last updated: 4 April 2023

privacy policy

regarding the website: www.hub-international.org, and the purchase of e-books on this website

IN SHORT

easy town projects have a no tracking and minimum data collection policy.

Whatever data is needed to process your communications, or your orders, will be solely used for those purposes, and your data will be deleted when our transactions are completed.

If you buy one or more e-books, some additional points apply, and you’ll find them in the paragraphs below.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

How to buy an e-book with the least data processing involved?

Use the option: pay directly via bank transfer

If you want to avoid all third-party payment methods and automated data collection, you can transfer the sum of your purchases directly to the account: easy town books, Ellen Paschiller.

In that case, the only data transfer will be between your bank and the Ethik Bank, and between you and easy town books.

You name, address and email will be used solely to process your order.

Find out more about pay directly >

note: Ellen Paschiller uses the pen-name Charlie Alice Raya for all their work.

GENERAL POINTS


Responsibility for your private data


easy town books, Ellen Paschiller is responsible for the safety of your private data and for ensuring that this privacy policy as well as any actions regarding your private data comply with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

easy town books, Ellen Paschiller
Meininger Straße 7, 10823 Berlin, Germany
ellenpaschiller@easy-town.org


Contact


If you have any questions or concerns about the safety of your personal data or about this privacy policy, you can send your questions or concerns via the contact form below, directly to privacy@easy-town.org, or via post to:

easy town books, Ellen Paschiller
Meininger Straße 7, 10823 Berlin, Germany

contact – privacy policy

Using a contact form


When you send an email via a contact form, only your email address is required to answer your message.

Your message(s) sent via a contact form will be stored on this website’s server for a maximum of 72h. This measure ensures that no message(s) get lost in a spam folder.

Your message will be transmitted via TLS.

Your email address will only be used to answer your message. After the correspondence is concluded, your email(s) and your data will be deleted within a week.

Concluded means that all the issues you presented in your message(s) have been addressed.

Email addresses will not be stored for future use or shared with third parties, unless there are legal reasons to do so.


Downloading a free pdf


All free downloads, such as the Fine Art Prints catalogue or 42 towns and counting, can be downloaded without transmitting any data.

The statistics programmes WP Statistics and Statify only register that someone visited a download page but not whether a file has been downloaded. IP addresses are anonymised. Only the date, town, country, browser, referrer and number of hits are identified.


Buying an e-book


The application used to process your e-book purchases will record pages visited and content viewed while your session is active.

Any e-book you add to your basket will be recorded so that it can be displayed on the checkout page.

On the checkout page, you have the option to make a note of the final sum of your purchases and proceed to the page: pay directly via bank transfer, or you choose to pay via PayPal.

If you choose to pay via PayPal, personal information about you will be collected during the checkout process.

This personal information may include, but is not limited to:

  • your name
  • billing address
  • email address
  • credit card/payment details
  • and any other details that might be requested from you for the purpose of processing your payment.

This data is collected to

  • send you order information
  • respond to your queries, refund requests, or complaints
  • process payments
  • prevent fraudulent transactions
  • provide technical and/or customer support
  • verify your identity.

If you place an order, or if taxes need to be estimated, the application will check your location and traffic data (including IP address and browser type).

Once the payment process is completed, you will be redirected back to the easy town books website and your download link will be displayed. In addition you will receive an email with your download link.

It is not possible to create an account on the easy town books website for future orders. Your customer data recorded by the download application will be deleted within seven days. This also means that your download link will expire after 7 days.

Find more information about payment options below.


Supporting the easy town projects


It is up to you how much personal data you want to share when supporting the easy town projects.

When you do share personal data, you can indicate whether your data should be deleted within seven days after the reception of your data, or whether it should be kept for further cooperation.

Whenever financial transactions are involved, a copy of those transactions will be kept for tax purposes.

In no event will your personal data be shared with third parties unless legal actions are required.

PAYMENT METHODS


pay directly via bank transfer


If you use the option pay directly via bank transfer, only a minimum of data will be processed.

  • your email
  • your full name and address

Your email is required to correspond with you concerning your order.

Your email will be deleted after all transactions are completed.

Your name and address are required for your invoice, and to determine which VAT applies.


Purchasing via PayPal


If you buy one or more e-books via PayPal, your data for the invoice will be processed on this website. This includes:

  • full name
  • full address
  • email address

All personal data processed on this website will be deleted within 7 days after the payment has been confirmed, and only a copy of your invoice will be saved offline.

As soon as you are redirected to PayPal, their privacy policy applies.

If you don’t have an account with PayPal, you can log in as a guest.

Once the payment is completed, PayPal will redirect you back to this website where the download link for e-book will be displayed. You will also receive an email with the download link(s).

Two copies of your invoice will be saved on an external and password-protected hard drive (one copy for tax, one for VAT).

In accordance with German law, the invoices will be stored for ten years.

Your data from the invoice will not be analysed, used or shared. It will merely be stored unless legal actions are required.

No unauthorised person has access to this data.


Customer Feedback


Customer feedback is anonymised to protect the customer’s privacy.

You could argue that that makes the feedback less convincing, but if I wanted to fake feedbacks, ratings or comments, I could invent names too.

If you send a feedback or a rating your message or part of your message might be used on this website or another easy town website.

If your message is not in English, a translation might be used.

Your email and/or any other personal data will be deleted unless legal actions are required.

It’s not happening yet, but at some point a witness routine will be included. That means two other people will see the original statement/message/feedback/rating before it gets online and before the original is deleted. This is purely for credibility reasons.


Comments


You can send a comment or review via email.

Either will be anonymised on receipt, and your email and/or any other personal data will be deleted unless legal actions are required.


Cookies, tracking, profiling, analysing, Google, social media


This website doesn’t use third-party cookies. It doesn’t track, profile or analyse any data. This website doesn’t use any Google tools, ad providers or social media links.

If you buy an e-book, cookies will temporarily store the information about which e-book you chose.

The purpose of this cookie is to remember which article(s) you chose so that these article(s) can be displayed in your checkout table and in your invoice.

There is no tracking or analysing involved.

Saying all this, if you are logged into your Google, Facebook or a similar account, while visiting this website, those companies will collect data about your activities on this website, unless you have changed your privacy settings in your account in a way that doesn’t allow for tracking.


Embedded content from other websites


This website doesn’t use any embedded content from other websites unless it is from another easy town website.


Statistics


When you use this website to read about the series or choose an e-book, some anonymised data will be collected by the two statistics programmes which run on this website: Statify and WPStatistics.

Statify doesn’t collect any personal data and only counts visits. It also deletes all data older than fourteen days automatically.

Statify collects the following anonymised data:

  • hits per page / post
  • top referrers

WPStatistics collects the following anonymised data:

  • online users
  • hits
  • visitors
  • pages / posts visited
  • search engine referrals / search words
  • agent / browser / platform / version
  • referring sites
  • country / city
  • date
  • anonymised IP

This means, your visits to this website are anonymous unless you purchase an e-book, or send an email.

Why use a statistics programme? Or two. Apart from monitoring and documenting the strange behaviour of some IP addresses (which usually belong to a pack of IPs used by one of the big tech giants, it’s also interesting and helpful to see which pages and posts get the most attention, and which countries have joined the readers of this website.

Data collected by WPStatistics is saved on this website and usually not older than a year. However some data is kept beyond a year to document above mentioned behaviour.


Hosting


This website is hosted by the Strato AG. Strato saves your IP-address in a log file when you visit this website.

Your IP-address will be kept for a maximum of seven days. This measure helps Strato to recognise and block attacks on the server.

In addition Strato keeps a statistic about the website. IPs are anonymised.

Strato is responsible for your data, and the Strato AG confirmed that it will treat your data in compliance with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).


Sharing your data


There are only two cases in which data will be shared:

a) If legal actions are required in one or more of the following cases:

  • copyright violations
  • legal disputes
  • fraud
  • harassment
  • offence
  • and any other case which might require legal actions,

b) and if the tax authorities require to see the invoices.

Other than that, there will be no sharing of data.


For how long is your data retained?


Messages and forms will be deleted as soon as our correspondence or your purchase is completed. Usually within seven days.

Two copies of your invoice will be saved on an external hard drive for ten years in accordance with the German Tax Law.


Your rights


With your copy of the invoice, you have copies of all the data that is stored when you purchase an e-book.

If you wish to view, correct, object, limit, or transfer any of this data, please send your request to privacy@easy-town.org.

Due to legal obligations, your invoice cannot be deleted before ten years have passed.


How is your data protected?


This website uses TLS to ensure the safe transmission of your data. The use of https:// instead of http:// and the lock-symbol indicate that TLS is active.

All invoices are stored on an external and password-protected hard drive.

As the easy town projects grow, this will probably be reorganised over the next years to ensure the lasting safety of your data.