The City of Münster is a public organisation and is therefore subject to the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act for the State of North-Rhine Westphalia (Datenschutzgesetz für das Land Nordrhein-Westfalen, DSG NRW). We are committed to protecting your personal data. We protect your personal data in line with statutory regulations and comply with all requirements of the GDPR and the Data Protection Act for the State of North-Rhine Westphalia.

Transfer of personal data

Use of the online services provided by the City of Münster is voluntary. The personal data required for the use of those services are collected and stored solely for the purposes of the transaction you have currently selected. The personal data collected by the City of Münster are deleted when they are no longer required for processing the selected transaction and legal retention periods have expired. Under no circumstances are data transferred to or processed by third parties.
To protect your data during transfer, we use encryption procedures (such as SSL) for Web forms that collect detailed personal data. Our servers have firewalls and anti-virus software.
As the transfer of information over the Internet is not completely secure, we cannot rule out the possibility of third parties intercepting or modifying data. This applies in particular to the unencrypted transfer of data over simple Web forms or an e-mail program. Other communication options should therefore be used for particularly confidential matters.

E-mail

If you contact us by e-mail, we will process your information for the purpose of responding to your enquiry and in the event that subsequent questions arise. You provide your personal data on a completely voluntary basis when you contact us by e-mail. We process your personal data on the basis of your consent (art. 6(1)(a) GDPR) or because we have a legitimate interest in the processing of your data (art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). We have, for example, a legitimate interest in being able to respond to your e-mail.

Rights of users

• You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. If you withdraw your consent, we shall cease processing that is based on that consent. This shall not affect the lawfulness of the processing of personal data relating to you prior to the withdrawal of your consent.
• You have a right of access to data saved relating to you and its processing pursuant to art. 15 GDPR.
• You have a right to rectification in the event that your data are incorrect or incomplete, pursuant to art. 16 GDPR.
• You have a right to the erasure of data saved relating to you in the event that one of the conditions of art. 17 GDPR applies. In addition to the exceptions specified in art. 17(3) GDPR, the right to erasure does not apply in cases in which erasure proves impossible or would involve a disproportionate effort because of the specific nature of storage. In these cases, the restriction of processing pursuant to art. 18 GDPR shall apply instead of erasure.
• You have a right to the restriction of processing pursuant to art. 18 GDPR.
• You have a right pursuant to article 20 GDPR to receive the personal data that you provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format or to have those data transmitted to another controller
• You have a right to object to certain instances of data processing pursuant to art. 21 GDPR

These rights can be limited pursuant to art. 23 GDPR. The federal and state legislators have made use of their option of restricting the rights of the data subject. If you exercise any of the above rights, the City of Münster shall check whether the statutory conditions for the exercise of those rights have been met in that particular case.

Web statistics

To allow us constantly to adapt the website to the needs of its users, the City of Münster monitors page views by evaluating information from the Web server log files and using a version of the analytical tool "Matomo" (www.piwik.org) that meets statutory requirements (matomo.org).

The data obtained from the log files and Matomo allow us to see which pages were particularly popular at what times and what information is accessed less frequently. This indicates how we can improve our website.
The data stored are evaluated solely for the specified purposes and under no circumstances are data transferred to or processed by third parties or associated with other data sources.

Log files
On the basis of its legitimate interest as the operator of the website (art. 6(1)(f) DSGVO), The City of Münster collects and stores the information sent by your browser in the log files of its Web server: IP address, operating system and browser type/version (user agent) of the computer, name and IP address of the server requesting the site (remote host), time of the server request, address of the pages of our website that you visit, volume of data transferred and the website from which you access our site (referrer URL). Individual users remain anonymous in this process.
The data are saved for a maximum of three months and are then deleted. Data are stored for security reasons. In the event that data need to be retained as evidence, they are not deleted until the matter in question has been dealt with in full.

Matomo
Matomo uses "cookies", text files that are stored on your computer. Cookies allow the recognition of the Internet browser and therefore provide us with information on how you use our website. This analysis is anonymous and does not allow us to associate information with individual users or create user profiles.
The information generated by the cookie on your use of this website (including your anonymised IP address) remains under the control of the City of Münster.
You can object to your visits being recorded by the Web analysis software Matomo at any time.

Social networks

Certain City of Münster departments and facilities use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter and YouTube. The City of Münster websites contain links to various City of Münster social media channels; content from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter is not embedded into the pages. Data are not automatically transferred to said networks when you access City of Münster websites.

YouTube

YouTube videos are embedded on some City of Münster Web pages. Where YouTube videos are embedded, connections are established to the server of Google LLC, and information can be sent to Google LLC over those connections. You can find information on how Google LLC manages those data in the Google LLC privacy policy.
The videos on the City pages are embedded in such a way that, according to YouTube, no information about your visit to a page can be sent to Google LLC when you simply access a page with an embedded video. Data are only transferred to Google when you play the video.

Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority

If you consider that the processing of your personal data is unlawful, you can lodge a complaint with the competent supervisory authority:

Landesbeauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen
www.ldi.nrw.de/metanavi_Kontakt

Questions about data protection?

If you wish access to your personal data or its rectification or erasure, or have any questions on the use of the personal data that you have provided to us, please contact the official data protection officer:
Stadt Münster, Der Oberbürgermeister
Michaela Heuer
Klemensstraße 10, 48143 Münster
datenschutz(at)stadt-muenster.de