Data protection

Data Protection Notice - Anonymous usage of website

During the access and use of the website, no private information will be saved. If you access our website, your browser will transmit your IP address to our server in order to establish communication via the Internet. Your IP address will be saved but modified in order to eliminate any chance of identification.

When calling up our website the following technical data will be transmitted: Name of accessed file; date and time of visit; transmitted data volume; notification whether the transfer was successful; web address, from which the data was accessed (Referrer URL); operating system as well as browser type (User Agent string); IP address (will only be saved in modified form)

At the end of your session, i.e. after leaving our website or upon closing your browser, this information is automatically deleted and will not be saved (e.g. in log files)

This website uses cookies in order to allow technical functionality and a smooth user experience. Cookies are small text files with information about the use of specific services, such as ours, which are stored on your device locally if you give permission through your browser settings. Cookies cannot execute programs or transmit viruses. This website is only using session cookies, which save information during the ongoing session but are deleted once the session finishes. No identification of your person is possible through these cookies.

Data Protection Notice - Participation in the study

Collected Data

Data Donation: When donating your interaction data, we extract metadata (e.g. length and timestamp of message as well as pseudonyms of conversation participants) and no actual contents (e.g. message text or name of message sender). To ensure that, we anonymize your data client-side, meaning that your private data is anonymized locally and does not leave your device. This means that we will never see the content of your conversations. Before uploading, we will show you a preview of the data so that you can verify it is sufficiently anonymous.

Questionnaires: You first fill out questionnaires about your demographic information, your donation, your current mood, and your messaging behavior. You can then carry out the data donation and receive feedback. You then fill out other questionnaires on similar topics and the user-friendliness of the feedback. In the end you will receive a questionnaire regarding important life experiences in the last two years and your messaging behavior. These surveys will all take place anonymously, using LimeSurvey.

Voluntary Participation

The participation in this study is entirely voluntary. At any time you may revoke your consent concerning your participation in this study, without giving any reason and without any kind of negative consequences. Before uploading the data to our research platform, you may revoke, without giving reason, your consent concerning the storage of your anonymized data, without any negative consequences.

Data Security

Since we are not collecting any names or other person-specific data, we will not be able to associate you with your data once the study has been completed from your side - the donated data is anonymous. This means that your data cannot be deleted on your request after submission. Due to the completely anonymous data handling and processing, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) does not apply. In case of questions or concerns, please contact the office for data protection at the University of Bielefeld:

Usage of data

The data and results of these surveys will be published in scientific journals. The published data will be anonymous, meaning that it cannot be associated with individuals. The fully anonymized data will be uploaded to a research data repository and qualified scientists will be granted access.