Privacy Policy

The controller within the meaning of the GDPR is:

FUCHS Enprotec GmbH
Stocktal 2
56727 Mayen
Germany

Represented by the Managing Directors Dr. Christian Henrich and James Horton.

Phone: +49 2651 8004-0
E-mail: info@fuchswater.com

The controller's Data Protection Officer is:

Dipl.-Jur. Georg A. Edeler
icertificate GmbH
Werner-von-Siemens-Straße 15
Industriepark Kottenforst
53340 Meckenheim
E-mail: kontakt@icertificate.de

You may contact our Data Protection Officer directly at any time on all matters relating to data protection and the exercise of your rights, using the contact details above or by e-mail to info@fuchswater.com.

We process personal data of our users only to the extent necessary to provide a functional website and our content and services, or where you have given your consent.

The legal basis for processing depends on the individual case:

• Your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR; for the setting of non-essential cookies and the loading of external services, additionally § 25(1) TDDDG),
• the performance of a contract or pre-contractual measures (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR),
• compliance with a legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR),
• the protection of our legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Personal data will be deleted once the purpose for storing it no longer applies and no statutory retention obligations prevent deletion. Where processing is based on your consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time with effect for the future. The lawfulness of processing carried out prior to the withdrawal remains unaffected.

No automated individual decision-making, including profiling within the meaning of Art. 22 GDPR, takes place. You are not obliged to provide us with personal data; however, without the information marked as mandatory in the forms, we will be unable to process your enquiry or application.

Our website is hosted by an external service provider (Laravel Cloud). The application, database and media file storage are operated in the Frankfurt am Main region (European Union). Images, documents and other media files are delivered via the same provider's object storage; when such a file is accessed, your IP address is technically transmitted to its servers so that the file can be delivered to your browser.

To detect errors and performance issues, we additionally use application monitoring from the same provider (Laravel Nightwatch). It records technical information about requests, errors and response times of our application. In individual cases, connection data such as the IP address may also be collected. The evaluation serves exclusively to ensure secure and stable operation.

Fonts, icons and script libraries are delivered exclusively from our own servers. We do not use external services such as Google Fonts or script networks; no unintended loading of third-party resources occurs when simply visiting the website.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in the secure, efficient and uninterrupted provision of our online offering (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). A data processing agreement in accordance with Art. 28 GDPR has been concluded with the provider.

Each time our website is accessed, technically necessary connection data transmitted by your browser is processed in order to deliver the page. In addition, for security and optimisation purposes, we log requested but unfound addresses (error pages) along with the requested path, the referring page (referrer) and the browser identifier (user agent). Your IP address is not stored for this purpose.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in the stability, security and improvement of our website (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

We use cookies and similar technologies. Technically necessary cookies (such as those for session management, protection against attacks and storage of your cookie preferences) are required for the operation of the website and are set on the basis of our legitimate interest and § 25(2) TDDDG without consent.

We use all non-essential services exclusively with your prior consent. Through our consent banner, you may give granular consent to the following categories:

• Necessary: required for the operation of the website, always active.
• Statistics: reach measurement using Google Analytics, as well as the analysis of questions submitted to our chat assistant in order to improve our offering.
• External Media: embedding of external content such as videos (YouTube/Vimeo) and the location map (OpenStreetMap).

Until you have given your consent, no cookies of these categories will be set and none of the external services mentioned will be loaded. "Accept all" and "Decline" are designed as equally prominent options.

Specifically, we use the following cookies and comparable storage technologies:

• fuchs_consent (necessary): stores your selection in the consent banner, duration 180 days.
• Session cookie (necessary): associates your requests with a session, for example when submitting forms; becomes invalid after at most 120 minutes of inactivity.
• XSRF-TOKEN (necessary): protects forms against cross-site request forgery, duration of the session.
• _ga and _ga_<identifier> (Statistics, only with your consent): Google Analytics cookies for distinguishing visits, duration up to two years.

You may change or withdraw your selection at any time via the "Cookie Settings" link in the footer of the website. The legal basis for consent-based services is Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR in conjunction with § 25(1) TDDDG.

When you contact us via the contact form or by e-mail, we process the data you provide (in particular name, e-mail address, telephone number, subject matter, chosen contact person, subject line and your message) in order to handle your enquiry. Your details are stored in our system and forwarded to the responsible mailbox for reply; you will receive an acknowledgement of receipt. To protect against automated spam submissions, the form contains an additional field that is invisible to you and filled in only by automated programmes; no additional personal data is collected in this way.

For sending our e-mails, we use the mail server of a German hosting provider with whom a data processing agreement in accordance with Art. 28 GDPR has been concluded.

The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR where your enquiry is directed at the conclusion or performance of a contract, and otherwise our legitimate interest in responding to your enquiry (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). The data will be deleted once it is no longer required for the purpose for which it was collected and no retention obligations apply.

You may apply for advertised positions via our website or submit an unsolicited application. We process the data you submit (in particular name, contact details, earliest possible start date, salary expectation, your message and uploaded documents such as a curriculum vitae and attachments) exclusively for the purpose of conducting the application process.

Uploaded application documents are stored on a secure, non-publicly accessible storage facility and are accessible only to authorised persons. The legal basis is § 26(1) of the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) in conjunction with Art. 88 GDPR (initiation of an employment relationship) and, where you provide consent (for example for inclusion in an applicant pool), Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR. If no employment relationship is established, your application data will as a rule be deleted no later than six months after the conclusion of the process, provided you have not consented to longer storage and no statutory retention obligations apply.

On our website we offer an AI-powered chat assistant that answers questions about our products, applications and markets. The messages you enter and the context generated in the course of the conversation are transmitted to specialised AI service providers for processing in order to generate a response. We use Anthropic (Anthropic PBC, USA) as the primary provider and, in the event of failure or overload, OpenAI (OpenAI, L.L.C., USA). To identify relevant content, your query is additionally converted into a numerical representation (embedding) and transmitted to OpenAI for this purpose. Under the providers' terms of use, content submitted via their application programming interface is not used to train the models; at OpenAI, we have additionally disabled the storage of requests.

Please do not enter any sensitive personal data in the chat. To prevent misuse, we limit the number of requests per unit of time and process your IP address for this purpose only transiently, without permanent storage. The conversation history visible in the chat window exists only temporarily in your browser and ends when the page is closed. Each conversation is assigned a random, session-related identifier that serves solely to group related questions together and is not linked to your identity.

In order to identify which questions our assistant cannot answer well, we analyse the use of the chat. We distinguish between two cases:

• Without your consent, we store only anonymous technical metrics for each request: the language, the time, the number of knowledge sources found and a measure of how well the question was covered in terms of content. In this case, the wording of your question and the response is not stored. No personal reference exists in this context.
• With your consent to the "Statistics" category, we additionally store the wording of your question and the response. Before storage, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers are automatically removed. From recurring questions, we derive topics and suggestions for our help pages in aggregated form.

Stored conversation data is automatically deleted after 90 days. The legal basis for answering your questions and for anonymous quality measurement is our legitimate interest in providing modern, helpful user information and in improving our offering (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR); the legal basis for storing the wording is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). The AI providers mentioned act as processors in a third country (USA). The transfer is safeguarded by appropriate guarantees pursuant to Art. 46 GDPR, in particular the standard contractual clauses of the European Commission.

To display locations in our network, we use map material from OpenStreetMap, provided by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (United Kingdom). The map is only loaded after you have consented to the "External Media" category. When the map tiles are loaded, your IP address is transmitted to the provider, which is technically necessary in order to deliver the map to your browser. The transfer to the provider based in the United Kingdom takes place solely on the basis of your explicit consent. The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, § 25(1) TDDDG).

In some places we embed videos from the providers YouTube (Google Ireland Limited, Ireland, and Google LLC, USA) and Vimeo (Vimeo.com, Inc., USA). This content is only loaded after you have consented to the "External Media" category and have additionally clicked on the respective preview. Only at that point is a connection established to the provider's servers and your IP address and, where applicable, further data transmitted to them. For YouTube, we use the privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie).

The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, § 25(1) TDDDG). Where data is transferred to the USA in this context, this is done on the basis of appropriate guarantees pursuant to Art. 46 GDPR or, for certified recipients, on the basis of the adequacy decision regarding the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. For details on data processing, please refer to the privacy notices of the respective providers.

For the statistical analysis of how our website is used and to improve our offering, we use Google Analytics 4, a web analytics service provided by Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland.

Google Analytics is only loaded if you have previously consented to the "Statistics" category. Without your consent, no analytics script is loaded, no analytics cookies are set and no connection to Google is established.

Data collected includes in particular the pages visited and time spent on them, the time and duration of the visit, the previously visited page (referrer), information about the device, operating system, browser and screen resolution, the approximate geographic origin based on the truncated IP address, and a random pseudonymous identifier by which your browser is recognised on subsequent visits. IP anonymisation is enabled; your IP address is truncated before any further processing.

Beyond page measurement, we collect a limited number of events to identify which content is helpful: the submission of a contact request, the submission of an application, the download of a document, the use of the chat assistant, and clicks on telephone numbers and e-mail addresses. What is transmitted to Google is only the fact that the respective action took place, not its content; names, e-mail addresses, message texts or application documents are not transmitted to Google.

We use Google Analytics without any connection to advertising services: there is no linking with Google Ads, no remarketing or advertising functions, and no use of the "Google Signals" feature. We have set the retention period for user and event data in Google Analytics to 14 months.

The provider in relation to us is Google Ireland Limited. A transfer of data to Google LLC in the USA cannot be excluded. Google LLC is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, for which an adequacy decision of the European Commission exists; in addition, Google has entered into standard contractual clauses pursuant to Art. 46 GDPR. A data processing agreement in accordance with Art. 28 GDPR has been concluded with Google.

The legal basis is exclusively your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, § 25(1) TDDDG). You may withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future via the "Cookie Settings" link in the footer of the website. Alternatively, you can prevent data collection by Google Analytics using the browser add-on provided by Google: tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. Further information on how Google handles user data can be found in Google's privacy policy at policies.google.com/privacy.

Data sheets, brochures and other documents can be downloaded without registration and without providing personal data. When accessed, the information described above regarding the delivery of media files applies.

Our website contains links to our profiles on LinkedIn and Instagram. These are simple links without embedded content or plugins; data is not transmitted to the providers until you click the link and access the respective platform, at which point their privacy policies apply.

For website maintenance purposes, we operate a password-protected, non-publicly accessible administration area. Only accounts of persons authorised by us (name, e-mail address, role) and a log of content changes made are processed there. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in the traceable and secure maintenance of our website (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR), and in the case of employees, in conjunction with § 26(1) BDSG. Visitors to the website are not affected by this.

Your data is only passed on to the extent necessary to fulfil the purposes described above. Recipients are:

• our hosting and infrastructure provider, including media storage and application monitoring (operated in the EU),
• the provider of our mail server (Germany),
• the AI providers Anthropic and OpenAI for answering chat requests (USA),
• Google Analytics, exclusively where Statistics consent has been granted (Ireland/USA),
• the providers of external media (OpenStreetMap, YouTube, Vimeo), exclusively where consent to external media has been granted,
• in individual cases, public authorities and courts, to the extent we are legally obliged to do so.

Data processing agreements in accordance with Art. 28 GDPR have been concluded with all processors. Transfers to third countries are made only on the basis of an adequacy decision or appropriate guarantees pursuant to Art. 46 GDPR, in particular the standard contractual clauses of the European Commission. A copy of these guarantees can be requested using the contact details provided above.

• Error log of requested but unfound addresses: until resolved, at most for the duration of the evaluation period; without IP address.
• Contact enquiries: until final processing of your matter, thereafter only within the scope of statutory retention obligations.
• Applications: as a rule until six months after conclusion of the process.
• Chat analysis: automatic deletion after 90 days.
• Consent cookie: 180 days.
• Google Analytics data: 14 months.

With regard to the personal data relating to you, you have the following rights:

• Right of access (Art. 15 GDPR),
• Right to rectification (Art. 16 GDPR),
• Right to erasure (Art. 17 GDPR),
• Right to restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR),
• Right to data portability (Art. 20 GDPR),
• Right to withdraw consent granted at any time with effect for the future (Art. 7(3) GDPR).

To exercise your rights, an informal notification to the controller named above or to our Data Protection Officer is sufficient.

Where we process personal data on the basis of legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR), you have the right to object at any time to such processing on grounds relating to your particular situation (Art. 21 GDPR). We will then no longer process the data concerned unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override your interests, rights and freedoms, or the processing serves the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.

Without prejudice to any other administrative or judicial remedy, you have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority if you consider that the processing of your personal data infringes the GDPR. The supervisory authority responsible for us is:

Der Landesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit Rheinland-Pfalz
Hintere Bleiche 34
55116 Mainz

For security reasons and to protect the transmission of confidential content, this website uses SSL/TLS encryption. You can recognise an encrypted connection by the fact that the address bar of your browser begins with "https://".

This privacy policy is dated July 2026 and is currently valid. As our website and our offerings develop, or as a result of changes in statutory or regulatory requirements, it may become necessary to update this privacy policy. The current version is always available on this page.