With effect from 24 May 2018

Gronda has set itself the task of helping every specialist and manager who works in the hotel and catering industry to exploit their full professional potential. To this end, we network the hospitality industry worldwide. Registered users share their professional identity, interact with their network, share knowledge and professional insights, publish and read relevant content and discover business and career opportunities.

When you use these services, you provide us with some information. Therefore, we want to be completely transparent and disclose what information we collect, how we use it, with whom we share it and what choices you have to access, update and delete your personal information.

That’s why we have this privacy policy. We tried to make you understand everything, without annoying legal English. If you have any further questions about our privacy policy, please contact us.

You should read our entire privacy policy, but if you have little time or want to remember something later, you can always take a look at this summary. This way you can familiarize yourself with some basics in a few minutes.

Basics of use of your information

Gronda GmbH is the data controller for your personal information provided, collected or processed in connection with our services. As a visitor or user of our services, the collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information is subject to this Privacy Policy, our Cookie Policy and the User Agreement that you enter into with us.

Your country only allows us to use your personal information if certain conditions are met. These conditions are called “legal bases”, and at Gronda we usually rely on one of the following three:

• One reason we may use your information is that you have a contract with us. For example, if you register with us, you agree to the user agreements and we must use your information to fulfill our services defined there.
• In some cases, we may ask for your consent to use your information in a certain way. If we do, we will ensure that you can revoke your consent under our services or through the permission settings of your device. Even if we do not rely on your consent to the use of your information, we may ask for your permission to access information such as your contacts and location.
• Legitimate interest. Another reason we may use your information is that we or a third party have a legitimate interest in it. For example, we need to use your information to provide and improve our services, including protecting your account, submitting applications, providing customer support and helping us find friends and content that we think you like. Because most of our services are free, we also use some of the information about you to try to show you job ads that you find interesting. An important point about legitimate interest that needs to be understood is that our interests do not outweigh your right to privacy; therefore, we rely only on legitimate interest when we are convinced that the way we use your information does not materially affect your privacy or is expected of you or that there is a compelling reason to do so.
• Legal obligationWe may be required to use your personal information to comply with laws, such as when we need to respond to a legal process or take steps to protect our users. If we are asked to provide your account information as part of a legal process, we will, of course, inform you.

Data we collect

We collect three basic categories of data:

• Data you give us voluntarily
• Data we receive through your use of the Services.
• Data we receive from third parties.

We will explain these categories in more detail.

Data you give us voluntarily

When you use our services, we collect the information you voluntarily provide to us. For example, you will need to set up a Gronda account for most of our services. To do this, we need to store some important information about you, such as: your name, password, email address, phone number and personal URL.

So that others can find you and you can present yourself better, we also ask you to fill in your profile. Which information you publish in your profile, such as education, work experience, photo, location and knowledge, is up to you. However, such profile information helps you to make better use of our services, e.g. because it makes you more visible to recruiters. It is up to you to decide whether you want to post confidential information on your profile and make it public. Actually, it should be self-evident, but at this point once again the request: Do not add any personal information to your profile that you do not want to be publicly available.

For other services, such as commercial services, you may be required to provide your bank or credit card number and account information.

Of course, we also receive the information you send or publish via our services, e.g. stories and messages to your contacts or companies. Note that the users and companies to whom you send messages, posts and other content may store or copy such content at any time outside the platform. What applies to the Internet in general also applies to Gronda: Do not send messages and do not share content that should not be stored or shared by others.

It probably goes without saying, but we’ll point it out to you: We collect all information you voluntarily provide when you contact customer support or otherwise contact us.

Data we get through your use of the services

When you use our services, we collect information about which of the services you have used and how you have used them. For example, if you’ve looked at a particular story or applied for a job, we’ll know. We collect the following data:

• usage data. We collect information about your activities in our services. For example, we may collect information about:
  • the way you use our services, e.g. which jobs you view and which companies you click on, which posts you publish, whether you use our mobile app, which stories you view or which search queries you send.
  • the way you communicate with contacts, such as their names, the time and date of your communication, how many messages you exchange, with which contacts you exchange the most messages and how you use the messages (e.g. when you open a message).
• Data about content. We collect information about the content you create and publish, such as stories you create, how often they are viewed, what reactions there are to that content, and the metadata provided with the content.
  device data. We collect data from and about the device(s) you use. For example, we collect the following information:
  • • Data about hardware and software, such as hardware model, operating system version, device memory, advertising IDs, specific application IDs, installed apps, specific device IDs, browser type, language setting, battery charge level, and time zone.
    • Data about hardware and software, such as hardware model, operating system version, device memory, advertising IDs, specific application IDs, installed apps, specific device IDs, browser type, language setting, battery charge level, and time zone.
    • Data from device sensors, such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, compasses, microphones and if headphones are connected; and
    • Data about your WLAN and mobile phone connections, such as mobile phone number, provider and signal strength.

  Data about your WLAN and mobile phone connections, such as mobile phone number, provider and signal strength.

• Camera and Photos For many of our services we need to capture images, photos and other data from your camera and gallery. For example, you can’t upload stories if we can’t access your camera or photos.
• Location Data. When you use our services, we may collect information about your location. With your permission, we will also collect information about your exact location using GPS, wireless networks, wireless masts, wireless access points and other sensors.
• Like most online services and mobile applications, we can collect information about your activity, browser, and device using cookies and other technologies such as web beacons, web storage, and specific ad IDs. We reserve the right to use these technologies for data collection even if you use services offered by us through a partner, such as ads and commercial features. Most web browsers accept cookies by default. If you wish, you can usually remove or reject browser cookies using the device or browser settings. However, remember that the removal or rejection of cookies may affect the availability or functionality of our services. You can learn more about your controls and our use of cookies in our cookie policy. To learn more about how third parties use these technologies in our services, see the Third Party Analytics and Advertising Services section of this Privacy Policy.
• Log data. When you use our website, we also collect log data. Among other things, this data includes:
  • details about the way you use our services.
  • device data, e.g. web browser type and language.
  • access times.
  • pages accessed.
  • the IP address.
  • IDs from cookies or other technologies that your device or browser can uniquely identify
  • pages you visited before or after you surfed our website.

• Data we receive from third parties

  We may collect information that other users share about you while using our services. For example, if another user publishes a story connecting you, we can merge that data with your account.

  We also receive information about you from third parties when you use other services connected to us, such as Facebook when you register with your account.

  We also receive information from our partner companies when you use their services, such as the current application status.

  Our services are dynamic and we often introduce new functions. Therefore, it may be necessary to collect new information. If we collect other personal information or make material changes to how we use your information, we will notify you and may also modify this Privacy Policy.

  Data usage

  How we use your personal data depends on which services you use, how you use these services and which settings you choose. We use your information to provide you with our cool services and to make them more relevant and useful to you.

  Services

  We use your data to enable you to use our services. These include the following three main areas:

  Networking. We enable you to stay connected with colleagues, partners and other professional contacts. You can network with specialists and managers of your choice, exchange professional opportunities, knowledge and experience with them. So that your profile can be found, we can suggest other exciting users (e.g. users with the same job position) and you can invite other contacts to our network, we use the data from your profile and your activity. You also have the option of specifying your location so that we can suggest more users or jobs from your area. During the entire usage, of course, it is up to you who you follow, with whom you exchange information or with whom you invite to the network.

  Inspiration. We offer you the opportunity to keep up to date with all the news, events and ideas regarding professional topics that are important to you. You can also use our services to expand your professional knowledge and acquire new skills. We use the data we have about you (e.g. data you provide voluntarily, data collected by us as part of your use of our services and conclusions drawn by us from the data available to us) to show you relevant stories to which you can respond by comment or bookmark, for example. At the same time, we use your data to distribute stories you publish to other users and, if necessary, to notify them with your name and photo if you have published something.

  CareerOur services enable you to explore career paths and training opportunities, be found for career opportunities and discover career opportunities. People who are looking for new employees can find your profile as long as you have agreed to it in the settings and you can indicate what your current search status is. We use your data to show you suitable jobs and companies. When you or another user connects your profile or story to a company, we also use your information to show you and other users that you work for the company and what you have experienced there. In order to constantly improve our suggestions and make them even more relevant to you, we also use automated systems to collect and process information about you. Overall, the more current your profile is, the better we can network you with others and you can find better job offers.

  Communication

  We will contact you by e-mail, telephone, through messages published on our websites or apps, through messages to your Gronda account or through other means available through our services, including SMS and push notifications. To this end, we enable communication between you and other users or partner companies via job offers and news. We send you news regarding availability & use of our services, security and network updates, reminders, job suggestions and promotional messages from us and our partner companies. You can change what you want to receive at any time in the settings. Please note that you cannot opt out of receiving security and legal topics.

  Advertising

  We may target ads both within and outside our services to you, other users and visitors to our websites and measure their performance . To do so, we use data you voluntarily provide, such as your job position or location, data from your use of our services, such as search history and reputable stories, as well as data from advertising technologies, such as web beacons, pixels, tags, cookies and device identifiers. If we show you advertised stories or content that are very similar to un advertised stories, we will inform you with an appropriate marker.

  Marketing

  We use your information and content for invitations and communications to promote the growth of our membership and network, interaction with it and our services.

  Development of our services

  We use your information and feedback to develop our services and to provide you and other members with a better, more intuitive and personalized experience, to help our users grow and interact with our services.

  Customer Support

  We use your data including messages to investigate and resolve complaints and problems with our services.

  Statistics

  We use your data to generate and share aggregated insights that do not allow any conclusions to be drawn about you personally. This enables us to show usage trends and generate statistics about our users, their profession, the number of content provided or clicked on, or the demographic distribution of visitors to our services.

  Safety

  We use your information, including your communication, when we believe it is necessary for security reasons or to investigate possible breaches of our User Agreement or this Privacy Policy or to investigate an attempt to harm our members or visitors.

  Forwarding of data

  We may share information about you in the following ways:

  • To all users, our partner companies and the public. We may share the following information with all users, our partner companies, and the public:
    • Your profile data like your name, your work experience, your education and your profile pictures. Depending on your preferences, this information may also be visible to third parties inside or outside our services, such as visitors to our websites or users of third-party search engines.
    • Published stories and your comments on other stories can be found and viewed by users, visitors and third parties.
    • Reactions such as “fire” marks and consequences can also be viewed by users, visitors and third parties, but only in aggregated and anonymized form.
  • • All information you share about the profiles of companies on our services can be seen by these and other people who visit these profiles.
  • To other users. In addition to the public data, we may share additional data with other registered users:
    • Data about your use of our services, such as the number of fires collected, data of your followers.
    • Data about your reactions and activity, so we can inform other users when you respond to their stories, follow them or view their profile.
    • Data with which users can determine your connection to other users, such as shared followers or interests
    • Messages and follow-up requests you send to and receive from other users and your response to them
    • mentions about you or other users in stories that you publish or are mentioned in another story
  • To other partner companies. In addition to the public data, other data can be shared with other partner companies:
    • Data that you have provided via application can be entered and saved by the partner companies.
    • Data about your reactions and activity with partner companies, so we can inform partner companies if you respond to their stories, follow them or have looked at their profile.
    • Messages you send to companies and your response to requests or messages received from partner companies
    • Data that you provide specifically for the job search, which you can manage in the settings if they can be found by companies.
    • Data that can be found by companies. Data on the use of a company profile. It is possible that your employer may invite you to connect and even manage a company profile, if you accept this we can provide information about your activity with the company profile to the partner company.
  • To Third Parties We may share your information with:
  • An Dienstleister We may share information about you with service providers who provide services on our behalf. These service providers support us, for example, in the analysis, marketing or the development and provision of our services. These service providers have access to your information to the extent reasonably necessary to perform the relevant functions for us and are required not to disclose or use your information for other purposes.
  • To business partners.We can share information about you with business partners who provide services and functionality.
  • To third parties for legal reasons We may share information about you if we reasonably believe that disclosure of the information is required:
    • • To comply with legal procedures, government requests, or applicable laws, regulations, or rules.
      • To investigate, settle or punish potential violations of the User Agreement.

    to protect the rights, property and safety of us, our users and others.

  • To detect and fix fraud attempts and security vulnerabilities.

If Gronda GmbH is involved in mergers, share sales, financing, liquidations, bankruptcy proceedings or takeovers of a part or all parts of our company by another company, we may, before and after the completion of the transacting business.

Third-party content and integration

Our services may contain links and search results from third parties, include third party integrations, or offer a service marketed with or by a third party. Through these links, third-party integrations and jointly marketed services or third-party services, you may submit personal information directly to the third party and/or to us. You acknowledge and agree that we are not responsible for the collection or use of your information by these third parties. Again, we recommend that you read the privacy policies of all third-party services you visit or use. This also applies to third parties with whom you have contact through our services.

Analysis and advertising staff

Provided by others

We may allow other companies to use cookies, web beacons and similar technologies in our services. These companies may collect information about your use of our services over time and combine it with similar data from other online services and providers. This information can be used, among other things, to analyze and track data, determine the popularity of certain content and better understand your online activities.

In addition, some companies use the information collected through our services to measure the effectiveness of advertising on our behalf or on behalf of others and to serve more relevant advertising, including on third-party websites and apps.

Provided by us

We may collect information about your activity on third-party services that use cookies and other technologies provided by us. We use this information to improve our advertising services. This includes measuring the advertising effectiveness of advertisements and displaying more relevant advertising.

Storage of data

We will keep your information for as long as your account exists or as necessary to provide you with our services. This includes data that you voluntarily give us data that others make available to us and data that was generated or derived by your use of our services. Even if you only use our services if you are looking for a new job every few years, we keep your information. Your profile will remain active until you close your account. In some cases we retain certain data, e.g. visits to job advertisements in anonymous or aggregated form.

Control your data

We give you many options for collecting, using and sharing your information, from deleting or correcting the information you provide in your profile and controlling the visibility of your profile to managing messages. You can manage these options in your settings.

We also provide the following options for your data:

• Change or correct data You can edit some of your data about your account. In certain cases, you may also ask for your information to be changed, updated or corrected, especially if it is incorrect.
• Restrict and revoke use of data If you allow us to use your information, you can change your mind later and simply revoke your permission. Change the settings of your device if it offers this function. In this case, however, you may no longer be able to use all functions for certain services.
• You can request a copy of your data and a copy of the data you provide in machine-readable form. Because your privacy is important to us, we may ask you to confirm your identity or provide additional information before you can access or update your information. We may also reject your request for a number of reasons, for example, if the request interferes with the privacy of other users or is unlawful. To retrieve your data, you can contact us using the contact information below.

• Delete dataOf course we hope you’ll stay with Gronda forever. However, if for any reason you wish to delete your account, you can request this from us via the contact options below. You can also delete individual information in the services themselves, such as stories you have published or information in your profile. Although our systems carry out deletion processes automatically, they can

Safety

We implement security measures such as HTTPS, which are designed to protect your data. We regularly check our systems for possible weak points and attacks. However, we cannot guarantee the security of the information you provide to us. There is no guarantee that data will not be accessed or disclosed, altered or destroyed as a result of a breach of our physical, technical and organisational security precautions.

International data transfer

We process data both inside and outside the EU and your country of residence. If we share information from you outside the EU, we will ensure that we use mechanisms provided by law to help you legally transfer information across borders. Please note that the countries in which we process data may have different laws that may not provide the same level of protection as the laws in your country.

Your right of objection

You have the right to object to our use of your information. For many types of data, we offer you the option of simply deleting them if you no longer want us to process them. For other types of data, we offer you the option of stopping the use of your data by completely deactivating the corresponding feature. You can therefore withdraw or refuse your consent to the use of your data at any time and, if we have collected and used data for legitimate reasons, object to this. Simply contact us using the contact information below. If there are other types of information you do not want us to process, you can also contact us. You can also contact our data protection officer if you have questions about the legal basis for collecting and using your data.

Minimum age

Our services are not intended for persons under 16 years of age. Therefore, we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under the age of 16. If we require the consent of a parent or guardian as a legal basis for processing your information, we may request this before collecting and using this information.

Changes

Gronda is free to make changes to this privacy policy. If we make material changes, we will notify you of our services or otherwise to give you an opportunity to review the changes before they take effect. If you do not agree to changes, you can delete your account. You acknowledge that your continued use of our services following the posting or notification of changes to our Privacy Policy will subject the collection, use and disclosure of your information to the updated Privacy Policy.

Contact information

If you have any questions or complaints regarding this policy, please contact us by email at info@gronda.eu. You can also reach us by post. If we have been unable to resolve your complaint by contacting you and you are based in the EU, you can file a complaint with the supervisory authority in your member state at any time. You can also contact our data protection officer at dpo@gronda.eu.