Privacy Policy

1. Contact & data protection officer

The controller within the context of the General Data Protection Regulation is

Good Search UG
Joachimstrasse 10
10119 Berlin Germany
mail@good-search.org

You can reach our data protection officer at mail@good-search.org or at our postal address with the addition “Data protection”.

2. Your rights

• You have the following rights with regard to your personal data:
• Right to information
• Right to rectification or erasure
• Right to restriction of processing
• Right to object to the processing
• Right to data portability
• You also have the right to complain to a data protection supervisory authority about the processing of your personal data by us.

3. Processing by external service providers

We sometimes use external service providers to process your data. These have been carefully selected and commissioned by us, are bound by our instructions and are regularly monitored.

4. Collection of personal data when visiting our website
If you use the website purely for information purposes without using the search function, we only collect the personal data that your browser transmits to our server. If you wish to view our website, we collect the following data, which is technically necessary for us to display our website to you and to ensure stability and security. The legal basis for the temporary storage of data is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR.

• IP address
• Date and time of the request
• Time zone difference to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
• Content of the request (specific page)
• Access status/HTTP status code
• Amount of data transferred in each case
• Website from which the request originates
• Browser
• Operating system and its interface
• Language and version of the browser software

The data is stored in the log files of our system. This data is not stored together with other personal data of the user. The data is deleted as soon as it is no longer required to achieve the purpose for which it was collected. If the data is stored in log files, this is the case after seven days at the latest.

Storage beyond this period is possible. In this case, the IP addresses of the users are deleted or anonymized so that it is no longer possible to identify the accessing client.
In addition, cookies are stored on your computer when you use our website. See below and section 5.

We collect anonymous data in order to identify and rectify errors and problems with GOOD products and services. This data includes data in connection with program crashes. We use several third-party providers to collect error logs. When using the GOOD website, various non-personal data necessary for the implementation is stored in encrypted form on the technical infrastructure of the third-party provider for a limited period of time.

5. Cookies

Cookies are small text files that are stored on your hard disk assigned to the browser you are using and through which certain information flows to the body that sets the cookie (here by us). Cookies cannot execute programs or transmit viruses to your computer. They serve to make GOOD more user-friendly and effective overall.

We set one or more persistent cookies to save the user’s settings and to make our website more user-friendly, to analyze user behavior and, if necessary, to carry out web analytics (see below) or A/B testing (see below). The legal basis for the processing of personal data using cookies is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR.

Persistent cookies are automatically deleted after a specified period, which may vary depending on the cookie. You can delete cookies at any time in the security settings of your browser.
You can configure your browser settings according to your wishes and, for example, refuse to accept third-party cookies or all cookies. Cookies that have already been saved can be deleted at any time. This can also be done automatically. You may not be able to use all the functions of this website to their full extent if you deactivate cookies for our website.

6. GOOD Mobile App

The GOOD app provides another way to access the GOOD platform. Accordingly, we use your data within the app as if you were accessing GOOD via our website. This applies, for example, to the use of your data and cookies, which are used for the same purposes and on the same legal basis. The statements in this privacy policy apply accordingly to the mobile applications.

We reserve the right to use a secure and fully encrypted analytics service to analyze and continuously optimize the use of our app. We can use the statistics collected to improve our offering for you as a user. The legal basis for this processing of your personal data is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f of the General Data Protection Regulation.

In addition to the data described under 7.e., we collect the following data when you use our app

• Usage statistics of the app, e.g. on which interface elements are interacted with
• Data about your app or end device, e.g. name of the device, manufacturer, model, operating system version, app version or SDK version and device number (IMEI)

The GOOD app may use your location data in anonymized or pseudonymized form if you have allowed access to this data on your device. We use the location data to offer you a better user experience in connection with GOOD or to provide you with more relevant search results or advertising. Personal data, e.g. name, address or date of birth, is not collected, stored or transmitted.

This data is anonymized after a short period of time, usually within seven (7) days. The anonymized data is stored for as long as is necessary for the evaluation. The data is not transmitted to third parties. We do not access your data outside the app, e.g. your calendar, photos, messages, unless you have given us permission to do so.

7. Special forms of use of the GOOD website

a. Search

GOOD is a search supported by third-party providers. When a search is performed with GOOD, data is transmitted to Brave. Brave is operated by: Brave, Inc, 580 Howard St. Unit 402, San Francisco, CA 94105 (hereinafter: Brave) to display search results and prevent fraudulent activities. The following data is transmitted to Brave when a search query is made: IP address, user agent string, search term, country and language settings, filter settings for adult content, active search filter settings (e.g. filter search results by time). Brave is a data-saving search that works in accordance with the requirements of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

b. Content from third-party providers

Our blog posts and news feed may include content from third-party providers, which in some cases collect and store personal data. These “embeddings” are not provided by GOOD but by a third-party provider, in the case of Good News by the Good Impact Foundation, Friedrichstraße 171, 10117 Berlin, and are integrated into our news feed or blog posts. These are, for example, YouTube videos, Facebook or Instagram posts and feeds or Twitter posts. Through these embeddings, the third-party provider can access your data to the same extent as when you visit the third-party provider’s site directly. For example, if you visit a blog post with an embedded YouTube video, YouTube will have access to your IP address and other data. In such cases, GOOD has no control over what data is collected and stored or what happens to this data. The use of personal data by integrated third-party content is therefore not covered by this privacy policy but by the privacy policies of the relevant third-party provider.

c. Newsletter

You can subscribe to our newsletter, which we use to inform you about the projects we support and other updates. We use the newsletter distribution platform “Mailchimp” to send our newsletter. Mailchimp is operated by The Rocket Science Group, LLC, 675 Ponce de Leon Ave NE, Suite 5000, Atlanta, GA 30308 USA.
We use the so-called double opt-in procedure to subscribe to our newsletter. This means that after you have registered, you will receive an email to the email address you have provided asking you to confirm that you wish to receive the newsletter. If you do not confirm your registration within 24 hours, your information will be blocked and automatically deleted after one month. The purpose of this procedure is to be able to prove your registration and, if necessary, to clarify any possible misuse of your personal data.

Your data will be stored:

• The email address to which you would like the newsletter to be sent
• The time and IP address of your registration in order to be able to trace any misuse of the email address of a data subject at a later date
• Technical information that is important for display (e.g. browser), as well as data to improve the service (e.g. access time)
• Data for statistical surveys, such as opening the newsletter and your click behavior on links in the newsletter

We explicitly do not pass on your e-mail address to third parties. MailChimp is certified under the US-EU data protection agreement “Privacy Shield” and thus undertakes to comply with EU data protection regulations.

Your email address will be stored for as long as your subscription to the newsletter is active. The other data collected as part of your registration will generally be deleted after a period of 7 days.

You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time. You will find a link to do this in every newsletter. This also enables you to withdraw your consent to the storage of the personal data collected during the registration process.

We also draw your attention to the options for objecting to the collection of data for advertising purposes on the websites http://www.aboutads.info/choices/und http://www.youronlinechoices.com/ (for the European area).

d. Surveys

We use the “Typeform” platform to conduct our surveys. Surveys help us to adapt our offers even better to your needs. The legal basis for this processing of your personal data is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR. Typeform is operated by TYPEFORM S.L. Carrer Bac de Roda, 163, 08018 Barcelona, Spain. If you take part in a survey, the following data will be processed
Your answers

Data about your device, such as whether it is a smartphone or a desktop computer and which browser you use in order to be able to display the pages appropriately

• Your IP address
• Your email address, if applicable, if you have provided this for the purpose of participating in the survey
• At the same time, we use cookies for statistical surveys and to prevent misuse
• This data is stored for as long as is necessary to evaluate the survey, usually up to two years. After that they are deleted or anonymized. Data collected in connection with surveys is not passed on to third parties.

e. Search Widgets

We sometimes enrich the search results with additional information such as Wikipedia widgets, which we obtain from our partner Search Expander, c/o Cyberscape Media Ltd, 3rd Floor, 207 Regent Street, London, W1B 3HH, United Kingdom. You can find further information on data protection here: https://www.searchexpander.com/privacy-policy

f. A/B testing

We reserve the right to carry out analyses of user behavior by means of A/B testing. This allows us to show you our websites with slightly different content, depending on a profile assignment. This allows us to analyze and regularly improve our offer and make it more interesting for you as a user. The legal basis for this processing of your personal data is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR.

Cookies (see above) are stored on your computer for assignment to a test group. Assignment to the test groups is always random. For the analysis, we use the data collected by our web analysis service (see above).

Before the analyses are carried out, the IP addresses are further processed in abbreviated form so that they cannot be directly linked to individuals. The IP address transmitted by your browser is not merged with other data collected by us.

If you do not wish to participate in the tests, you can deactivate the collection of all usage data and the storage of the relevant cookies by activating the “Do Not Track” setting in your browser.

g. Online advertising (phasing out)

GOOD is in transition to an ad-free search engine. Our GOOD Plus offering already consistently dispenses with advertising and all associated tracking functions.

We are currently still working with the Bing Ad Network on GOOD. No data is passed on to this ad network (only to Bing, see above) when searching for and displaying an ad. Only when you click on an ad will the following data, among others, be sent to the ad network: the search term, your IP address, location, date and time of the search query and the browser configuration.

The ads are displayed via the Bing subsyndication partner Rise Code Ltd, Menachem Begin Road 121, Tel Aviv 6701203, Israel. They assign unique property and ad unit IDs to individual search queries, which are stored in a cookie and retrieved on future visits. These ID’s are used to track traffic metrics such as revenue and paid clicks as well as the quality of conversions for their advertisers. This enables Bing to show you more relevant ads from Bing or third parties from the Bing Ad Network, including based on previous searches. The legal basis for the aforementioned data processing is Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. f GDPR.

If “Do Not Track” is activated in your browser, the customer ID is automatically deactivated and not saved or sent.

Further details on data processing by the Bing Ad Network can be found here: https://privacy.microsoft.com/privacystatement

In addition, we use a price comparison tool provided by idealo internet GmbH, Zimmerstraße 50, 10888 Berlin, Germany.

h. Objection or revocation against the processing of your data

If you have given your consent to the processing of your data, you can withdraw this at any time. Such a revocation affects the permissibility of the processing of your personal data after you have expressed it to us.

Insofar as we base the processing of your personal data on a balancing of interests pursuant to Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR, you can object to the processing of your personal data at any time for reasons arising from your particular situation. In the event of your objection, we will examine the situation and will cease or adjust the data processing unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing that correspond to your interests, rights and freedoms, or the processing serves to assert, exercise or defend legal claims.

Of course, you can object to the processing of your personal data for advertising purposes at any time. No justification is required for this. This also applies to profiling insofar as it is associated with such direct advertising.

To assert an objection or revocation, you can contact our data protection officer at mail@good-search.org.
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Last updated: June 20, 2024