Privacy Policy

Expoport privacy policy

The protection of your personal data is of utmost concern to Expoport. Sharing of personal data is crucial for a social network to identify firends and colleagues suitable for targeted networking. However without protection of personal data, the intended networking will not work. It is our target to prevent the abuse of personal data.

In these terms and conditions on data protection Expoport would like to inform you about how Expoport treats your personal data and how you can exchange these data with other users of Expoport.
These terms and conditions supplement the General Terms and Conditions for using Expoport.

1. Basic Principles of Expoport for handling your Personal Data
Expoport shall collect, process and use your Personal Data in accordance with the laws and statutes on data protection of the Federal Republic of Germany and those of the European Union.
Expoport shall use your Personal Data solely to provide you the Expoport Services on the Internet for which you have registered. Expoport will never pass your Personal Data on to any third party, neither for advertising, nor for marketing or for any other purposes.

2. Definitions
The following terms used in these Terms and Conditions on Data Protection shall have the following meanings:
(1) "Personal Data" shall mean all data and/or information about your profession or your person.
(2) "Expoport Websites" shall mean all websites on which Expoport provides the Expoport Services.
(3) "Expoport Members" shall mean all registered users of Expoport on the Expoport Websites.
(4) "Expoport Services" shall mean all registration based services provided by Expoport on the Expoport Websites.
(5) "Registration Data" shall mean the Personal Data you are obliged to make available to Expoport in the registration process for the Expoport Services (mandatory fields).
(6) "Profile" shall mean the Expoport Website page where the Personal Data you have made available to Expoport is displayed in accordance with your specifications and your consent. This set of data shall be referred to as "profile data".
(7) Your postal address, telephone number, fax number, and email address shall shall be referre to as "Contact data".
(8) The data of your network, which may build up during your Expoport membership will be referred to as "network data".

3. What does Expoport know about you, what do you give Expoport and Expoport Members permission to do, and what happens with your Personal Data?

3.1 Registration Data
To functionalize the Expoport Services, Expoport needs to collect and process certain elements of your Personal Data in the course of the registration process. These are the the following data:
(1) Email
(2) Password
(3) First name
(4) Family name
(5) Country
(6) Company name

Your First name and your Familiy name will be visible for all visitors of Expoport as long as
(1) you are one of the three most recent registered members
(2) you contribute to Trade Show reports/comments
(3) you contribute to the boards.

The other registration data will be treated as follows:
# email address: you may choose in each individual case whether the email address shall be displayed to a specific other Expoport-Member or not (cf. 3.3 Your Profile, Contact Management);
# password: your password shall be never visible to any Expoport Member at any time. Expoport shall never disclose or pass your password on to any third party
# country: will be visible for members as part of your profile
# company name: will be visible to members as part of your profile.

3.2 Profile data
If you wish, you may provide additional information about yourself apart from the mandatory data on a voluntary basis, to allow other Expoport members to get to know you better and possibly encourage them to choose you as an appropriate business contact. At the moment Expoport allows for the following voluntary profile data:
(1)   your photo, which you can upload
(2)   your nutshell description (for example why you have registered, your interest in trade shows, your education, steps of your business career etc.)
(3)   your position (title) in the company
(4)   your function in the company
(5)   address
(6)   zip-code
(7)   city
(8)   telephone
(9)   fax
(10) homepage
(11) sex
(12) date of birth
(13) your favourite trade shows

The voluntary profile data you choose to provide to Expoport are accessible to all other Expoport members, except your birthday and your sex. Out of these data you can control visibility of your contact data (cf. 3.3 Profile and Contact Management). 

3.3 Profile and Contact Management
All Expoport members may access your profile and may see the information of your profile (except date of birth and sex), if you have not specified differently in "My Profile".

Access to the contact data can be controlled by yourself. The contact data include:
# email address
# postal address: street, no., cip - code, city
# telephone
# fax
You can block visibility of these contact data for all members of Expoport by going to the section "control privacy" in "My Profile" and activating there the box "show only general profile data".
Selectively you can unblock your contact data for several members like this: if you receive the request for contact from an Expoport member, and you confirm that request positively, then you unblock the contact data for this member to allow for contacting you.

You can change your profile data and the privacy setting anytime in "My Profile" to adjust for new circumstances.

3.4 Network data
Your profile exhibits for Expoport members the following network data:
# your confirmed contacts
# type of membership (planned: "member" or "premium member"
# group membership, if you have applied for a group, and if you are accepted by the moderator (planned)
# number of your contributions to boards and trade show reviews (planned)

4. Visibility of your profile to non-members of Expoport
Non-members cannot see your complete profile at no point in time. The following occasions make only your first name and your family name visible:
# as long as you are one of the three most recent members
# if you have contributed a trade show review/comment
# if you have contributed to the boards. 

5. Invitations
As a Expoport member you may invite others to join Expoport. Expoport shall process personal data collected in the course of the invitation solely for the invitation and shall not use it for any other purposes.
Please note that the recipient of your invitation will see your profile as far as you have made it accessible to Expoport members.

6. Search Functions
The Expoport services offer various possibilities to search for particular Expoport members. These various search functions may assist you, for example, in finding other Expoport members with similar interests. The search functions can also help you to initiate contact with other Expoport members who offer exactly what you are looking for. Thus, you can find the contacts you need - and systematically expand your personal network.

7. Newsletter, Status-Emails
Expoport regularly sends out newsletters or status emails (collectively hereinafter referred to as the "newsletter(s)") to all Expoport members. In these newsletters Expoport may inform you, among others, about new features on Expoport, or may provide you with specific personal statistics (i.e. the number of hits on your profile, whether you have new contacts to be confirmed and/or new private messages, etc.).

Furthermore, Expoport may present three (3) new members of Expoport to you in each newsletter.

You may choose to unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time by sending an email to the link provided at the end of each newsletter.

8. Cookies
After you have logged in to the Expoport services with your user name and password, Expoport uses cookies in order to identify you during the course of your session. A cookie will be stored on your computer. Upon the termination of your session the cookie will be automatically deleted. You can save this cookie on your computer to enable automatic login for subsequent sessions by activating the function: "Login automatically on this computer". The cookie will then store part of your login data in encrypted form. If you select automatic login, please be aware that this will then only be possible on the same computer on which the cookie was first saved, i.e. an automatic login on two (2) different computers is not possible.

9. Log Files
Each time you access a website from the Expoport websites, Expoport will save the following data in a log file (the so called "server log"):
# your IP address (by which your computer can be clearly identified),
# the name and IP address of the computer requesting the respective page from the Expoport websites (the so called "remote host computer"),
# the time, status, and amount of the transferred data, as well as the internet website from which you have reached the requested page of the Expoport Websites (the so called "referrer")
# the product and release information from your internet browser (the so called "user agent").

This log file will be stored by Expoport in the standardized "combined" log file format for the Apache Web server. Expoport uses the data from this log file in anonymous form without reference to your person for statistical purposes. In doing so, Expoport may analyze on which days and at which time the Expoport services are particularly frequented and how much data volume is created on the Expoport websites. Furthermore, by using the log file, Expoport can identify defects on the Expoport websites, such as defective hyperlinks or program defects, and thus continually improve the quality of the Expoport websites. Expoport does not attribute the website demands stored in the log file to specific individual users. However, Expoport reserves the right to review the log files from the last known IP address of an Expoport member where Expoport has reasonable cause to believe that the member is using Expoport services in breach of contractual agreements or the applicable legislation. In doing this, Expoport is protecting other Expoport members, the safety of Expoport members’ data, as well as Expoport websites and the Expoport services.

10. Under Age
Membership of Expoport services is reserved to persons, who have reached the legal age of 18. Parents and legal guardians are responsible for the protection of their children's privacy.

11. Changes to these Terms and Conditions on Data Protection
Expoport reserves the right to amend these Terms and Conditions on Data Protection, in the event that this becomes necessary due to gaps in these Terms and Conditions on Data Protection identified after their release, or in the event that it becomes necessary with respect to additional or amended services provided by Expoport. Expoport will notify you of any amendments to these Terms and Conditions on Data Protection by email to the email account you provided to Expoport in the course of your registration.

12. Accessibility of these Terms and Conditions on Data Protection
These Terms and Conditions on Data Protection are accessible under the link "Privacy Policy".

Version: 23.05.2008