German Academy Zurich
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Privacy Policy

We are fiercely protecting the confidentiality and privacy of all information laid into our hands. We comply with applicable Data Protection Regulations including in particular the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Please read this Privacy Policy and learn about your rights, how and what information we collect and how we use and protect it.

This website is operated by Geistzeit Ltd, a british corporation and a british legal entity.

The Geistzeit Ltd can use the collected data for commercial purposes and advertising, for the creation of user profiles, internal analytics and statistics to improve the offered services and to send information and offers of services to the people that have subscribed to our newsletter or other customer lists. Each person in our database has the right to revoke the permission of the usage of their data any time.

How are we collecting personal data?

  • Directly . We obtain personal data directly from individuals in a variety of ways, including obtaining personal data from individuals who complete our online forms, join a course waiting list, book a consultation, register for courses or apply for open positions.
  • Indirectly . We obtain personal data indirectly about individuals from a variety of sources including our clients. We may attach personal data to our customer relationship management records to better understand and serve our business clients, prospects, subscribers and individuals, satisfy a legal obligation, or pursue our legitimate interests. Personal data may be obtained from public registers (such as Commercial Registers), news articles and internet searches.

Types of personal data we collect

We may obtain the following categories of personal data about individuals through direct interactions with us, or from information provided through client engagements, from applicants, our suppliers and through other situations including those described in this Privacy Policy.

  • Personal data . We commonly collect contact details (e.g., name, company name and personal email and postal address) to conduct our business activities.
  • Sensitive personal data . When we do need to process sensitive personal data, it is with the consent of the individual and in the course of a professional engagement.
  • Location-based data . We may process geographical locations, e.g. when you are using our website.

What lawful reasons are there for processing personal data?

We may rely on the following lawful reasons when we collect and use personal data to operate our business and provide our services:

  • Contract: We may process personal data in order to perform our contractual obligations.
  • Consent: We may rely on your freely given consent at the time you provided your personal data to us.
  • Legitimate interests: We may rely on legitimate interests based on our evaluation that the processing is fair, reasonable and balanced. These include:
  • Delivering services and products: To deliver the services and products our clients have engaged us to provide.
  • Marketing: To deliver professional knowledge, offerings and invitations we believe are welcomed by our business clients, prospects, subscribers and other individuals.
  • Recruitment: To seek for qualified candidates.
  • Legal obligations and public interest: We may process personal data in order to meet regulatory and public interest obligations or mandates.

Why do we need personal data?

We aspire to be transparent when we collect and use personal data and tell you why we need it, which typically includes:

  • Providing professional advice and delivering reports and services related to our language courses and officially recognized language certificates (e.g. TELC or Goethe)
  • Promoting our professional services, products and capabilities to existing and prospective clients.
  • Sending invitations and providing access to guests attending our courses and webinars.
  • Personalizing online landing pages and communications we think would be of interest based on interactions with us.
  • Administering, maintaining and ensuring the security of our information systems, applications and websites.
  • Authenticating registered users to certain areas of our sites.
  • Processing online requests, including responding to communications from individuals or requests for proposals and quotations.
  • Preventing fraud or criminal activity, safeguarding our IT systems and handling of claims.
  • Employment of personnel and work processes.
  • Seeking for qualified candidates.

In some situations the provision of personal data is required to provide the services in such cases this is indicated on the Website accordingly or pointed out in the disclaimers or contractual agreements. Furthermore, we may be required to collect certain personal data by law. If you fail to provide such data, we may not be able to provide the services, or we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us.

Do we share personal data with third parties?

We may share personal data with trusted third parties to help us deliver efficient and quality services and products. These recipients are contractually bound to safeguard the data we entrust to them. We may engage with several or all of the following categories of recipients:

  • Parties that support us as we provide our services and products (e.g. providers of telecommunication systems, IT system support, archiving services, document production services and cloud-based software services).
  • Our professional advisers, including lawyers, auditors and insurers.
  • Payment services providers.
  • Marketing services providers.
  • Law enforcement or other government and regulatory agencies (e.g. FAOA, FINMA) or to other third parties as required by, and in accordance with, applicable law or regulation.

Do we transfer your personal data outside Switzerland?

We store personal data on servers located in Switzerland. We may transfer personal data to reputable third party organisations situated inside or outside Switzerland and when we have a business reason to engage these organisations. Each organisation is required to safeguard personal data in accordance with our contractual obligations and applicable data protection legislation. Such safeguards may include transfer to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection according to lists of countries published by the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner; applying standard data protection model clauses, binding corporate rules or other standard contractual obligations which provide for appropriate protection of data; with providers in the US, use of companies that use the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks.

Do we use cookies and automatically collect personal information?

Our website uses cookies and comparable technologies to collect certain information automatically when you visit us online. What exactly is collected, and how you can object, is set out in the section on cookies and analytics below. We no longer send a newsletter, so no data is collected through email campaigns. The collection of this information allows us to customize your online experience, improve the performance, usability and effectiveness of German Academy Zurich’s online presence, and to measure the effectiveness of our marketing activities. Where cookies are used, a statement will be sent to your browser explaining the use of cookies. There is a detailed Cookie Policy at the end of this Privacy Policy.

What are your data protection rights?

If Geistzeit Ltd processes personal information about you, you have the rights listed below. Before responding to your request, we may ask for proof of identity. This helps us to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also ask you for sufficient information about your interactions with us so that we can locate your personal information.

  • Access: You can ask us to verify whether we are processing personal data about you, and if so, to provide more specific information.
  • Correction: You can ask us to correct our records if you believe they contain incorrect or incomplete information about you.
  • Erasure: You can ask us to erase (delete) your personal data after you withdraw your consent to processing or when we no longer need it for the purpose it was originally collected and no retention requirements exist
  • Processing restrictions: You can ask us to temporarily restrict our processing of your personal data if you contest the accuracy of your personal data, prefer to restrict its use rather than having us erase it.
  • Data portability: In some circumstances, where you have provided personal data to us, you can ask us to transmit that personal data in electronic form if technically feasible.
  • Automated Individual Decision-making: You can ask us to review any decisions made about you which we made solely based on automated processing, including profiling, that produced legal effects concerning you or which significantly affected you.
  • Right to Object to Marketing including Profiling: You can object to our use of your personal data for marketing purposes, including profiling. We may need to keep some minimal information to comply with your request to cease marketing to you.
  • Right to Withdraw Consent: You can withdraw your consent that you have previously given to one or more specified purposes of processing your personal data. This will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. It may mean we are not able to provide certain products or services to you and we will advise you if this is the case.

What about personal data security?

We have put appropriate technical and organisational security policies and procedures in place to protect personal data (including sensitive personal data) from loss, misuse, alteration or destruction. We limit access to personal data in general. Those individuals who have access to the data are required to maintain the confidentiality of such information. We may apply pseudonymization, de-identification and anonymization techniques in efforts to further protect personal data.

If you have access to parts of our websites or use our services, you remain responsible for keeping your user ID and password confidential. Please be aware that the transmission of data via the Internet is not completely secure. Whilst we do our best to try to protect the security of your personal data, we cannot ensure or guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk.

How long do we retain personal data?

We retain personal data to provide our services, make offerings, stay in contact with you and to comply with applicable laws, regulations and professional obligations that we are subject to. We retain personal data for so long as the personal data is needed for the purposes for which it was collected or in line with legal and regulatory requirements or contractual arrangements. We will dispose of personal data when we no longer need it.

Links to other websites

Our websites contain links to other sites that are not governed by this Privacy Policy. Please review the destination websites’ privacy policies before submitting personal data on those sites. Whilst we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content, security, or privacy practices employed by other sites.

Who can you contact for privacy questions or concerns?

If you have questions or comments about this Privacy Policy or how we handle personal data, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with:

Geistzeit Ltd

Felix Zeeb

Im Bachofen 1

8304 Wallisellen

Switzerland

info@german-academy-zurich.ch

We aim to respond within 30 days from the date we receive privacy-related communications.

We regularly review this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy was last updated on 27 August 2026.

Cookies and analytics

This section describes what happens technically when you visit german-academy-zurich.ch. Our pages do not load any advertising pixels or social media tracking scripts on their own. Links to our Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube profiles are ordinary links; they transmit nothing until you click them.

Our own visitor measurement

We measure how our website is used with our own system, running on our own servers. No third party is involved and no data leaves our infrastructure. We store:

  • a random visitor identifier that we set ourselves, so that repeat visits within a session can be recognised;
  • which pages were opened, in what order, and how long they were viewed;
  • which elements were clicked, for example buttons and forms;
  • the referring page, the approximate screen size and the language setting of the browser.

We do not store IP addresses and we do not store browser user agents. Your IP address is checked in memory only, to filter out our own internal visits, and is not written to any file or database. The data cannot be linked to you as a person unless you yourself provide us with your details through a form.

Google Tag Manager

We use Google Tag Manager (container GTM-WHZ6QVW) to manage measurement tags. Google Tag Manager loads when you open a page and can set cookies. We operate it with Google Consent Mode v2.

We inform you about this in a notice on your first visit and offer you an objection. If you object, analytics storage is switched off and no further cookies are set by these tags. You can change your decision at any time through the link in the footer of our website. Your decision is stored in a first-party cookie so that we can respect it on later visits.

Provider: Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland. Data may be transferred to servers outside Switzerland and the EU; Google relies on the standard contractual clauses for this.

The following services are loaded through the container. They are what actually sets cookies and processes data:

  • Google Analytics 4: measures how the website is used, which pages are opened and which actions are taken. Provider: Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland.
  • Google Ads: measures which visits result from an advertisement and allows us to show you our advertising again on other websites (remarketing). Provider: Google Ireland Limited, address as above.
  • Meta Pixel: measures which visits result from an advertisement on Facebook or Instagram and allows us to show you our advertising again on those platforms (remarketing). Provider: Meta Platforms Ireland Limited, Merrion Road, Dublin 4, Ireland.
  • Brevo web tracking: records which pages you visit and links this to your contact record if you have given us your details through one of our forms, so that we can follow up appropriately. Provider: Brevo SAS, 106 boulevard Haussmann, 75008 Paris, France.

Google Analytics 4, Google Ads and Meta Pixel may transfer data to servers outside Switzerland and the EU, including the United States. The providers rely on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses and on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework for these transfers.

Google Ads and Meta Pixel are used for advertising, not only for measurement. If you object using the notice on our website or the link in the footer, these services stop setting cookies and stop receiving data about your visit.

Forms (Brevo) and spam protection

Our inquiry, waiting list and material forms are provided by Brevo. When you submit a form, the details you entered, for example your name, email address, phone number and the German level you selected, are transmitted to Brevo and stored there so that we can contact you.

Provider: Brevo SAS, 106 boulevard Haussmann, 75008 Paris, France. To protect the forms against automated abuse we use Google reCAPTCHA, which processes technical data about your interaction with the form.

Videos

Video testimonials and course videos are hosted on YouTube. Nothing is loaded from YouTube until you actively click a video. Only from that moment can YouTube set cookies and record the playback. Provider: Google Ireland Limited, address as above.

Course assistant

On the A1 and A2 course pages we offer a chat assistant that answers questions about the course concerned. It is provided by Zapier and loads only on those pages. The messages you enter are processed by that provider. Provider: Zapier Inc., 548 Market St #62411, San Francisco, CA 94104, USA. Please do not enter any sensitive personal data in the chat.

Which cookies are used

  • Necessary: your decision about the measurement notice, and technical settings such as your language. These are always set and cannot be switched off.
  • Measurement and advertising: our own visitor identifier, plus the cookies set through Google Tag Manager by Google Analytics 4, Google Ads, Meta Pixel and Brevo web tracking. These are switched off as soon as you object.
  • Third-party: cookies set by YouTube, Brevo and Google reCAPTCHA. YouTube only after you click a video, Brevo and reCAPTCHA only in connection with a form.

Most browsers accept cookies automatically. You can decide in your browser settings whether to accept cookies, and you can delete cookies that have already been stored. If you block cookies entirely, parts of our website may not work correctly.

Policy updates and changes

We review this Privacy Policy regularly and publish updates on this page. This version dates from 27 August 2026 and replaces the version of 20 August 2022, which still described tools we no longer use, among them a survey tool, social media widgets, retargeting pixels and our newsletter, which has been discontinued.