Privacy Policy

Last updated: June 1, 2021

1. Introduction

We at ADS GmbH (collectively as “ADS”, “we”, “us” or “our”), including FollowTheQuote.com (hereinafter as “service”, know you care about how your personal information is used and shared, and we take your privacy seriously. This privacy policy governs each website, application, and any service provided thereby, regardless of how distributed, transmitted, published, or broadcast (each, a “service”) provided by us, our parent, subsidiaries and/or affiliates that links to this privacy policy.
We have developed this privacy policy to inform you how we collect data through our services, how we use the collected data, and a user’s rights with respect to the collected data. This privacy policy is binding on all those who access, visit and/or use our services, whether acting as an individual or on behalf of an entity, including you and all persons, entities, or digital engines of any kind that harvest, crawl, index, scrape, spider, or mine digital content by an automated or manual process or otherwise (collectively, “user”, “member”, “visitor”, “you”, or “your”).

Please read this privacy policy carefully. If you do not agree to be bound by this privacy policy, then do not access or use any of our services. By accessing and/or using a service, you accept and agree fully to be bound by this privacy policy and our terms of service, which is hereby incorporated by reference.

2. Collection of information

We collect personal data about you when you provide such information directly to us, when third parties such as our business partners or service providers provide us with personal data about you, or when personal data about you is automatically collected in connection with your use of our services.

Information we collect directly from you: We receive personal data directly from you when you provide us with such personal data, including but not limited to:

• Email address
• First name and family name
• Time of visits, content viewed, added, commented and liked
• User content, e.g. posts, comments, likes and images
• Approximated geolocation
• Connections in the service

Information we receive from third-party sources: Some third parties such as our business partners and service providers provide us with personal data about you, such as the following but not limited to:

• If you provide your third-party account credentials to us, or if you share content from our services through a third-party social media service, or otherwise sign in to the services through a third-party site or service (e.g. Facebook Connect), you understand some content and/or information in those accounts (“Third-party Account Information”) may be transmitted into your account with us if you authorize such transmissions through your account settings, and that Third-party Account Information transmitted to our Services is covered by this privacy policy. Certain information may be required to register with us or to take advantage of some of our features.
• We receive information about you from some of our advertising partners who assist us with marketing or promotional services related to how you interact with our websites, applications, products, services, advertisements or communications.
• We receive information about you from some of our service providers who assist us in offering and improving our services by providing information about how you use our services and by helping us to maintain the security and integrity of our platform.

We receive and store any information you knowingly provide to us. For example, through the registration process, mail requests and/or through your account settings, we may collect personal data such as your email address and third-party account credentials.

We may communicate with you if you’ve provided us the means to do so. For example, if you’ve given us your email address, we may send you promotional email offers on behalf of other businesses, or email you about your use of the services. If you do not want to receive communications from us, please configurate your preference in your account.

Information we automatically collect when you use our services: Some personal data is automatically collected when you use our services, such as the following but not limited to:

• IP address
• Device identifiers
• Usage information
• Web browser information
• Cookies
• Log data, e.g. access times, hardware and software information
• Language preference

3. Use of cookies and other tracking technologies

Cookies and other tracking technologies like web beacons, pixel stags, and SDKs (collectively, “cookies”) are identifiers we transfer to your device that allow us to recognize your device and tell us how and when pages and features in our services are visited and by how many people. You may be able to change the preferences on your device to prevent or limit your device’s acceptance of cookies, but that may limit your use of some convenient features of our service.

Cookies can either be “session cookies” or “persistent cookies”. Session cookies are temporary cookies that are stored on your device while you are visiting our service, whereas “persistent cookies” are stored on your device for a period of time after you leave our service. We use persistent cookies on our services to store your preferences so that they are available for the next visit, and to keep a more accurate account of how often you visit our services, and how your use of the services varies over time. The services uses the following kind of cookies:

“Essential cookies” are required for providing you features or services that you have requested. For example, certain cookies enable you to log into secure areas of our services. Disabling these cookies may make certain features and services unavailable.

“Functional cookies” are used to record your choices and settings regarding our services, maintain your preferences over time, and recognize you when you return to our services. These cookies help us to personalize our content for you for what we think you might like based on your usage patterns and remember your preferences.

“Performance/Analytical Cookies” allow us to understand how users use our services such as by collecting information on how often users use a particular feature of the services. These aggregated statistics are used internally to improve the services in a way that makes the services interesting to as many users as possible. They also help us measure the performance of our advertising campaigns in order to help us improve our campaigns and the services’ content for those who engage with our advertising.

Our advertising partners may also transmit cookies to your device, when you click on ads that appear on the services. Also, if you click on a link to a third-party website or service, a third-party may also transmit cookies to you. Again, this privacy policy does not cover the use of cookies by any third parties, and we aren’t responsible for their privacy policies and practices. Please be aware that cookies placed by third parties may continue to track your activities online even after you have left our services.

4. Use of personal data in general

We process personal data to operate, improve, understand and personalize our services. For example, we use personal data to:

• Create and manage user profiles
• Communicate with you about the service
• Provide support and assistance for the service
• Administer and improve the service
• Performance of a contract with the user
• Meet contract or legal obligations
• Comply with our legal or contractual obligations
• Protect against or deter fraudulent, illegal or harmful actions
• Enforce our terms of service

Additionally, we may communicate with you if you’ve provided us the means to do so. For example, if you’ve given us your email address, we may email you about your use of the services. If you do not want to receive communications from us, please configurate your preference in your account.

We also may de-identify your personal data so that you are not identified as an individual, and provide that information to our partners. We may also provide aggregate usage information to our partners (or allow partners to collect that information from you), who may use such information to understand how often and in what ways people use our services, so that they, too, can provide you with an optimal online experience. However, we never disclose aggregate usage or de-identified information to a partner (or allow a partner to collect such information) in a manner that would identify you as an individual person.

5. Collaboration with advertisers, affiliated businesses and agents

We allow advertisers and/or merchant partners (“Advertisers”) to choose the demographic information of users who will see their advertisements and/or promotional offers and you agree that we may provide any of the information we have collected from you in non-personally identifiable form to an advertiser, in order for that advertiser to select the appropriate audience for those advertisements and/or offers. For example, we might allow advertisers to display their ads to users with similar usage patterns to yours, but we will not disclose usage information to advertisers except in aggregate form, and not in a manner that would identify you personally. Note that if an advertiser asks us to show an ad to a certain audience or audience segment and you respond to that ad, the advertiser may conclude that you fit the description of the audience they were trying to reach. sometimes we conduct advertising campaigns on third-party websites and applications (collectively, “Third-party Platforms”). In those cases, we may disclose your information in personally identifiable form to the operators of the Third-party Platforms solely to allow them to direct our advertising content to you via the Third-party Platform. In no event would we authorize such Third-party Platform Operators to reuse your email address in conjunction with other advertisers or for any other purpose.

In certain situations, businesses or third-party services we’re affiliated with may sell or provide products or services to you through or in connection with the services (either alone or jointly with us). You can recognize when an affiliated business is associated with such a transaction or service, and we will share your personal data with that affiliated business only to the extent that it is related to such transaction or service. We have no control over the policies and practices of third-party services or businesses as to privacy or anything else, so if you choose to take part in any transaction or service relating to an affiliated service or business, please review all such service’s or business’ or policies.

We employ other companies and people to perform tasks on our behalf and need to share your information with them to provide products or services to you; for example, we use a data hosting service provider to store your information and make it available for use on the service. Unless we tell you differently, our agents do not have any right to use the personal data we share with them beyond what is necessary to assist us.

6. Use of personal data in the community and for protection

Certain user profile information, including your name, location, image and any text content that such user has uploaded to the service, may be displayed to other users to facilitate user interaction within the service or address your request for our services. Your account privacy settings may allow you to limit the other users who can see the personal data in your user profile and/or what information in your user profile is visible to others. Please remember that any content you upload to your public user profile, along with any personal data or content that you voluntarily disclose online in a manner other user can view (on discussion boards, in forums, in messages, etc.) becomes publicly available, and can be collected and used by anyone. Your user name may also be displayed to other users if and when you send messages or comments or upload images through the service and other users can contact you through messages and comments.

We reserve the right to access, read, preserve, and disclose any information that we reasonably believe is necessary in response to a lawful request by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements; enforce or apply our terms of service and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of us, our employees, our users, or others.

7. Security of the personal data

Your account is protected by a password for your privacy and security. If you access your account via a third-party, you may have additional or different sign-on protections via that third-party. You must prevent unauthorized access to your account and personal data by selecting and protecting your password and/or other sign-on mechanism appropriately and limiting access to your device by signing off after you have finished accessing your account.

We take reasonable steps online and offline to safeguard the personal data that you provide to us, including e.g. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encrypted connections (HTTPS) on our service. We endeavour to protect the privacy of your account and other personal data we hold in our records, but unfortunately, we cannot guarantee complete security. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors, may compromise the security of user information at any time.

Any transmission of Personal data, or other information, is at your own risk. By using our service, you acknowledge and accept these risks. As a result, we cannot guarantee or warrant the security of any information you disclose or transmit to us or that are otherwise provided to us and we cannot be responsible for the theft, destruction, or inadvertent disclosure of information.

Please notify us immediately at privacy @ followthequote.com if you become aware of any unauthorized use of your password or account or any other breach of service security or of this policy. If our security system is breached, we will notify you of the breach only if and to the extent required under applicable law.

8. Grounds for processing

We will only process your personal data if we have a lawful basis for doing so. Lawful bases for processing include consent, contractual necessity and our “legitimate interests” or the legitimate interest of others, as further described below.

We process personal data like email and password as a matter of “contractual necessity”, meaning that we need to process the data to perform under our terms of service with you, which enables us to provide you with the service. When we process data due to contractual necessity, failure to provide such personal data will result in your inability to use some or all portions of the service that require such data.

We process the following categories of personal data when we believe it furthers the “legitimate interest” of us or third parties. The IP Address, user content, device identifiers, usage information and log data, and language preference. legitimate interests can e.g. include operation and improvement of our business, products and services, provision of customer support, marketing of our products and services, protection from fraud or security threats and compliance with legal obligations.

In some cases, we process personal data based on the “consent” you expressly grant to us at the time we collect such data. When we process personal data based on your consent, it will be expressly indicated to you at the point and time of collection.

From time to time we may also need to process personal data to comply with a legal obligation, if it is necessary to protect the vital interests of you or other data subjects, or if it is necessary for a task carried out in the public interest.

9. Sharing personal data with third parties

We use third-party service providers to help us operate our service, who may collect, store, and/or process the information detailed herein. These parties include e.g. payment processors, fraud prevention and integrity service providers, analytics service providers, ad networks, contract personnel, telecommunications service providers and hosting service providers. We allow access to our database by third parties that provide us with services, such as technical maintenance, market research, community and forums management, and other classified ads functionality, but only for the purpose of and to the extent necessary to provide those services.

If you choose to purchase merchandise, products, and/or services on or through features on the service, we may forward your information to third parties for services such as credit card or other payment processing, order fulfilment, credit pre-authorization, and address verification. There are also times when you provide information about yourself to us in areas of the service that may be managed or participated in by third parties. In such cases, the information may be used by us and by such third party, each pursuant to its own policies. We may also provide your information to our advertisers, so that they can serve ads to you that meet your needs or match your interests.

We also share personal data when we believe it is necessary to comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies. To protect us, our business or our users, for example to enforce our terms of service, prevent spam or other unwanted communications and investigate or protect against fraud. If necessary also for the maintain the security of our products and services and to resolve technical or other operational issues.

Furthermore, if we choose to buy or sell assets, user information is typically one of the transferred business assets. Moreover, if we, or substantially all of our assets, were acquired, or if we go out of business or enter bankruptcy, user information would be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party, and we would share personal data with the party that is acquiring our assets. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of us or our assets may continue to use your personal data as set forth in this policy.

10. Specific third-party service providers

We have enabled Google Analytics to collect data about our traffic through the use of google advertisements and other anonymous identifiers. We use google analytics cookies and other cookies to compile data to better understand users and provide users with a more tailored experience. You can opt out of Google Analytics by visiting Google’s Opt-Out Browser Add-on website.

We use Google AdX to help with managing many of our revenue sources related to online display advertising inventory and allows us to buy and sell ad space on or relating to our services. And our services utilize Google AdSense to promote and manage advertising on those services tailored to our content and audience.

We use YouTube to deliver video content through our service. You can learn more about YouTube’s data collection practices through its privacy policy, which is available at https://youtube.com/ .

We use Twitter’s widget to facilitate connection between your twitter account the service. Twitter receives data based on this widget. For information about Twitter’s privacy policy, visit its website at https://twitter.com/ .

11. Retention of personal data

We retain personal data about you for as long as you have an open account with us and we will retain personal data for the period necessary to fulfil the lawful purposes outlined in this privacy policy unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. In some case we retain personal data for longer, if doing so is necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes or collect fees owed, or is otherwise permitted or required by applicable law, rule or regulation. Afterwards, we retain some information in a depersonalized or aggregated form but not in a way that would identify you personally.

12. Links to third-party sites and services

Our service may contain links to other sites that are not operated by us. If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to that third party’s site. Such links do not constitute an endorsement by us of those other websites, their content or services, or the persons or entities associated with those websites. This privacy policy does not apply to third-party websites, applications or services. We have no control over, and assume no responsibility for, the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party services. We encourage you to review the privacy policies and terms of all third-party services that you may visit.

13. Applicability of the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and EU General Data Protection Regulation

We do not offer and sell products or services for purchase by anyone under the age of sixteen (16). In accordance with the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”), we will never knowingly request or solicit Personal data from anyone under the age of sixteen (16) without verifiable parental consent. In the event that we receive actual knowledge that we have collected such Personal data without the requisite and verifiable parental consent, we will delete that information from our database as quickly as is practical. We reserve the right to request proof of age at any stage so that we can verify that minors are not using the services. If you are under sixteen (16) please do not attempt to register for the services or send any personal information about yourself to us. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under the required minimum age, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that a child under the required minimum age may have provided us personal information, please contact us at legal @ followthequote.com

If you are a resident of the European Union (“EU”), Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway, or United Kingdom, you may have additional rights under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) with respect to your personal data, as outlined below.

For this section, we use the terms “personal data” and “processing” as they are defined in the GDPR, but “personal data” generally means information that can be used to individually identify a person, and “processing” generally covers actions that can be performed in connection with data such as collection, use, storage and disclosure. We will be the controller of your personal data processed in connection with the service. Note that we may also process personal data of our customers’ end users or employees in connection with our provision of services to customers, in which case we are the processor of personal data. If we are the processor of your personal data (i.e., not the controller), please contact the controller party in the first instance to address your rights with respect to such data.

If there are any conflicts between this section and any other provision of this privacy policy, the policy or portion that is more protective of personal data shall control to the extent of such conflict. If you have any questions about this section or whether any of the following applies to you, please contact us at privacy @ followthequote.com

14. Changes to the privacy policy

We’re constantly trying to improve our service, so we may need to change this privacy policy from time to time as well. It is our custom to provide notification on this page when we make material changes. The date that this privacy policy was last revised is identified at the top of the page. You are responsible for ensuring that you periodically visit our service and this privacy policy to check for any changes. If you use the service after any changes to the privacy policy have been posted, that means you agree to all of the changes. Use of information we collect now is subject to the privacy policy in effect at the time such information is collected.

15. Privacy contact information

If you have an inquiry regarding your personal data, pursuant to the rights listed in the preceding section, please send your message to the following: ADS GmbH, attn. Privacy, Bergstr. 128-130, 58095 Hagen, Germany, or email privacy @ followthequote.com

If you have any questions or comments concerning this privacy policy, you may contact our representatives with the following information: ADS GmbH, attn. Legal, Bergstr. 128-130, 58095 Hagen, Germany, or email legal @ followthequote.com

You have the rights to erasure, object and restrict process the personal data. In this case please delete your account and all personal data in the account settings section.

16. Transfer and hosting of personal data

The service is hosted and operated in the United States (“US”) and in the European Union (“EU”) through us and our service providers. If you do not reside in the US or EU, laws in the US and EU may differ from the laws where you reside. By using the service, you acknowledge that any personal data about you, regardless of whether provided by you or obtained from a third-party, is being transferred to and processed in in the US and/or EU and will be hosted on servers in US and/or EU, and you authorize us to transfer, store and process your information to and in the US and/or EU and possibly other countries. You hereby consent to the transfer of your data to the US and EU as set forth herein.