meinVZ and the network

you must provide the following information, without which the registration process cannot be completed. This obligatory data is:

• First name and surname
• Date of Birth
• Sex
• Region
• Email address
• Password.

To access meinVZ you need to enter the email address and password you provided when you registered. This information is referred to as your ‘login details’.

When you access the network, information regarding your use of the site will be transferred by your internet browser and saved in server log files. The following information will be saved:

• Name of page accessed
• Date and time page was accessed
• IP address of the computer used to login
• Browser type and version (user-agent)
• Operating system used
• Referring URL (originating URL); URL of the site from the which the user has come
• Volume of data transferred
• Report on whether the site was accessed successfully

We use the server log files to analyse the network load at peak times and to find out how much data is being generated by the site. This helps us to recognise and address problems such as faulty links.

When you use your login details to register or login to meinVZ, the date and time will be saved, in addition to the respective login details.

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identify you. Amongst other things, cookies can save your login details in a coded form. This makes it easier for you to login and helps make the network more user-friendly.

Cookies are alphanumerical identification symbols which are temporarily saved in the memory (‘session cookies’) or permanently saved on the hard drive (‘permanent cookies’). Most of the cookies we use are session cookies. These session cookies are not saved on your hard drive, but expire at the end of your session, and are then deleted automatically. In addition, there are other cookies that stay in your computer, so that you can be recognised when you next login.

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These messages appear at the very top of your homepage.

Friendship Requests
Your confirmed friends will see more of your information than other users. Only friends, for example, will be able to see your contact details (if you have entered them in your profile). You can select which information you would like displayed to everyone, and which to just friends, by changing your settings under ‘Privacy’.
When you receive a friendship request you should think carefully about whether or not you accept it. If you decline a friendship request, the user who invited you will not be informed.

Birthday Reminders
You are required to enter your date of birth when you register. Unless you choose to limit the visibility of your birthday under ‘Privacy’, the users on your friend list will be informed that it is approaching; these reminders will be posted from five days in advance.

Visitors to your profile
At the bottom of your homepage you can see who has recently visited your profile. Other users will also be able to see when you’ve visited their profile. If you would rather not be seen, you can choose to be invisible as a visitor by going to ‘Privacy’.

Do you know ...?
The ‘Do you know…?’ section on your homepage randomly displays the profile photos and names of other users from your region. Unless you change your settings under ‘Privacy’, you may also appear in this section to other users.

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you can display information about yourself. There are two main versions of your profile, and it’s important you understand the differences between the two:

Full Profile
Your full profile contains all of the information that you enter about yourself. If, for example, you complete the ‘Employment’ and ‘Personal’ sections, this information will appear in your full profile. The only exception to this rule involves your contact details, which are only ever visible to friends. Please note that when you register with the network, your basic settings will make your full profile visible to all other users.

If you do not want all of your information to be visible to everyone, you can select that your full profile is only visible to certain users (for example your friends), by going to ‘Privacy’. Anyone you don’t allow to see your full profile will instead see your limited profile.

Limited Profile
Your limited profile will show your name, region, and profile photo. This information cannot be removed. Further information will be displayed in your limited profile if, and only if, it is selected in the relevant list in ‘Privacy’.

Please note: Ignored users can only see your name, region, and profile photo. Ignored users will never be able to see more than this, regardless of all other settings. For more details, see the ‘Reporting and Ignoring’ chapter below.

Connection
The ‘Connection’ section on other users’ profiles shows you which shared friends connect you to the profile owner. You may also appear as a connection between friends. If, however, you have selected under ‘Privacy’ that certain users cannot see your friend list, these users will not be able to see your friends as connections either.

General Information
The ‘General Information’ section displays certain obligatory information (your name, region, sex and birthday), as well as any extra information you choose to enter here. By going to ‘Privacy’, you can select if this information is only visible to your friends or if it can be seen by everyone. These settings can be determined separately for meinVZ and studiVZ.

Please be aware that, regardless of your settings, your limited profile will always remain visible to all users. Your limited profile will always display your name, region, and profile photo. Further information will be displayed in your limited profile if, and only if, it is selected in the relevant list under ‘Privacy’.

Some of the information in your profile will be displayed in a different colour. This means it is linked. By clicking on this information you can see which other members in your region have the same entry in this field. Click again and you can see those members of either the meinVZ platform or the whole network who have the same entry.

You are required to enter your date of birth when you register. This will then be displayed in your profile for all users to see. If you don’t want your date of birth to be displayed you can go to ‘Privacy’ and select that it is hidden, or that the date is displayed but not the year.

Contact Details
The contact details you enter will only ever be visible to confirmed friends, irrespective of all other settings.

It is important to stress that your basic settings will allow every user to read all other information you have entered. Please go to ‘Privacy’ if you would like to change this.

Employment
The ‘Employment’ section allows you to enter your current job and the positions you’ve had in the past. This means that you can not only let your friends and other users know where you’re working, but can also look for your current or former workmates on the network – company names are automatically linked.

access to your full profile if you want to prevent users from seeing your 'Employment' section. This information is automatically displayed in your full profile, but is only displayed in your limited profile if you have selected it under "What is visible in my limited profile?", in ‘Privacy’.

Profile Photo
Your profile photo is always visible to all members of the network. Once you’ve uploaded a profile photo you must always have one, but feel free to change it at any time.

Notice Board
Your notice board works just like a real notice board – you can write on it yourself, and people can leave messages for you there. These messages are always visible to all users who can see your notice board. Under ‘Privacy’ you can select who can see and use your notice board, and whether it is also displayed in your limited profile.

Once you have deleted an entry on your notice board it cannot be recovered. You can delete the messages you leave on other notice boards but, whilst you and other users can no longer see them, they will remain visible to the notice board owner until he or she decides to delete them.

Friend List
Your full profile contains a link to a list of your friends. Your full profile will also display your friends according to a range of different criteria, such as ‘region’ or ‘university’. Any user who can see your full profile will be able to see the profile photos, names, and regions (or universities) of your friends.

If you want to prevent certain users from seeing your friend list, you can select that they are only able to see your limited profile. You can then remove the link to your friend list from your limited profile by going to ‘Privacy’. More information can be found in this document underneath the ‘Privacy’ heading.

Photo Albums and Photo Links
Users viewing your full profile are able to click on a link that will display a list of your photo albums. They will only be able to see the actual photos themselves, however, if you have made them visible under ‘Edit album information’ in the album concerned.

Your full profile also contains a link to the list of photos that you’ve been linked to (your own and other users’). Users viewing your full profile can only see the actual photos, however, if the photo owner allows this.

You can prevent people from seeing this information by blocking their access to your full profile: both these links can be removed from your limited profile. More details can be found in this document under ‘My Photos’.

Groups
Information about groups can be found under ‘My Groups’.

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and add them to your friend list. The other person just needs to agree to this. Once your friendship has been confirmed you and the other user are officially ‘friends’. If the request is not answered, or is declined, nothing happens and you remain connected only through other individuals. If a friendship request is declined, the individual that made the request will not be informed.

Every member of the network can see who is friends with whom. You can remove your friend list from your limited profile by going to ‘Privacy’.

Those of your confirmed friends who are able to see your friend list will also be able to see you as a “connecting friend”. The connection between two people is shown when they visit each other’s profiles. It is displayed at the top of the page and in their ‘Shared friends’ section. If you are friends with both of these users – the profile owner and the profile visitor – you can appear as the “connecting friend”.

Every user who is able to see your friend list will also be able to see the following information:

• The number of friends they share with you
• The number of friends you have in your own region
• The number of friends you have in other regions
• The number of friends you have who are at university (i.e. the number of friends you have in studiVZ)

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By uploading photos you are confirming that you have the exclusive rights to use them, that their publication does not violate statutory provisions, public policy and/or third party rights, and that they conform to the network’s Code of Conduct.

When you create a new photo album you should go to ‘Edit album information’ and select who can see the pictures. These settings can be selected independently for the meinVZ and studiVZ platforms, and allow you to choose whether an album is visible to everyone, to just your friends (on either platform), or just to you. The visibility of each album can be determined and altered independently.

Attention: Any users whom you allow to see your pictures are able to copy them through their browser and either save them locally or save the corresponding URL. This means that users can then view the photos when they are not logged in to meinVZ and are able to pass the pictures, or the links, to non-members. This is no different in our network than in other online communities and websites, but it is important you are aware of it.

An additional function allows users to be linked to photos. You can link your friends to your own photos and to the photos of other users, and they can do the same to you. Links connect the profile of a user to the picture concerned. In order for a photo link to be added, both the user who would like to add the link and the user who is being linked must be able to view the picture. If these circumstances change (if the album owner alters the album visibility, for example), the link will be deleted. If you are about to link your friend, please be sure that he or she is happy with this, and that by adding the link you are not infringing on any statutory provisions, public policy, and/or third party rights.

If you are unhappy about being linked to a photo, you can remove the link yourself. Simply go to the corresponding album, click on the photo, and select “Remove my link”. The owner of the photo is able to remove all links.

Worried about someone linking you in an embarrassing picture? Don’t worry, you can decide whether or not your friends are able to link you under ‘Privacy’. If you do allow them to link you, you can choose to be notified by email each time you are linked. Further, you can select that links will only appear once they have been approved by you, and in this instance you will be informed of links awaiting approval by a notification on your home page.

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and who its members are; unless the corresponding settings are adjusted.

As the creator of a group you can decide if it is visible in both platforms, only in meinVZ, or only in your region. studiVZ users have the equivalent options for their groups.

As a group member you are able to adjust whom your membership is visible to under ‘Membership settings’. You cannot, however, join a group completely anonymously: membership of a group will always be visible to other group members.
If you’ve selected that your membership of a group is not visible to other users, this group will appear on your profile in grey (this means that it will not appear to users visiting your profile).

If a group is visible to you this means that you are able to join it (or request membership). Regardless of whether or not you are a member, you will be able to see the group name, the group description, and any recent news, in addition to the group’s website and office (providing this information has been entered). Reading group threads and taking part in group discussions is only possible, however, once you’ve joined a group.

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Communicating with studiVZ users in this way will not be possible, however, until they have connected their accounts to meinVZ.

When someone sends you a message you will be notified via an email that will be sent to the email address you used to register, unless you have deactivated this in 'My Account'. You can manage your messages – read them, reply to them, and delete them – under 'My Messages'. The messages in your inbox and outbox are at no time and under no circumstances visible to other members of the network.

Under 'Privacy' you can select which studiVZ users are able to send you messages. You may wish to block all studiVZ users from contacting you in this way, or decide that only those studiVZ members who are your friends have this option. studiVZ users can do the same with regard to meinVZ users.

Please be aware, however, that you cannot block users within your own platorm (meinVZ) from sending you messages. Any member of meinVZ can send you a message at any time - even if you have restricted the visibility of your full profile.

If another user’s messages are annoying you, don’t worry, you can prevent him or her from sending you any more by using our 'Ignore' function. Simply go to the user’s profile, click on 'Report/Ignore' and select 'Ignore'. Ignored users cannot contact you by any means, and will only ever be able to see your name, region and profile photo. More information can be found in the 'Reporting and Ignoring' chapter.

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Here you are able to change your login details (email address and password). Neither your email address nor your password will be visible at any time to employees of studiVZ Ltd. or anyone else.

studiVZ Ltd. employees will only ever ask you for your email address or password in the following two instances, and not on any other occasions:

• If you are unable or unwilling to delete your meinVZ account online (point 9.5 of the Consent to the Use of Personal Data).
• o If you are making a request regarding freedom of information (more information can be found in the “Freedom of Information” chapter below).

Your email address will under no circumstances be passed to third parties for commercial or business reasons. Under 'My Account' you are able to adjust various settings to determine what kind of notifications you receive from meinVZ.

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You are already able to pre-register for this under 'My Account'. This means we’ll let you know as soon as it’s possible.

If you’re a meinVZ member who will soon be studying, it’s easy for you to change platform and move your profile across to studiVZ. First you need to replace your region with your university - so we know where your profile should appear. You then need to make sure that the legal side of things is in order by agreeing to the General Terms & Conditions, Consent to the Use of Personal Data, and Code of Conduct for studiVZ.

The rest of your information will be automatically transferred to the corresponding fields in studiVZ. In those instances where the corresponding field in studiVZ is different (such as Employment), your information will be displayed in an adapted form. In the few cases where there is no corresponding field, the information will be lost.

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by going to 'My Account' and clicking on ‘Delete my account’. When you end your membership all of your information will be deleted from the meinVZ database and cannot be recovered.

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all of the information in your profile will be visible to everyone in meinVZ and studiVZ. The only exception to this is your contact details. When you have registered you can specify exactly who is able to see your personal information, independently for each platform, by going to 'Privacy'. The settings here can be readjusted at any point in the future.

Please be aware that your limited profile, including your name, region, and profile photo, cannot be hidden and is visible to every member of the network except ignored users. More details on this can be found in the 'Reporting and Ignoring' chapter.

Who can see my full profile?
Here you can select who is able to see your full profile. You can decide, for meinVZ and studiVZ independently, if your full profile is visible to everyone or only to certain groups of users.

Which information is displayed in my limited profile?
Here you can select which bits of your information are visible in your limited profile. Your name, region, and profile photo will always be visible to every member of the network; everything else is optional. If you want to display your 'Employment' section in your limited profile, for example, simply select it from the list.

Contact Details
Your contact details (e.g. ICQ number, mobile, address) are only ever visible to your friends.

Who can link me to photos?
Here you can select whether or not your friends are able to link you to photos. If you allow them to link you, you can ensure that these links only appear once they have been approved by you. If you have links to approve a note will appear on your homepage. You can only be linked by users who are on your friend list.

‘I’m currently…’ settings
You can write something in 'I’m currently... ' to let other users know what you’re up to. You can adjust which groups of users can see this, independently for meinVZ and studiVZ, under 'Privacy'.

Birthday Display
You are required to enter your date of birth when you register. This will then be visible on your profile to all members of the network. If you don’t want people to see your date of birth you can chose to remove it from your profile, or display it without the year.

Messages and Gruschels
Any member of the network can send messages to or gruschel any other member of the network. You can only do this to studiVZ users, however, when they have connected their account to meinVZ.
As a meinVZ member you can change your privacy settings so that studiVZ users are unable to message or gruschel you, or so that only your friends in studiVZ can do this. studiVZ users have the equivalent options regarding meinVZ users.

If another user is annoying you, you can simply choose to ignore this person: Go to the profile concerned, click on 'Report/Ignore', and select 'Ignore'. An ignored user cannot contact you in any way, through either gruschels or messages, and cannot write on your notice board. Access to your profile is also blocked. Regardless of your privacy settings, an ignored user will only be able to see your profile photo, your name, and your region. More details can be found in the 'Reporting and Ignore' chapter.

If you receive messages that breach the meinVZ Code of Conduct, whether junk mail, advertising, or a message that is in any way offensive, you can report the sender to the support team by clicking on 'Report/Ignore' on his or her profile. The support team will then take the necessary steps to address the breach.

Search
Your settings in this area allow you to select how you can be found on the network.

Under 'Super-search' you can select if you can be found through search criteria such as 'Home country', or if you only want to be found through searches for your name.

Under 'Who can find me?' you can select whether you can only be found by meinVZ users, or whether all users of the network can find you.

Visiting other profiles
When you visit a profile your name and profile picture will appear on that user’s homepage beneath 'Recent visitors to my profile'. You can change your settings under 'Privacy' so that you will be invisible and never appear in this section to other members.

Do you know...?
The 'Do you know…?' section on your homepage randomly displays the profile photos and names of other users from your region. Unless you change your settings in 'Privacy' you may also appear in this section to other users.

Who can see that I’m online?
When other users look at your profile they will be able to see if you’re online or not. If you don’t want users to be able to see this, simply change your settings under 'Privacy'.

[ Settings for the use of my data ]

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you can choose to ignore them. Simply go to the relevant profile, click on 'Report/Ignore', and select 'Ignore'.

An ignored user cannot contact you in any way, not through messages, gruschels, or your notice board. An ignored user is also unable to access your profile and, regardless of what you have made visible on your limited profile, can only ever see your name, region, and profile photo.

If you feel a member is misusing the network or breaching the Code of Conduct in any way (sending advertising, junk mail, or annoying people, for example) you should report this to us immediately. Our support team will then investigate the issue and take the necessary action. To report someone, go to his or her profile, click on 'Report/Ignore' and select 'Report'. Please then explain the reason for the accusation in the corresponding fields.

The report function also allows you to bring to our attention any photos or groups you find offensive or believe may be breaking our Code of Conduct. To do so, simply click on 'Report group' in the group menu, or on 'Report photo' above the photo on the right hand side.

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This information will be shown in colour. By clicking on the information you can see other members of the network with the same information displayed in the same field. This means you can expand your personal network by finding people with the same interests as you.

Clicking on the information once will show you all of the users from your region with the same entry. If you click again, you can choose to view all of the users with that entry from 'meinVZ', 'studiVZ' and 'Everywhere'.

The following search functions are also available when you click on 'search':

Search in your own region: Look for people in the same region as you.

Search Everywhere: Don’t limit yourself to a region; search the entire network for a particular name.

Super-search: Find people according to a range of different criteria – “first name”, “Home country”, or “relationship status”. Only profile information that is linked can be found.

The School search allows you to find people who attended the same school as you. Finding old school friends has never been easier!

Groups: You can find groups by typing keywords into the group search function. Please bear in mind that some groups can only be seen by users in a particular platform (studiVZ or meinVZ), or from a particular region.

It is important to note that the different search options are available to all users of the network. Under 'Privacy' you can decide how, and by whom, you can be found.

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If someone you know isn’t on here, why not send them an invitation? If you’re looking for someone on the network but cannot find them, an invitation box will automatically appear. To invite a friend, simply enter his or her email address into the box. When you invite someone to join, you can decide whether or not you would like to add a personal message to the standard invitation. The recipient will then be sent an email including your name and this message.

studiVZ Ltd. will only use the information you provide here – the email address and name of your friend – to send an invitation, and not for any other purposes.

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To login again later you must re-enter your password and email address. To prevent other people from accessing (and misusing) your account after you have left a computer, you will automatically be logged out if your account is inactive for more than 30 minutes.

To be on the safe side, please always click on 'logout' when you have finished your session.

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our Consent to the Use of Personal Data only applies to our network – consisting of meinVZ and studiVZ.

External websites, even if they can be accessed from links on our website, are not covered by our Consent to the Use of Personal Data. studiVZ Ltd. assumes no responsibility for the conduct of external websites with regards to data protection.

To ensure that any external sites meet with your expectations concerning data protection guidelines, we advise you to read all the information provided by these websites on this topic.

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The means for studiVZ Ltd. to support and further develop this service are in part provided by advertising.

You have the option to select whether or not you would like to be sent advertising, and to decide if you want to be shown personalised advertising on the website. The settings for this can be changed at any time under
[ Settings for the use of my data ] in "Privacy".

Advertising shown over the network is typically not managed by studiVZ Ltd. but by advertising companies or digital advertising agencies. When you click on an online advert your IP address is automatically sent to the advertiser. Furthermore, some advertisers use cookies, flash-cookies, javascript and/or other technical devices.

More information about advertising on meinVZ can be found under 'Data Protection' by going to [How does the advertising on meinVZ work?].

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the operator of meinVZ, studiVZ Ltd., to use the information you have provided, in accordance with your settings, for the purpose of advertising.

With your consent, studiVZ Ltd. can send you advertisements, either to your email address or through the platform’s message service. The maximum number of advertisements you will be sent is limited to five a month.

You have the option to select whether or not you would like to be sent advertising, and to decide if you want to be shown personalised advertising on the website. The settings for this can be changed at any time under [ Settings for the use of my data ] in "Privacy".

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that the operator of the meinVZ platform, studiVZ Ltd., has saved about you. When making such a request, please provide us with the email address that you last used to access the network.

This information will then be sent to you by email or, if this is not possible, by post.

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analyse the information provided by you for advertising purposes, whether or not we send you advertising, and whether or not you are shown personalised adverts on the site. You can adjust these settings at any time by going to 'Privacy' and then to 'Advertising settings'. If you indicate that you do not wish to be sent advertising and that you do not want to be shown personalised adverts this will have no effect on your membership of the network.

Nevertheless, please understand that it is necessary for us to record information about every members’ use of the site – this is obligatory. We store the activity of members for up to six months to both prevent and investigate network misuse and violations. This information is saved to ensure the security of our users and the network. We would like to emphasise that this information is not saved for business purposes (you are in any case able to prevent this through your privacy settings – see above), but because we want to provide a safe and attractive platform to our users. We want to ensure that users have the best possible security and protections.

If you do not want us to save any more of your information you can revoke the consent you gave during registration at any time. To do this, either write an email to revoke@meinvz.net or send a letter to studiVZ Limited, Saarbrücker Strasse 38, 10405 Berlin. Due to the reasons explained above, however, this will result in your account being deleted. If, on the other hand, you simply wish that we do not send you adverts or analyse your data for advertising purposes, you can adjust your settings accordingly under 'Privacy' by going to 'Advertising settings'.

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or would like to know more about our rules concerning user information, please contact our Data Protection Officer at the following address:

studiVZ Ltd.
– Data Protection Officer –
Saarbrücker Straße 38
10405 Berlin / Deutschland
E-Mail: dataprotection@meinVZ.net

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