Privacy Statement Social Media

We have established and operate openly accessible presences in various social networks. While visiting these presences your personal data will be processed not only by us but also by the provider of the respective social network. Besides us, the provider generally acts as the controller for the collection and further processing of your personal data on the respective social network, e.g., through its websites and apps. If you use and/or contact us through our social media presence (e.g., social media page or social media channel) the provider will process your personal data. Please note that this also applies if you have no user account on the social network or are not logged into an existing account when visiting or using our social media presence.

You are not legally or contractually obliged to make your personal data available to us. However, to be able to use all functionalities of the social networks in general and of our social media presence in particular your personal data may be needed. Otherwise, certain functionalities might not be or only to a limited extend be available to you.

Information on the processing of personal data by the provider of the respective social network can be found in their privacy policy which we have linked in the section „Additional information regarding the individual social networks“ of this Data Protection Information. These links may be updated from time to time.

As the operator of our social media presences, we can only view your public profile on the respective social network. Which of your information on your profile is visible to us depends on the chosen privacy settings in your profile. Further information on the privacy settings can be found in the respective privacy sections of the social networks.

We process your personal data (such as your name and the content of your messages, inquiries or other postings directed to us) when you contact us via our page on the respective social network. We then process this data for the purposes of handling and, if applicable, responding to your postings and/or messages directed to us.

Furthermore, the provider of the respective social network may provide us with so-called page insights data and/or analytics. This data are anonymous statistics that we use to evaluate the quality of our social network presences and contents. These statistics are compiled based on usage data collected by the respective social network about your interaction with our social network page. We do not have access to this usage data. Which of the specific tracking and analysis techniques are used by the social networks in particular can be found under the respective tab under the section „Additional information regarding the individual social networks“ of this Data Protection Information.

The processing of your personal data is based on our legitimate interest pursuant to Art. 6 para. 1 letter f) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In particular, our legitimate interest is to be able to contact you on your enquiries or contributions as well as to recognize user preferences (e.g., number of so-called “followers”, number of visits to individual page areas, user statistics according to age, geography and language) and additionally, to be able to adapt and improve the offering on our social network presence as closely as possible to the target group.

We store your personal data in our systems (e.g., when we use certain management tools to handle messages from and to you), i.e., outside of the respective social media network, if and only for as long as necessary for the relevant processing purposes or as long as there are legal retention obligations to do so.

When visiting certain social networks your personal data may be provided to recipients in countries outside of the European Union ("EU"), Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway (= European Economic Area) and are transferred and processed there, in particular to the USA. Where there is no decision of the European Commission that establishes an adequate level of personal data protection (so-called "adequacy"), we agree with recipients in other countries on the use of EU standard contractual clauses, binding corporate rules or other applicable instruments (if any) to create an "adequate level of protection" according to the legal requirements.

In the following countries outside the EU/EEA, the EU determined an adequate level of protection for the processing of personal data in accordance with EU standards (so-called "adequacy decision"):
https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/international-dimension-data-protection/adequacy-decisions_en

We may use certain qualified service providers for the design and support of our social media presences. In such cases, we only pass on your personal data if this is necessary for the purposes mentioned under the section „Purposes of use“ of this Data Protection Information and where this is permitted by law or to the extent you consented to it.

Right of access: In accordance with Art. 15 GDPR you have the right to information about the personal data stored by us. This means that you have the right to obtain from us confirmation as to whether or not personal data concerning you is processed, and, where that is the case, to request access to the personal data. The access information includes – inter alia – the purposes of the processing, the categories of personal data concerned, and the recipients or categories of recipients to whom the persona data have been or will be disclosed. However, this is not an absolute right and the interests of other individuals may restrict your right of access.

Right of rectification: You may have the right to have incorrect personal data corrected in accordance with Art. 16 GDPR. This means that you have the right to obtain from us the rectification of inaccurate personal data concerning you. Depending on the purposes of the processing, you may have the right to have incomplete personal data completed, including by means of providing a supplementary statement.

Right to erasure (“right to be forgotten”): You have the right to have your personal data erased in accordance with Art. 17 GDPR. This means that under certain circumstances, you may have the right to obtain from us the erasure of personal data concerning you and we may be obliged to erase such personal data.

Right of restriction of processing: In accordance with Art. 18 GDPR, you have the right to request a restriction on the processing of your personal data. This means that, in this case, the respective data will be marked and may only be processed by us for certain purposes (e.g., with your consent or to raise legal claims).

Right to data portability: In accordance with Art. 20 GDPR, under certain circumstances, you may have the right to receive the personal data concerning you, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and you may have the right to transmit those data to another entity without hindrance from us.

Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority: You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the competent data protection supervisory authority, in particular in the EU Member State of your habitual residence or of an alleged infringement of the GDPR.

Under certain circumstances, you may have the right to object, on grounds relating to your particular situation, or where personal data is processed for direct marketing purposes at any time to the processing of your personal data by us and we can be required to no longer process your personal data. Moreover, if your personal data is processed for direct marketing purposes, you have the right to object at any time to our processing of personal data concerning you for such marketing, which includes profiling to the extent that it is related to such direct marketing. In this case, we will no longer process your personal data for such purposes. To exercise your right of objection, if possible, please send us an e-mail to dataprotection.int@athlon.com.

To exercise these rights with respect to data processing by the provider of the respective social network, please kindly contact them via the contact options provided on their websites. In other cases or if so desired, please send us an e-mail to dataprotection.int@athlon.com.

For additional information on our handling of personal data, please refer to the Data Protection Policy (https://group.mercedes-benz.com/data-protection-policy)

LinkedIn

We have a presence on LinkedIn. Provider of this social network is LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company, Wilton Plaza, Wilton Place, Dublin 2, Irland.

Information on the processing of personal data by the provider can be found in their privacy policy under the following link: https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy.

In connection with the operation of our LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn provides us with so-called Page Insights data. This information is anonymous statistics that we use to evaluate the quality of our Instagram profile and content. These statistics are compiled on the basis of usage data collected LinkedIn about your interaction with our LinkedIn profile; we do not have access to this usage data. Further information about the usage of your data in this context can be found under the following link: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a1338708?lang=en-US.

Regarding Page Insights data we have an agreement with LinkedIn on joint responsibility pursuant to Art. 26 GDPR (https://legal.linkedin.com/pages-joint-controller-addendum).

YouTube

We have a channel on YouTube. Provider of this social network is Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Irland.

Information on the processing of personal data by the provider can be found in their privacy policy under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacy.

Status: February 2024