The protection of your privacy is extremely important to us. This data protection declaration provides information on how and for what purpose we process personal data and explains the rights to which you are entitled. Blumble is owned and operated by Blaze Limited Hong Kong. As part of our commitment to protecting user data and their privacy, Blumble upholds all European data protection provisions in order to provide maximum protection to its users.

Data protection declaration version date: 29/01/2021

1. Contact & data protection officer

In relation to the General Data Protection Regulation (DSGVO), the organisation responsible is:

Blaze Limited
Tower 5, 33 Canton Road
China Hong Kong City Building
Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon,
Hong Kong

Our Data Protection Officer can be contacted at info@blumble.com.

2. Your rights

You have the following rights with respect to us regarding the personal data relating to you:

• Right to information
• Right to correction or deletion
• Right to restriction of processing
• Right to refuse processing Right to data transferability
• In addition, you have the right to complain to a data protection supervisory authority regarding our processing of your personal data.
  
  
  

3. Processing by external service providers

In some cases, we avail of external service providers to process your data. We select and commission these carefully, they are bound by our instructions and inspected on a regular basis.

4. Gathering of personal data while visiting our website

In the case of use of the website for purely informational purposes, if you do not – for instance, using our search function – provide us with information in any other way, we gather only the personal data which your browser transmits to our server. If you wish to view our website, we gather the following data, which we technically require in order to show you our website and to guarantee stability and security. The legal basis for the temporary storage of the data is Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. f of the General Data Protection Regulation.

• IP address
• Date and time of enquiry
• Difference between time zone and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
• Content of the request (specific webpage)
• Access status / HTTP status code
• Respectively transferred data quantity
• Website from which the request comes
• Browser
• Operating system and its surface
• Language and version of the browser software.
  
  

The data are saved in the logfiles of our system. This data can never be connected to other personal data of our users. The data are deleted once they are no longer required to achieve the purpose of your gathering. In the event that the data are saved in log files, this occurs at the most seven days later.

It is possible to save the data for longer than this. In this case, the users’ IP addresses are deleted or anonymised so that they can no longer be associated with the visiting client.

In addition, while you are using our website, cookies are saved on your computer. See below and section 4 in this regard.

We gather anonymous data in order to identify and gather errors and problems in Blumble products and services. These data include data in connection with program crashes. We use several third-party providers for the gathering of error logs. During the use of the Blumble’s website, various pieces of personal data that are necessary for the performance are saved on the technical infrastructure of the third-party supplier a limited period of time in encrypted form.

5. Cookies

Cookies are small text files which are saved on your hard drive assigned to the browser you have used and through which the location which the cookie sets (here by us) accrues specific pieces of information. Cookies cannot execute any programs or transmit viruses to your computer. They serve to make Blumble more user-friendly and more effective in general.

We set one or several persistent cookies in order to save the user’s settings and to make our website more user-friendly, to analyse user behaviour and as necessary carry out web analytics (see below in this regard) or A/B testing (see below also). The legal basis for the processing of personal data using cookies is Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. f of the General Data Protection Regulation.

Persistent cookies are automatically deleted after a specified length of time, which may differ from one cookie to another. You may delete the cookies in the security settings of your browser at any time. You may configure your browser setting the way you want it and e.g. refuse the acceptance of third-party cookies or all cookies. Cookies that have already been saved may be deleted at any time. This can also be done automatically. Please note that you may not be able to use all functions of this website within the full scope if you deactivate cookies for our website.

6. Mobile Apps

The Blumble app provides another means of access to the Blumble platform. Accordingly, we use your data within the app as if you were accessing Blumble via our website. This applies, for example, also to the use of your data and cookies, which will be used for the same purposes on the same legal basis. Thus, the statements made in the present privacy policy will apply to the app.

a. Additional use of app-specific data

We use a safe and fully encrypted analysis service, which we ourselves operate, in order to analyse and continuously improve the use of our app. Using the statistics obtained, we can improve our offering and design it in a more interesting way for you as a user. The legal basis for this processing of your personal data is Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. f of the General Data Protection Regulation.

Additionally to the data described under 7.g. we collect the following data when you use our app:

• Usage statistics of the app, e.g. which interface elements are interacted with
• Data relating to your app or your end device, e.g. the name of the device, its manufacturer, model, operating system number and app number or SDK version

The Blumble app may use your locational data in anonymized, respectively pseudonymized, form if you have allowed access to these data on your device. We use the locational data in order to give you a better Blumble experience or to show more relevant search results or advertising to you. Personal data such as names, addresses or dates of birth will not be collected, stored or transmitted.

This data is anonymised after a short space of time, generally 7 days. The anonymised data is saved for as long as is necessary for the evaluation. The data is not transferred to any third party. We will not access your data located outside of the app, such as your calendar, photos, messages or such like unless you have permitted us to do so.

b. Conversion tracking

We use several offerings of third-party providers to advertise our app on external websites and services. We have integrated third-party providers in our app which form a direct connection with the provider’s server to report a successful conversion. In relation to the data of the advertising campaigns, we can determine how successful the individual advertising measures are. By doing so, we can achieve a fair calculation of advertising costs. The legal basis for this processing of your data is Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. f of the General Data Protection Regulation.

We use the following conversion tracking services in the app:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy. Facebook has undertaken to uphold the EU-US Privacy Shield.

We do not have any influence on the scope and the further use of the data which are gathered by the third-party provider. Therefore, we inform you in accordance with what we know: Due to their involvement, the third-party provider receives the information that you installed our app due to an advertising campaign run through the third-parties network.

c. Push notifications

If you have correspondingly configured your mobile end device and have activated push notifications in the Blumble app, this will enable the Blumble app to send push notifications to your device, for example in order to provide you with information about us, about our planting projects, news or new functionalities or to send you system notifications.

You may easily revoke your consent to receiving push notifications at any time by deactivating them in the settings of the operating system.

7. Special forms of use of the Blumble website

a. Search

Blumble search is a search which is supported by third-party suppliers. If a search is carried out with Blumble, data are transferred to Bing. Bing is operated by: Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd, Carmanhall Road, Sandyford Industrial Estate, Dublin 18, Ireland (referred to below as: Bing). This is done in order to display search results and to prevent fraudulent activities. The following data are transferred to Bing during a search enquiry: 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 date).

Blumble also assigns a “Bing Client ID” in order to improve the quality of the search results. This value is a user-specific ID which enables Bing to deliver more relevant search results also based on previous searches. The ID is saved in the Blumble cookie and retrieved during future visits. In both cases, the legal basis for the processing of these data is Art. 6 Para. 1 S. 1 lit. f of the General Data Protection Regulation.

However, you have full control over the use of this “Client ID”. If “Do not track” is activated in your browser, the Client ID is automatically deactivated and neither saved nor sent. 

Microsoft/Bing is certified under the “Privacy Shield” US-EU data protection agreement and undertakes to uphold the EU data protection provisions. For information on data protection at Bing, go to: https://privacy.microsoft.com/privacystatement

b. Blog functions

We provide a blog in which we publish various posts on topics about our activities in order to circulate our website and its contents on the internet and to increase our visitor numbers.

When you are using our blog functions we collect and store personal information and usage data in order to improve the service as described under g. Web Analytics. The legal basis for this processing of your personal data is Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. f of the General Data Protection Regulation.

c. Content embeds

Blog posts may contain third-party embeds, which may in some cases collect and store personal data. These “embeds” are hosted by a third-party and embedded in our Blog. For example: YouTube videos, Facebook or Instagram posts and feeds or Twitter tweets that appear within a Blog post. These files send data to the hosting site just as if you were visiting that site directly. For example, when you load a Blog post page with a YouTube video embedded in it, YouTube receives data about your activity. Blumble does not control what data third parties collect in cases like this, or what they will do with it. The use of personal data by embedded content providers is not covered by this statement, but by the privacy policies of those sites or services.

d. Web analytics

We use a safe and fully encrypted web analysis service, which we ourselves operate, in order to analyse and continuously improve the use of our website. Using the statistics obtained, we can improve our offering and design it in a more interesting way for you as a user. The legal basis for this processing of your personal data is Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. f of the General Data Protection Regulation.

For this evaluation, cookies (see above) are saved on your computer and the following data are processed:

• IP address
• The website visited
• The website from which you arrived at the website visited
• The sub-pages visited following on from the website visited
• Access status / HTTP status code
• The length of time spent visiting the website
• The frequency of visits to the website
• Your click behaviour on the website
  
  

These data are anonymised after a short space of time, generally 7 days. The anonymised data are saved for as long as is necessary for the evaluation. The data are not transferred to any third party.

If you do not wish to take part in the tracking, you can deactivate the gathering of all usage data by activating the “Do not track” setting in your browser.

e. A/B testing

We additionally carry out analyses of usage behaviour by means of “A/B testing”. As part of this, based on the completion of a profile assignment, we can show you our websites with slightly varied content. Thus, we can analyse and continuously improve our offering, and make it more interesting for you as a user. The legal basis for this processing of your personal data is Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. f of the General Data Protection Regulation.

Cookies (see above) are saved on your computer for the purpose of allocation to a test group. Allocation to the test groups is always carried out on a random basis. We use the data gathered by our web analysis service (see above) for the evaluation. We save the information gathered in this way on our server in Germany only.

Before carrying out the analyses, the IP addresses are processed further in a shortened form, thus preventing direct traceability to any particular individual. The IP address forwarded by your browser is not amalgamated with other data we have gathered.

If you do not wish to take part in the tests, you can deactivate the gathering of all usage data and the saving of the relevant cookies by activating the “Do not track” setting in your browser.

8. Online advertising

Advertising on Blumble

At Blumble, advertisements are shown beside or above the search results. If you click on these adverts, we earn commission. We use this to pursue the interest in generating income which goes towards covering our ongoing costs. These adverts are provided by advertising networks.

We work with the Google Ad Network. During the search and simple display of an advert, no data are transferred to this advertising network. The following data, among others, are only sent to the advertising network when you click on an ad: the search term, your IP address, place, date and time of the search inquiry and the browser configuration.

Blumble also assigns a Google “Client ID” in order to improve the quality of the adverts. This value is a user-specific ID, which is saved in the Blumble cookie and retrieved during future visits.

This enables Google to display more relevant adverts from Google or third-party suppliers from the Google ad network for you, based in part on prior searches. The legal basis for the data processing referred to Art. 6 Para. 1 S. 1 lit. f of the General Data Protection Regulation.

For further details on the data processing of the Google Ad Network, go to: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites?hl=en

Monitoring the success of advertisements via Blumble on third-party provider platforms

We use several offerings of third-party providers such as Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Facebook Ads, in order to call attention to ourselves with the help of advertising tools on external websites. In relation to the data of the advertising campaigns, we can determine how successful the individual advertising measures are. By doing so, we pursue the interest in showing you advertising which is of interest to you, we can shape our website in a way which is more interesting for you and we can achieve a fair calculation of advertising costs.

In some places, Blumble allows third-party providers to set cookies in order to check the success of Blumble advertising campaigns.

Based on the marketing tools used, your browser automatically forms a direct connection with the third-party provider’s server. We do not have any influence on the scope and the further use of the data which are gathered by the third-party provider. Therefore, we inform you in accordance with what we know: Due to their involvement, the third-party provider receives the information that you visited the relevant website of our internet presence or clicked on one of our adverts.

If you are registered for one of the third-party providers’ services, it may assign the visit to your account. Even if you are not registered or you have not logged in, it is possible that the provider may find out your IP address and other identifying characteristics and save them.

The legal basis for this processing of your data is Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. f of the General Data Protection Regulation. You may prevent the participation in this tracking process in various ways:

• You may configure your browser setting the way you want it and refuse the acceptance of third-party cookies or deactivate cookies in general.
• By deactivating the interest-related adverts of the provider, which are part of the self-regulation campaign “About ads”, via the link http://www.aboutads.info/choices
• By deactivating the function “Facebook Custom Audiences” for logged-in users at https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=ads#_
  
  

For further information on data protection in third-party suppliers which we commission to measure the success of our advertising measures, go to:

• Google: http://www.google.com/intl/policies/privacy. Alternatively, visit the website of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) at: http://www.networkadvertising.org. Google has undertaken to uphold the EU-US Privacy Shield. https://www.privacyshield.gov/EU-US-Framework
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy. Facebook has undertaken to uphold the EU-US Privacy Shield.

We never integrate tracking scripts or pixels into Blumble search pages. Therefore, search data are never shared with third-party providers who are not directly connected with the provision of the search service.

9. Refusal or withdrawal of the consent to processing of your data

If you have granted your consent to the processing of your data, you can withdraw this at any time. Such a withdrawal influences the permissibility of processing of your personal data, on the basis that you have stated this to us.

Insofar as we support the processing of your personal data on a balancing of interests in accordance with Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. f of the General Data Protection Regulation, you may at any time refuse the processing of data about you for reasons which arise from your specific situation. In the event of a refusal, we will inspect the matter and will stop or adjust the data processing, unless we can provide compelling and legitimate grounds for the processing which outweigh your interests, rights and freedoms, or the processing serves to assert, exercise or defend legal claims.

Of course, you may refuse the processing of your personal data for advertising purposes at any time. No justification is required to do so. This also applies to profiling if it is connected with such direct advertising.

To assert a refusal or a withdrawal of consent, please contact our Data Protection Officer at info@blumble.com.