Data processing (Social Media)

Information on data processing in conformity with Art. 14 General Data Protection Regulation

As the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology and Epigenetics, Freiburg, as part of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science e.V. (MPG), takes the protection of your personal data very seriously. We process personal data collected when you visit our social media websites in compliance with the applicable data protection regulations. Your data will neither be published by us nor improperly disclosed to third parties. In the following, we inform you about which data is involved, how it is processed, and what rights you have in this regard. As the responsible party for these pages, we have entered into agreements with the operator of the respective social media platform, which, among other things, regulate the terms of use of the pages. The terms of use of the respective operator and the other conditions and guidelines listed there at the end are decisive.

1. Use of Insights and Cookies The operators of the social media platforms also provide us with usage statistics (so-called analysis services or page insights data) of our pages on the social media platforms based on the actions and interactions of our followers (e.g., likes, shares, comments, etc., number of followers, views of individual page areas, reach of a post, as well as statistics on followers by age, language, origin, or interests), which help us to connect with our followers and interested parties, to understand the use and reach of our posts, to evaluate content and recognize usage preferences, and to design our pages on the social media platforms to be as target-group-oriented as possible. We have no influence or access to the creation and processing of these usage statistics and the underlying data; this is the sole responsibility of the operator of the respective social media platform.

The information stored in the cookies is received, recorded, and processed by the operator of the respective social media platform. This also includes services provided by the operator or the operator group of social media platforms, as well as services provided by other companies that use the social media platforms and are visited by the user. In addition, other entities such as partners or even third parties may use cookies on the social media platforms to provide services to companies advertising on the social media platforms. For more information on the use of cookies by the operator, please refer to their [Cookie Policy](please insert the link here if available). 

2. Purposes of Data Processing The data you enter on our pages on social media platforms, such as comments, questions, videos, images, likes, public messages, job preferences and selections, etc., are published by the operator of the social media platform and are only used or processed by us for the purposes stated below. We reserve the right to delete content if this should be necessary. We may share your content on our page if this is a function of the website and communicate with you via the website. 

On the websites we operate, you will find links to other social media platforms. Links to the websites of social media platforms can be recognized, for example, by the respective company logo. By clicking on a link to a social media platform, a connection is established to the servers of the social media platform. This transmits that you have visited our website. In addition, further data is transferred to the provider of the social media platform. This includes, for example:   

  • Address of the website on which the activated link is located
  • Date and time of accessing the website or activating the link
  • Information about the browser used and the operating system used 
  • IP address

If you are already logged in to the corresponding social media platform at the time of activating the link, the provider of this social media platform may be able to determine your username and possibly even your real name from the transmitted data and associate this information with your personal user account on the social media platform. You can exclude this possibility of assignment to your personal user account by logging out of your user account beforehand

Contacting Us

You can contact us via some of our pages on social media platforms. We process your data to answer your inquiry and, if necessary, to send you the requested information material. Your data may be transmitted to the office responsible for your request. This office may also be a third party. Transmission will only take place if there is a data protection law authorization to transmit.   

If you send us an inquiry on the social media platforms, we may, depending on the required response, also refer you to other secure communication channels that guarantee confidentiality.   

You always have the option of sending us confidential inquiries to our address stated in the legal notice.   

Statistical Evaluations

The processing of the information is intended to enable us, as the operator of the social media page, to receive statistics (so-called page insights data) that the operator of the social media platform creates based on visits to our page. For example, this allows us to gain knowledge of the profiles of visitors who like our page or use applications of the page in order to provide them with more relevant content and to develop functions that might be of greater interest to them.

To better understand how we can better reach our interested users with our page, demographic and geographical evaluations are also created and made available to us based on the collected information. We can use this information to offer targeted, interest-based content without directly gaining knowledge of the visitor's identity. If visitors use social media platforms on multiple devices, the collection and evaluation can also take place across devices if they are registered visitors logged into their own profile.

The created visitor statistics are transmitted to us exclusively in anonymized form. We have no access to the underlying data in each case.

For more information on the processing of your personal data by the operator of the respective social media platform in the context of the creation and processing of usage statistics, please refer to the information on usage statistics on the following websites of the respective social media platform:   

No statistics are created for the social media platforms Mastodon and Bluesky.

3. Legal Basis of Data Processing

We operate these social media pages to present ourselves to users and other interested parties who visit our pages and to communicate with them. The processing of users' personal data is based on our legitimate interests in an optimized company and product presentation (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR).   

4. Recipients or Categories of Recipients

We do not pass on any data to third parties.

The servers of the social media platforms are located in the USA and other countries outside the European Union. The data may therefore also be processed by the provider of the social media platform in countries outside the European Union. Please note that companies in these countries are subject to a data protection law that generally does not protect personal data to the same extent as is the case in the member states of the European Union.   

Please note that we have no influence on the scope, type, and purpose of data processing by the provider of the social media platforms. For more information on the use of your data by the social media platforms integrated on our website, please refer to the privacy policy of the respective social media platform:   

5. Storage Period

The data is not stored by us.

6. General Information

6.1. Contact Details of the Responsible Party

The responsible party within the meaning of the General Data Protection Regulation and other national data protection laws as well as other data protection provisions is the   

Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology and Epigenetics (MPI-IE)
Stübeweg 51
D-79108 Freiburg Germany

Phone: +49 (0761) 5108-0
Mail: presse@ie-freiburg.mpg.de
Internet: https://www.ie-freiburg.mpg.de

as the operator of the following social media websites:

As the operator of these pages, we, the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology and Epigenetics, are jointly responsible with the operator of the respective social media platform within the meaning of Art. 4 No. 7 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):

  • Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. (Facebook, Instagram)
  • Google Ireland Ltd. (YouTube)
  • New Work SE (Xing)
  • LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company (LinkedIn)
  • X Internet Unlimited Company Ireland (X)
  • Mastodon gGmbH (Mastodon)

6.2. Contact Details of the Data Protection Officer

The data protection officer of the responsible party is

Data Protection Officer of the MPG Hofgartenstraße 8 D-80539 Munich Germany Phone: +49 (89) 2108-1554 datenschutz@mpg.de

6.3. Rights of Data Subjects

As a data subject whose personal data is collected within the scope of the aforementioned services, you have the following rights in principle, provided that no statutory exceptions apply in individual cases:

  • Right of access (Art. 15 GDPR)
  • Right to rectification (Art. 16 GDPR)
  • Right to erasure ("right to be forgotten") (Art. 17 para. 1 GDPR)
  • Right to restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR)   
  • Right to data portability (Art. 20 GDPR)
  • Right to object to the processing (Art. 21 GDPR)
  • Right to withdraw consent (Art. 7 para. 3 GDPR)   
  • Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority (Art. 77 GDPR). For the MPG, this is the Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision, Postfach 1349, 91504 Ansbach, Germany.   

7. Source of the Data

The data is not collected directly from the data subjects but is provided by the operator of the social media platform:

  • Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. (Facebook, Instagram)
  • Google Ireland Ltd. (YouTube)
  • New Work SE (Xing)
  • LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company (LinkedIn)
  • X Internet Unlimited Company Ireland (X)
  • Mastodon gGmbH (Mastodon
Web-View
Print Page
Open in new window
Estimated DIN-A4 page-width
Go to Editor View