Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy, Status 04 April 2022

Thank you for visiting our website and for your interest in our company. The protection of your personal data is very important to us. OQ Chemicals GmbH and affiliated companies (hereafter "OQ Chemicals", "we" or "us") value the security of user data and compliance with data protection regulations.

The OQ Chemicals website may contain links to third-party websites, to which this privacy policy do not apply. The information which may be collected by the operators of these sites is beyond our knowledge and influence.

You may obtain information in the data protection policies of the respective sites.

Following is detailed information regarding how your data is handled

§ 1 Information about the collection of personal data

(1) Below, we inform you about the collection of personal data when using our website. Personal data is all data that relates to your personal identity, for example name, address, email addresses.

(2) The controller, according to Article 4(7) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is OQ Chemicals GmbH, Rheinpromenade 4a, 40789 Monheim am Rhein. Our data protection officer  may be reached at sc.dataprotection@oq.com.

§ 2 User rights

You have the following rights with respect to your personal data:

• Right of access. You have the right to access the personal data we have stored about you in order to review it and to get an idea of how we use your data. 
• Right to rectification, erasure and restriction. You have the right, in certain circumstances, to request that we correct, restrict or delete your personal data. 
• Right to data portability. You have the right to receive your personal data from us in a structured, common and machine-readable format and to have it transferred directly from us to third parties, to the extent that this is technically feasible. 
• Right of withdrawal. You have the right to withdraw any consent you may have given. Please note that this withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of the data processing until your withdrawal. 
• Right to object. You have the right to object at any time, on grounds relating to your particular situation, to the processing of personal data relating to you which is carried out on the basis of Article 6(1)(f) GDPR. We will then no longer process your personal data unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing.
• Right to complain. If you believe that our data processing violates European data protection law, you can file a complaint to a supervisory authority. For example, to the supervisory authority of the federal state in which you are located. A list of all state data protection officers and their contact details can be found at: https://www.bfdi.bund.de/DE/Infothek/Anschriften_Links/anschriften_links-node.html. However, you can also contact North Rhine-Westphalia’s Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, who is responsible for us. 

§ 3 Collection of personal data when visiting our website

(1) In the case of using the website merely for informative purposes, i.e., if you do not register or otherwise provide us with information, we will only collect the personal data that your browser transmits to our servers. If you wish to view our website, we collect the following information that is technically necessary to display our website to you and to guarantee stability and security (legal basis is Article 6(1)(1)(f) GDPR): 

• IP address
• date and time of inquiry
• time zone difference relative to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
• contents of inquiry (actual page)
• access status/HTTP status code
• amount of transmitted data
• website from which the request originates
• browser
• operating system and its interface
• language and version of browser software.

This data is stored in server log files for 3 days for security reasons and will be deleted subsequently. If data must be retained for proof purposes, it will not be deleted until the incident has been finally resolved

(2) Use of cookies:

This website uses cookies. Cookies are text files that are filed and stored on a computer system via an Internet browser.

Many websites and servers use cookies. Many cookies contain a so-called cookie ID. A cookie ID is a unique identifier of the cookie. It consists of a character string which websites and servers can use to relate the cookie to the specific internet browser on which the cookie is stored. This allows the visited sites and servers to distinguish the individual's browser from other browsers, which contain other cookies. A particular web browser can be recognized and identified by the cookie ID.

We use cookies in order to guarantee the functionality of our website (Art. 6 para.1 (f) GDPR).

You can prevent the setting of cookies by our website at any time by changing the appropriate setting of your browser, thus objecting to the setting of cookies. Furthermore, cookies which have already been set may be deleted at any time through the internet browser. This is possible with all commonly used browsers. However, should you decide to deactivate cookie setting in your browser, all of our website's functions may not be fully usable.

(3) Use of Google Maps

We use Google Maps to display maps and generate directions to OQ Chemicals locations. Google Maps is operated by Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland (hereinafter „Google“).

We use Google Maps in an extended data protection mode, which means that a direct connection between your browser and Google is only established when you click on the map. Data processing by us does not take place. Controller within the meaning of the GDPR is Google. You can obtain further information on this processing of your data by Google at policies.google.com/privacy

(4) Getting in touch via e-mail or contact form

When you contact us by e-mail, the data you provide (your e-mail address, your name and telephone number, if applicable, the content of your message) will be stored by us in order to answer your questions. Moreover, you have the possibility of using the contact form on our website to send us inquiries. We will save the following data from the form for the purpose of handling your inquiry and possible later correspondence: content of inquiry, subject of inquiry, date, and contact data you have provided (e.g. company, title, first and last name, street address, postal code, city, telephone number, fax number, email address). 

The legal basis for this data processing is Art. 6 para. 1 (b) GDPR, as far as a contractual relationship is intended, and our legitimate interest in answering your inquiry according to Art. 6 para. 1 (f) GDPR, as far as other inquiries are concerned.    

The data you provide will remain with us until the purpose of the data storage has been fulfilled (e.g., after completion of your request). Mandatory legal provisions –- specifically retention periods –- remain unaffected. 

(5) Analytics tool Matomo

We use the web analysis software Matomo. For statistical analysis of user behavior ("web analysis"), this service creates and evaluates pseudonymized user profiles. No cookies are used for this purpose (cookieless). The IP address transmitted by you is shortened before storage so that the data generated cannot be used to identify you personally. We therefore do not know your actual identity through Matomo, but only the information stored in the user profile.

We process the following types of data through Matomo:

• shortened IP address(2 bytes)
• accessed website
• the website from which you accessed the website (so-called referrer)
• subpages that are accessed from the accessed website
• time spent on the website
• Frequency of the call of the website

Matomo runs exclusively on the servers of our website. A storage of the personal data of the users only takes place there. The data is not passed on to third parties.

The web analysis is used to evaluate the flow of visitors to our website and may include behavior, interests or demographic information as pseudonymous values. Through web analytics, we can see at what time our website and its content are most frequently used and which areas need further optimization.

If you do not agree with this processing, you can stop the analysis of your usage behavior by clicking the following link:

This will save a cookie on your terminal device that prevents further analysis. Please note that you will need to click the above link again if you delete the cookies stored on your device.

The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interest in the statistical analysis of user behavior for optimization and marketing purposes pursuant to Art. 6 para. 1 (f) GDPR.

§ 4 When will my personal data be erased?

As far as possible, we have informed you of the specific retention period and the period for which the personal data will be stored in § 3 above. Otherwise, the retention period is determined by us by the following criteria: 

We process and store your personal data as long as necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected. If the processing of your personal data is no longer necessary for us, in particular because contractual obligations or our legitimate interests have been fulfilled, it will be erased by us, unless its further processing or archiving is required for legal reasons. These legal reasons include, for example, retention obligations under commercial and tax law (e.g. German Commercial Code and the German Fiscal Code). The periods specified there for the retention of data are generally two to ten years.

§ 5 Do I have an obligation to provide my personal data?

You are under no legal or contractual obligation to provide us your personal data. However, without this data we are in some cases not able to offer all functionalities of the website.

§ 6 Am I subject to a decision based on automated processing, including profiling?

No automated decisions or other profiling measures are carried out by us, unless expressly indicated in § 3.