Privacy Policy

Abroad American (this website, with the address: https://abroadamerican.com, also referred to as “we”, “our”, and “us”) is committed to safeguarding your privacy. Contact us at admin@abroadamerican.com if you have any questions or problems regarding the use of your Personal Data and we will gladly assist you.

By using this site or/and our services, you consent to the Processing of your Personal Data as described in this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy is a part of our Terms and Conditions; by agreeing to Terms and Conditions you also agree to this Policy. In the event of collision of terms used in Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, the latter shall prevail.

Definitions used in this Policy
Data protection principles we follow
What rights do you have regarding your Personal Data
What Personal Data we gather about you
How we use your Personal Data
Who else has access to your Personal Data
How we secure your data
Information about cookies
Contact information

Personal Data – any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.
Processing – any operation or set of operations which is performed on Personal Data or on sets of Personal Data.
Data subject – a natural person whose Personal Data is being Processed.
Child – a natural person under 16 years of age.
We/us (either capitalized or not) – Abroad American

We promise to follow the following data protection principles:

Processing is lawful, fair, transparent. Our Processing activities have lawful grounds. We always consider your rights before Processing Personal Data. We will provide you information regarding Processing upon request.
Processing is limited to the purpose. Our Processing activities fit the purpose for which Personal Data was gathered.
Processing is done with minimal data. We only gather and Process the minimal amount of Personal Data required for any purpose.
Processing is limited with a time period. We will not store your personal data for longer than needed.
We will do our best to ensure the accuracy of data.
We will do our best to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of data.

The Data Subject has the following rights:

Right to information – meaning you have to right to know whether your Personal Data is being processed; what data is gathered, from where it is obtained and why and by whom it is processed.
Right to access – meaning you have the right to access the data collected from/about you. This includes your right to request and obtain a copy of your Personal Data gathered.
Right to rectification – meaning you have the right to request rectification or erasure of your Personal Data that is inaccurate or incomplete.
Right to erasure – meaning in certain circumstances you can request for your Personal Data to be erased from our records.
Right to restrict processing – meaning where certain conditions apply, you have the right to restrict the Processing of your Personal Data.
Right to object to processing – meaning in certain cases you have the right to object to Processing of your Personal Data, for example in the case of direct marketing.
Right to object to automated Processing – meaning you have the right to object to automated Processing, including profiling; and not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated Processing. This right you can exercise whenever there is an outcome of the profiling that produces legal effects concerning or significantly affecting you.
Right to data portability – you have the right to obtain your Personal Data in a machine-readable format or if it is feasible, as a direct transfer from one Processor to another.
Right to lodge a complaint – in the event that we refuse your request under the Rights of Access, we will provide you with a reason as to why. If you are not satisfied with the way your request has been handled please contact us.
Right for the help of supervisory authority – meaning you have the right for the help of a supervisory authority and the right for other legal remedies such as claiming damages.
Right to withdraw consent – you have the right withdraw any given consent for Processing of your Personal Data.

Generally speaking, if you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Information you have provided us with

General Personal Data

This might be your e-mail address, name, billing address, home address etc – mainly information that is necessary for delivering you a product/service or to enhance your customer experience with us. We save the information you provide us with in order for you to comment or perform other activities on the website. This information most often includes, for example, the name and e-mail address you provide when filling out the Contact form or signing up for the Newsletter.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your e-mail address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website (most often in comments), you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (Exif GPS data) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website. More on Exif data.

Information automatically collected about you

In addition to any personally identifiable information or other information that you choose to provide to us on the website, we and our third-party service providers may use a variety of technologies, now and hereafter devised, that automatically collect certain web site usage information whenever you visit or interact with the website. This information may include browser type, operating system, the page served, the time, the source of the request, the preceding page view, and other similar information. We may use this usage information for a variety of purposes, including to enhance or otherwise improve the website and the user experience. In addition, we may also collect your IP address or some other unique identifier for the particular device you use to access the Internet, as applicable (collectively, referred to herein as a “Device Identifier”).

A Device Identifier is a number that is automatically assigned to your Computer or Internet connection, and we may identify your device by its Device Identifier. When analyzed, usage information helps us determine how our website is used, such as what types of visitors arrive at the website, what type of content is most popular, what type of content you may find most relevant and what type of visitors are interested in particular kinds of content and advertising. We may associate your Device Identifier or web site usage information with the personally identifiable information you provide, but we will treat the combined information as personally identifiable information.

This includes information that is automatically stored by cookies and other session tools. For example, your shopping cart information, your IP address, your shopping history (if there is any) etc. This information is used to improve your customer experience. When you use our services or look at the contents of our website, your activities may be logged. See the Information about cookies section below for more information.

Information from our partners
We gather information from our trusted partners with confirmation that they have legal grounds to share that information with us. This is either information you have provided them directly with or that they have gathered about you on other legal grounds. See the list of our partners here.

Publicly available information
We might gather information about you that is publicly available.

We use your Personal Data in order to:

provide our service to you. This includes for example registering your account; providing you with other products and services that you have requested; providing you with promotional items at your request and communicating with you in relation to those products and services; communicating and interacting with you; and notifying you of changes to any services.
enhance your customer experience;
fulfill an obligation under law or contract.

We use your Personal Data on legitimate grounds and/or with your Consent.

Newsletter and E-Mail

If you wish to sign up to receive our e-mail newsletter we ask for your e-mail address so that we can send our newsletter to you. We do not send you e-mail newsletters that you do not specifically ask to receive, and the lawful basis for our use of your personal information is your consent. You can unsubscribe from our newsletters at any time, by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of our newsletters.

If you send us an e-mail with questions or comments (via the Contact form or any other means), we may use your personally identifiable information to respond to your questions or comments, and we may save your questions or comments for future reference. For security reasons, we do not recommend that you send non-public personally identifiable information, such as passwords, social security numbers or bank account information, to us by e-mail. Further, we may send you e-mail under the following circumstances:

(a) if you request a particular service or sign up for a feature that involves e-mail communications;
(b) if it relates to purchases you have made with us (e.g., product updates, customer support, etc.);
(c) if we are sending you information about our other products and services;
(d) if you consented to being contacted by e-mail for a particular purpose;
(e) if you send us an e-mail, post information on the website (i.e., a blog) or otherwise submit information to us electronically, we may e-mail you to follow-up or otherwise communicate with you with respect thereto;
(f) to provide you legal notices or notices with respect to your use of the website; or
(g) to otherwise facilitate a transaction between us.

In certain instances, we may provide you with tools on the website that will allow you to set your preferences for receiving e-mail communications from us; that is, agree to some communications but not others. You may “opt out” of receiving future commercial e-mail communications from us by clicking the “unsubscribe” link or following the other instructions included at the bottom of most e-mails we send; provided, however, we reserve the right to send you transactional e-mails such as customer service communications. See the Privacy Tools page for more information.

If you opt to receive marketing emails from us we may use your identity and contact details to contact you periodically to keep you updated about changes to our website, our policies or the terms of use. We use your Personal Data in this way to allow us to comply with legal obligations (when changes to the law require changes to our terms) and for our legitimate interests to keep our records updated.

Public Forums & Chat

We may offer chat rooms (such as a Discord or IRC channel), message boards, bulletin boards or similar public forums where you and other users of our website can communicate. The protections described in this Privacy Policy do not apply when you provide information (including personally identifiable information) in connection with your use of these public forums. We may use personally identifiable and non-personal information about you to identify you with a posting in a public forum. Any information you share in a public forum is public information and may be seen or collected by anyone, including third parties that do not adhere to our Privacy Policy. We are not responsible for events arising from the distribution of any information you choose to publicly post or share through our website.

On the grounds of entering into a contract or fulfilling contractual obligations, we Process your Personal Data for the following purposes:

to identify you;
to provide you a service or to send/offer you a product;
to communicate either for sales or invoicing.

On the ground of legitimate interest, we Process your Personal Data for the following purposes:

to send you personalized offers (from us and/or our carefully selected partners);
to administer and analyze our client base (purchasing behavior and history) in order to improve the quality, variety, and availability of products/ services offered/provided;
to conduct questionnaires concerning client satisfaction.

As long as you have not informed us otherwise, we consider offering you products/services that are similar or same to your purchasing history/browsing behavior to be our legitimate interest.

With your consent we Process your Personal Data for the following purposes:

to send you newsletters and campaign offers (from us and/or our carefully selected partners);
for other purposes we have asked your consent for.

We Process your Personal Data in order to fulfill obligation rising from law and/or use your Personal Data for options provided by law. We reserve the right to anonymize Personal Data gathered and to use any such data. We will use data outside the scope of this Policy only when it is anonymized. We save your billing information and other information gathered about you for as long as needed for accounting purposes or other obligations deriving from law, but not longer than two years.

Additional Purposes for Processing Personal Data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue. For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

We might process your Personal Data for additional purposes that are not mentioned here, but are compatible with the original purpose for which the data was gathered. To do this, we will ensure that:

the link between purposes, context and nature of Personal Data is suitable for further Processing;
the further Processing would not harm your interests and
there would be appropriate safeguard for Processing.

We will inform you of any further Processing and purposes.

Usage of Non-Personal Data

We use non-personal information in a variety of ways, including to help analyze site traffic, understand customer needs and trends, carry out targeted promotional activities and to improve our services. We may use your non-personal information by itself or aggregate it with information we have obtained from others. We may share your non-personal information with our affiliated companies and third parties to achieve these objectives and others, but remember that aggregate information is anonymous information that does not personally identify you. We may provide our analysis and certain non-personal information to third parties (who may in turn use this information to provide advertisements tailored to your interests), but this will not involve disclosing any of your personally identifiable information.

We do not share your Personal Data with strangers. Personal Data about you is in some cases provided to our trusted partners in order to either make providing the service to you possible or to enhance your customer experience. In certain instances we may also share your personally identifiable information with our third-party vendors performing functions on our behalf (or on behalf of our affiliated companies) – e.g., vendors that process credit card orders, deliver our merchandise, administer our promotions, provide us marketing or promotional assistance, analyze our data, assist us with customer service, etc.

Our vendors agree to use this information, and we share information with them, only to carry out our requests. In addition, we may share your personally identifiable information with participating sponsors to a program or promotion (e.g., a sweepstakes or contest) you enter via our website, and with third parties who assist us in using the content or other information you have posted or shared with us via the website (e.g., production companies we may use). Further, we may share your personally identifiable information with third parties such as our co-promotional partners and others with whom we have marketing or other relationships.

We share your data with:

Our processing partners:

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service (e.g. Akismet Anti-Spam, etc.).
- From Akismet: “We collect information about visitors who comment on Sites that use our Akismet anti-spam service. The information we collect depends on how the User sets up Akismet for the Site, but typically includes the commenter’s IP address, user agent, referrer, and Site URL (along with other information directly provided by the commenter such as their name, username, e-mail address, and the comment itself).”

Our business partners:

None at this time.

Connected third parties:

None at this time.

We only work with Processing partners who are able to ensure adequate level of protection to your Personal Data. We disclose your Personal Data to third parties or public officials when we are legally obliged to do so. We might disclose your Personal Data to third parties if you have consented to it or if there are other legal grounds for it.

Embedded Content

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

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

Third Party Links

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share information about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.

We do our best to keep your Personal Data safe. We use safe protocols for communication and transferring data (such as HTTPS). We use anonymizing and pseudonyms where suitable. We monitor our systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks.

We have implemented security measures we consider reasonable and appropriate to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control. Please be advised, however, that while we strive to protect your personally identifiable information and privacy, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you disclose or transmit to us online and are not responsible for the theft, destruction or inadvertent disclosure of your personally identifiable information. In the unfortunate event that your “personally identifiable information” (as the term or similar terms are defined by any applicable law requiring notice upon a security breach) is compromised, we may notify you by e-mail (at our sole and absolute discretion) to the last e-mail address you have provided us in the most expedient time reasonable under the circumstances; provided, however, delays in notification may occur while we take necessary measures to determine the scope of the breach and restore reasonable integrity to the system as well as for the legitimate needs of law enforcement if notification would impede a criminal investigation. From time to time we evaluate new technology for protecting information, and when appropriate, we upgrade our information security systems.

If you have an account with us, note that you have to keep your username and password secret.

Children

We do not intend to collect or knowingly collect information from children. We do not target children with our services.

We use cookies and/or similar technologies to analyze customer behavior, administer the website, track users’ movements, and to collect information about users. This is done in order to personalize and enhance your experience with us. A cookie is a tiny text file stored on your computer. Cookies store information that is used to help make sites work. Only we can access the cookies created by our website. You can control your cookies at the browser level. Choosing to disable cookies may hinder your use of certain functions.

As you come to the site, your computer hands its “cookie” to our server so we know whether you have been here before. Cookies are how we save your password and other information on site so you don’t have to re-enter your details each time you visit. Cookies also allow us to track your clicks as you go through the site; information supplied by cookies can help us to provide you with a better service and tell us more about our visitors.

Abroad American website uses cookies to tell us whether you have visited us before, which pages you look at on our website, your journey around the website, and whether you came from a particular Internet link or banner advertisement. For further information on cookies, please visit allaboutcookies.org.

Our use of cookies may allow us to identify you individually. Our use of information gathered by cookies is, however, necessary for our legitimate interests and so that we can:

For technical purposes, so our website functions properly.
To drive targeted advertisements from third-party to make suggestions and recommendations about goods or services which may be of interest to you.
To enable us to collect information about the browsing habits and activities of customers, so we can constantly improve our website and service.
To define types of customers for our products and services,
To develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy

Cookies are set by us and may also be set by third parties who participate with us in affiliate-marketing programs. Below is a more in-depth list of the types of cookies the website uses or might use in the future.

We use cookies for the following purposes:

Necessary cookies – these cookies are required for you to be able to use some important features on our website, such as logging in. These cookies don’t collect any personal information.
Functionality cookies – these cookies provide functionality that makes using our service more convenient and makes providing more personalized features possible. For example, they might remember your name and e-mail in comment forms so you don’t have to re-enter this information next time when commenting.
- If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, e-mail address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
- If you have an account and you log in to this site, 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 also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
- If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Analytics cookies – these cookies are used to track the use and performance of our website and services
Advertising cookies – these cookies are used to deliver advertisements that are relevant to you and to your interests. In addition, they are used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement. They are usually placed to the website by advertising networks with the website operator’s permission. These cookies remember that you have visited a website and this information is shared with other organizations such as advertisers. Often targeting or advertising cookies will be linked to site functionality provided by the other organization.

You can remove cookies stored in your computer via your browser settings. Alternatively, you can control some 3rd party cookies by using a privacy enhancement platform such as optout.aboutads.info or youronlinechoices.com. For more information about cookies, visit allaboutcookies.org.

Most modern browsers allow you to control your cookie settings for all websites that you browse. You can disable cookie deployment completely by editing your browser settings, however in doing this you may be limiting the functionality that is displayed on our website. To learn how to disable cookies on your preferred browser we recommend reading this advice posted by Google.

If you are concerned about cookies tracking your movements on the Internet then you may be concerned about spyware. Spyware is the name given to a particular band of cookies that track personal information about you. There are many anti-spyware programs that you can use to prevent this from happening. To learn more about anti-spyware software, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware.

Google Analytics

To see how our website is performing, see what products/services interest our users, to improve our website, marketing, customer relationships and experiences, we use the Google Analytics® service to monitor website traffic. This involves the collection of personal and other technical information about how you use our website. Our use of your personal information in this way is necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy).

We use Google Analytics to measure traffic on our website. Google has their own Privacy Policy which you can review here. If you’d like to opt out of tracking by Google Analytics, visit the Google Analytics opt-out page. You call also disable Google Analytics on all websites by downloading the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

At the suggestion of Google, Inc., we have included the following statement to explain about the service:

“This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.”

Google AdSense

We use Google AdSense to display ads on some of our pages. Google AdSense may use user data. You can review Google’s privacy policy regarding advertising here. That page also provides information on how to manage what information is collected and how to opt out of collection. Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to the website.

The DoubleClick cookie is used by Google in the ads served on the websites of its partners, such as websites displaying AdSense ads or participating in Google certified ad networks. When users visit a partner’s website and either view or click on an ad, a cookie may be dropped on that end user’s browser. Google’s use of the DoubleClick cookie enables it and its partners to serve ads to website users based on their visit to this and/or other sites on the internet.

You may opt out of the use of the DoubleClick cookie for interest-based advertising by visiting Ads Settings. You may be also interested to visit this page for instructions how to opt out of a third-party vendor’s use of cookies for interest based advertising.

The website may include subscription and registration management tools that allow you to make changes regarding your preferences for receiving communications. Regardless of whether these tools are available through the website, you may contact us as at admin@abroadamerican.com if: (a) you have questions or comments about our Privacy Policy; (b) wish to make corrections to any personally identifiable information you have provided to us; (c) want to opt-out from receiving future commercial correspondence, including e-mails, from us (we may continue to send you transactional messages such as responding to your inquiries); or (d) wish to withdraw your consent to our future sharing of your personally identifiable information with third parties for their direct marketing purposes.

We will respond to your request and, if applicable and appropriate, make the requested change in our active databases as soon as reasonably practicable. Please, note that we may not be able to fulfill certain requests while allowing you access to certain benefits and features of the website. Also, please note that it is not always possible to completely change, remove or delete all of your information from our databases and that residual data may remain on backup media or for other reasons. Also, if you have made any public postings on the website such as in forums or blogs, these communications are generally not removed by us.

Data Protection Officer
If you have any questions regarding Processing your Personal Data, your rights regarding your Personal Data or this Privacy Policy, contact our Data Protection Officer, Thomas Scriba, at admin@abroadamerican.com

Supervisory Authority
E-Mail: poststelle@bfdi.bund.de
Phone: +49 228 997799 0

We reserve the right to make change to this Privacy Policy.
Last modification was made August 6, 2018.

Privacy Policy

Table of Contents

Definitions

Data Protection Principles

Data Subject’s rights

Data we gather

How we use your Personal Data

Who else can access your Personal Data

How we secure your data

Children

Cookies and other technologies we use

Contact Information

Changes to this Privacy Policy