Privacy Policy

General Information

Data protection has a high priority for Hitex and its subsidiaries. We comply with the data protection legislation of the countries in which we do business. Internal data protection regulations ensure that consistent and high data protection standards apply at all Hitex companies. Our employees are obligated to comply with statutory and internal data protection regulations and to treating your data as confidential.

Extensive operational, technical and organizational security measures protect your data against accidental or deliberate manipulation, loss, destruction and access by unauthorized persons. We review our security measures regularly and adapt them to technological advances.

Responsibility for data protection at Hitex

The Data Protection Officer

Children

Amendments to the data privacy statement

Your Data

As users or registrants of our website, integrated online services and/or portals, we process the personal data that you proactively and voluntarily provide us with, for example, by contacting us or registering to use services offered by us.

Users of our website, integrated online services and portals

Profile Information

Profile information is personal information on your person you share with us when registering for an account in order to make use of our online services and/or portals including events. This includes, for example:

your first and last name
your business contact details
your job role
demographic details like country
your login data (business email address, password)

You can complete your personal profile by supplementing data like subscriptions for receiving specific marketing information or by telling us about applications and products you are interested in.

Contacting Us

If you contact us, we will collect your contact details depending on how you contact us (e.g. by email or telephone) as well as the content of your message. This may include your name, business postal address and business email address.

Information for Campaigns and Surveys

We generally ask you for or use personal information like your name and email address if you take part in prize competitions or surveys. We conduct surveys for the purposes of receiving feedback from our customers and partners in areas such as (1) existing products and services (2) expectations and opinions regarding new products and services (3) and general opinions about, and experiences with, the Hitex brand and its affiliates.

Information on Your Interests

When you visit our website and/or integrated online services and portals, your activities and how you use our services are tracked and collected. This information is collected by using cookies and similar mechanisms, and is generally stored in a pseudonymized manner. When a user is logged in and uses one of our services, we may identify you as a user.
Furthermore, we may assign the information on how you interact with our services to your user profile for personalization purposes. This information in turn may be linked to your personal profile.

If, for example, you repeatedly visit a particular area of our website or you participate intensively in discussions about specific products and services, we can extrapolate your interests by means of usage analysis. This allows us to understand your interests from how you use our services in addition to the interests you have directly shared with us.

We may also supplement and analyze your personal profile with existing business information on a company level we have in our system, or other relevant information publicly available, or provided by third-parties where and as permitted under applicable law.

Device and Access Data

We collect and process technical connection data sent to us by the device being used by you (such as IP address, browser type, date and time of your query) and cookies and similar mechanisms in order to make our services useful.

Business partners

Business partners are all parties with whom Hitex maintains an active business relationship or with whom it is initiating such a relationship. In particular, contact persons at customers, prospective customers, suppliers, sales partners and service providers are affected by the processing of personal data.

We process personal data that we receive from you through use of one or more of the following channels:

business relationships,
visits to trade fairs, attendance at events, such as webinars and product demos,
use of our website, integrated online services and portals.

Such data may include your name, your business contact details, such as your postal address, email address and phone number, information about your request and your interests.

Purpose for processing the data

We process your personal data in accordance with the applicable data protection law in particular to

provide and improve our services,
process and fulfill your inquiries, orders, applications, etc.,
manage and perform business relationships,
prepare, conclude and/or implement contracts,
complete and fulfill purchases,
enable you to use our services,
plan and perform events,
provide you with personalized services (such as product recommendations and other content corresponding to your interests) based on your explicitly mentioned interests and derived interests by analyzing your usage of our website, integrated online services and portals, performance measurement of content and marketing activities and conducting further business-relevant analysis (e.g. expected purchase behavior, interest evaluation, market and trends analysis) based on your individual profile,
administer and perform personalized direct marketing activities and conduct surveys for market research purposes
ensure the security and safety of Hitex facilities and our website through appropriate technical and organizational measures,
protect our services, applications and products against security risks and criminal activities,
ensure compliance with legal obligations, export control and customs and to carry out compliance screenings in order to meet statutory standards and internal policies and
to enforce our contractual agreements and enable the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims

Legal basis

We process your personal data on the basis of one or more of the following legal grounds:

To perform a contract with you.
To comply with legal obligations.
To safeguard Hitex’s legitimate interests. Hitex has legitimate interests in processing your data for the following purposes:
- To provide, operate and improve the website, integrated online services and portals.
- To initiate and conduct business relationships.
- To comply with industry and other standards that Hitex has voluntarily subjected itself.
- To establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

To process your personal data for the distribution of newsletters and other marketing information, we ask for your consent, which you may revoke at any time without having to state a reason.

Transfer of your Data

When we are legally entitled to do so, we may transfer your personal data to other entities of the Hitex Group or to third-parties, especially to selected service providers, distributors, partners, and sales representatives. Please note that we do not sell your personal information to third parties or with any ad networks or ad server companies.

We enter into contracts with our service providers in which the requirements of relevant data protection laws are addressed. Service providers must take appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure the protection of the rights and freedoms of the data subject and are prohibited from processing personal data in derogation of the Hitex's instructions.

If data is transferred outside the European Economic Area that may not be subject to equivalent data protection laws we will ensure that a transfer only takes place if an appropriate level of protection exists with the recipient and suitable safeguards like Standard Contractual Clauses are provided.

Duration of storage

Your Rights

Visitors to European websites covered by the GDPR have key rights that protect their personal data and ensure transparency in its collection, use, and storage.

Right of data subjects

You have the right to demand that Hitex provide you with access to and information on the personal data it has stored concerning you. You also have the right to demand rectification and erasure of data or restriction to processing of it, as well as the right to demand that the stored data be transferred to you or a third party named by you in a suitable form.

You may object to the processing of your personal data for purposes of direct advertising. If we process your personal data to protect Hitex’s legitimate interests, you may object to this processing for reasons based on your specific situation. We will then stop processing your data unless it is predominantly used to serve interests worthy of protection on our part.

Withdrawal of consent

Right to lodge complaint

You may contact our Data Protection Officer (see above) or the competent data protection supervisory authority.

The data protection supervisory authority responsible for Hitex GmbH is

Der Landesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit Baden-Württemberg
Postfach 10 29 32, 70025 Stuttgart
Königstraße 10a, 70173 Stuttgart
E-Mail:
Internet: http://www.baden-wuerttemberg.datenschutz.de

Cookies

All Hitex websites use cookies. A cookie is a small text file that is stored on your computer. A cookie enables your browser to recognize you and your most recent settings (e. g. language settings) on the website. Your settings will be made available immediately and don't have to be done again. At the same time, we can also offer you tailor-made offers.

We also use cookies that remember your preferences for using a website in order to adjust the content displayed to your personal interests and needs.

You can adjust your browser to inform you of cookies being set and permit this on a case-by-case basis only, permit the acceptance of cookies in certain cases or generally exclude it, as well as automatically delete cookies when you close the browser. Deactivating cookies may restrict the functionality of this website.

Google Analytics

On this website we use Google Analytics, a web analysis service provided by Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States ("Google").

Google analyses your use of this website on behalf of Hitex. For this purpose, the following data are collected and transmitted to a Google server in the USA, which is not currently considered a safe third country, where the data are stored, analyzed and made available to us in anonymous form: information about your use of this website, the type and version of browser you use, the operating system you use, your language settings, the date and time of your query and the referrer URL (previously visited website). Google places a permanent cookie in your Internet browser for this purpose. With the help of this cookie, it is also possible to recognize your browser when you visit this website again.

We have activated the IP anonymization function offered by Google on this website so that your IP address is shortened by Google within member states of the European Union or the EEA (European Economic Area) and only transmitted to the USA in anonymized form. Only in exceptional cases the full IP address will be transmitted to a Google server in the USA and shortened there. Google might use this data for its own purposes, such as profiling, and might link it to other data, such as Google accounts. We have contractually agreed appropriate security measures with Google for these cases.

The IP address of your browser, which is collected by Google Analytics, is not merged with other data from Google.
We use Google Analytics to analyze the use of our website and to improve it regularly. The statistics obtained allow us to improve our services and make them more interesting for you as a user.

Additionally, we use the data collected by Google Analytics together with Google Optimize, a sub-service of Google Analytics. With the help of an additional cookie, Google Optimize enables us to display different versions of our website and test the reaction of the users to it. This data is statistically analyzed by us in order to improve the user experience and usability of our website.

You can generally revoke your consent to web analysis by Google at any time by downloading and installing the available Google browser plug-in. This option prevents web analysis only as long as you use a browser on which you have installed the plugin and as long as you do not delete the opt-out cookie.

Further information on data protection and the security of your data at Google Analytics can be found here. Please also read Google's privacy policy.

Third party information: Google Dublin, Google Ireland Ltd, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland, Fax: +353 (1) 436 1001. Terms of use: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/terms/us/

Google Tag Manager

The Google Tag Manager is a solution that allows us to implement, trigger and manage so-called website tags via an interface. Therefore, we can integrate Google Analytics and other services (which also may collect data) into our online offering. The Tag Manager itself does not process any personal user data.

The usage guidelines can be found at: https://www.google.com/analytics/tag-manager/use-policy.

Pardot

We use Pardot to personalize communication with you. When you visit the Hitex website for the first time, a cookie of third-party provider Pardot will be stored in your browser. This cookie is used to record the pages you visit during your session. Although this cookie is set on many other third-party websites, the information about your visit to the Hitex website is visible to Hitex only and not shared with other users of the Pardot system. Likewise, it is not possible for Hitex to use this cookie to record or view information about your visits to other websites.

Although this cookie does not contain any specific personal information, it may be possible to establish a connection to a person by subsequently linking the data with other information. If you provide Hitex with personal information by filling out a form on our website, this information may be combined with the browser information recorded by the Pardot cookie. The information thus collected is used to improve the services we offer, including whether and how we communicate with you, and personalization of the content of such communication. We try to tailor this communication to your personal interests, as gleaned from your visits to the Hitex website or from the profile settings you have selected, thus focusing as far as possible only on offerings and promotional campaigns that we believe are of interest to you.

Pardot is compliant with the "Do Not Track" initiative. You can enable this feature in your browser. Pardot does not use cookie-based tracking for any visitors with that setting enabled. Alternatively you can also delete cookies from your computer hard drive, block all cookies, or warn you before a cookie is stored by adjusting your browser settings. If you do not accept cookies, the use of some of our services will not be available to you. Generally, cookies allow us to determine who you are and thus provide you with better and more personalized services.

External Services or Content on our Website

If you use the below mentioned services, you will access the website via a frame. We have no influence on the scope of your personal data being processed and the handling of your data by the mentioned service providers, which result from access to the website. The mentioned service providers are themselves legally responsible for this. You can find more information on how your personal data is handled here:

The social media links embedded on our website (X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.) are not integrated via so-called plug-ins. When you visit our website, no direct link to social media servers will be established. When you click a social media button, you will be transferred to the selected social media service. Hitex accepts no responsibility for the content of other providers’ websites.