the link contained in each notification email. This notification service is based on your consent, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a. GDPR.
3. Course feedback
Once the minimum threshold for the course has been reached, a prompt will appear in the course dashboard asking you to submit feedback for the course. You can edit or delete your feedback by clicking on "My activities" in your profile and then on "Feedback". By submitting your feedback, you consent to your rating being sent to us. Your data will be used by the iversity team and the course instructors to evaluate and improve the quality of the courses. Your data, such as your name and your feedback, can be viewed by users and non-users.
4. Inspection of your data by course instructors
Course instructors can view your name and email address, your activity in the course and your learning progress. Course instructors can also view your course feedback.
With your email address you can subscribe to our newsletter that provides you with the latest news about our products and services if you consent to receiving such newsletters and may also contain topic-specific advertisements. The legal basis for this processing is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a GDPR. Your email address will be retained as long as you subscribe to our newsletter.
You can unsubscribe from this service by opting out via the link provided in each newsletter.
We do not use your personal data for automated decision making which produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you.
For statistical analyses we use web analytics services to collect information about the use of this site.
1. General tracking information
The tools collect information such as
We use the information we get from the providers only to determine the most useful information you are looking for, and to improve and optimise this website. We do not combine the information collected through the use of the tools with personal data.
Depending on the provider the information generated about your use of the website may be transferred to and processed in third countries, e.g. the United States. For further information about the potential risks of a cross border data transfer please refer to section XII. The tools collect only the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit this site, rather than your name or any other identifying information. The provider will use this information in order to evaluate your use of the website, to compile reports on website activities and to provide other services relating to website and internet use to us.
The legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR and represents our legitimate interest to analyse our website’s traffic to improve the user’s experience and to optimise the website in general.
2. Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Irland (“Google”). On our behalf Google will use the information generated by a cookie for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity and providing other services relating to website activity and internet activity in connection with the use of the website.
We have activated the IP-anonymisation within the Google Analytics service, and your IP address will be truncated within the area of member states of the European Union or other parties to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases the whole IP address will be first transferred to a Google server in the USA and truncated there. The IP-address your browser conveys within the scope of Google Analytics will not be associated with any other data held by Google.
Further information on data protection and Google Analytics can be found on the website of Google:
http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html?hl=de
The legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. f GDPR. The processing is based on our legitimate interest in evaluating the data traffic on our website to enhance your user experience and for the general optimisation of the website.
3. Google AdWords
We use Google Adwords to advertise on our site and third party websites to previous visitors of our site. Google Adwords is provided by Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland (“Google”).
The advertisements are displayed on the basis of information that is stored in cookies which Google places on your computer. The text files include information, on your visit of our website, in particular product views that is read-out in the course of subsequent visits of this or third party websites for specific product recommendations. The cookie includes a random alias. In case you visit our website within a certain period of time and view our products, Google is able to recognize you by means of the alias. However, the information cannot be attributed to you personally. We or Google will not merge this information with your personal data and will not disclose any of your personal data to any third party.
You can prevent the storing and using of information in a cookie placed by Google by clicking on the following link http://www.google.de/ads/preferences and configuring your preferences there.
For more information about Google privacy policies see https://privacy.google.com/intl/en/ and https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/?hl=en.
You can prevent being tracked by choosing the appropriate preference in the privacy options of your browser or disable cookies or delete the cookie. Alternatively you can deactivate cookies from third parties by opening the website of the network advertising initiative http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/
4. Facebook Pixel / Custom Audience
We use the “Website Custom Audiences” service from the Facebook social network on the website and in our apps. This service is operated by Facebook Ireland Limited, 4 Grand Canal Square, Dublin 2, Ireland. You can find more information on "Website Custom Audiences" under the following link: https://facebook.com/business/help/449542958510885
Through this service, Facebook, according to its own information, generates a non-reversible and non-personal checksum (hash value) from your usage data, which Facebook can use for analysis and marketing purposes. For the product “Website Custom Audiences”, a cookie, web beacon, pixel or similar technology is addressed on the website by Facebook and possibly stored on your device. Since the service and the data processing that takes place via this service are solely in the area of responsibility of Facebook, we have no influence on the possible processing of personal data. For more information about the purpose and scope of data collection and the further processing and use of the data by Facebook as well as your setting options to protect your privacy, please refer to
Facebook's data protection guidelines, which can be found at https://www.facebook.com/ads/website_custom_audiences/ and https://www.facebook.com/privacy/explanation.
If you would like to object to the use of the Facebook Custom Audiences website, you can exercise this objection (opt-out) at the following link:
https://www.facebook.com/ads/website_custom_audiences/
This website may contain links to third party websites. We are not responsible for the content and the data collection on respective third party websites; please check the privacy policy of respective websites for information of respective websites’ data processing activities.
Your personal data will be disclosed to the contractual partners who make online e-learning courses from our portfolio available to a group of participants defined by them.
Legal basis for the transfer of your personal data is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b and f GDPR. and represents our legitimate interest to improve your user experience and optimize the quality of our services.
It is carried out to fulfil our legitimate interest in offering learning content from contractual partners and for defined user groups of these contractual partners (e.g. company employees) and thus to expand our range of services.
We have reasonable state of the art security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of personal data under our control. For example, our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary and only authorised personnel have access to personal data. Whilst we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of
information will never occur, we use all reasonable efforts to prevent it.
You should bear in mind that submission of information over the internet is never entirely secure. We cannot guarantee the security of information you submit via our website whilst it is in transit over the internet and any such submission is at your own risk.
We strive to keep our processing activities with respect to your personal data as limited as possible. In the absence of specific retention periods set out in this policy, your personal data will be retained only for as long as we need it to fulfil the purpose for which we have collected it and, if applicable, as long as required by statutory retention requirements.
Depending on the circumstances of the specific case, you have the following data protection rights:
In addition, you have the right to object to the processing of your personal data at any time:
You can (i) exercise the above rights or (ii) ask questions or (iii) lodge a complaint against our processing of your personal data by contacting us as indicated below.
Please submit any questions, concerns or comments you have about this privacy policy or any requests concerning your personal data by email to our Group Data Protection Officer. You can contact our Group Data Protection Officer via dataprotection@springer.com.
The information you provide when contacting us (support@iversity.org) will be processed to handle your request and will be erased when your request is completed. Alternatively, we will restrict the processing of the respective information in accordance with statutory retention requirements.
We reseve the right to change this policy from time to time by updating our website respectively. Please visit the website regularly and check our respective current privacy policy. This policy was last updated on January 22st, 2024.