WORLDTECHPrivacy
Saman Hassani
office@worldtech.news
Imprint / Disclosure
Controller
Saman Hassani
Necessary server processing
Delivering pages requires technical processing of connection data such as IP addresses and HTTP requests. The application does not keep access logs. Search queries are processed for local search, not stored in traffic counters. Hosting, proxy and email services may require separate processing; their providers, retention and transfers must be confirmed before launch.
Consent and storage
The necessary first-party worldtech_consent cookie stores version, timestamp and categories for 180 days. Necessary is always enabled. Analytics, advertising and personalization default OFF. These categories are technical settings, not active services. No optional trackers are integrated. You can accept all, reject optional categories or choose individually, and change or withdraw choices at any time through Privacy settings. Invalid, outdated or expired choices enable no optional services.
Cookie-free audience measurement
Successful public HTML GET requests are counted as aggregates independently of optional analytics consent (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR): by UTC day, normalized path, language, broad referrer category (direct, internal, search, social, external; for external sites only the domain name), request type (human, bot/crawler, system) and country. The country is derived locally from the IP address only (IP Geolocation by DB-IP, CC BY 4.0); the IP address is not stored. To count visitors and sessions, a hash of IP address and browser identifier is formed with a random value that is regenerated every day; the random value and all hashes are deleted at the end of the day, so visitors cannot be recognised across days. For reading depth, only page type, desk, the number of pages and articles in a visit and the type of entry and exit page are counted within a day. So that a reloaded article is not counted twice, only a salted short hash of the article is held during the visit and deleted with the random value at the end of the day; which articles someone read is not kept. The system stores no IP addresses, user-agent strings, visitor IDs, fingerprints, tracking cookies, full referrer URLs or search queries. Page views are not unique visitors. Aggregates are kept for 90 days. Static assets, APIs, health checks, HEAD, consent actions, internal routes and errors are excluded. For the globe on the front page we count per day how many visitors saw it, turned it, zoomed, hid it, opened a preview or went from it to an article -- each at most once per visitor and day, with the same hash deleted at the end of the day; which story or place was chosen is not stored. Whether the globe is hidden is remembered only by your browser (local storage, at your request).
Language on arrival
A visitor who opens a page without a language from outside the website is redirected to the language of their country (German in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein; Chinese in China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Taiwan; English elsewhere; Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). The country is derived locally from the IP address only (IP Geolocation by DB-IP, CC BY 4.0); where it cannot be determined, the browser's language setting decides. Nothing is stored for this and no cookie is set; the language can be changed at any time at the top of every page.
Comments
Readers can comment below the stories (text only, no links, no images). The name or nickname given, the comment, its time, language and story are stored; name and comment are shown publicly (Art. 6(1)(a) and (f) GDPR). To prevent abuse (rate limits), a daily-rotating salted hash of the IP address is stored, never the IP address itself. A report stores the reason chosen and the same daily hash, so that each person can report a comment only once. Comments containing gross insults are reviewed before publication and comments reported several times are hidden; WORLDTECH removes comments that break the comment rules or the law. Deleted comments are erased for good after 30 days, reports after 12 months. You can ask for your own comment to be deleted through the contact form. No external services are involved.
Newsletter
If you subscribe to the free WORLDTECH newsletter (once a week), you give an e-mail address and the language you want, and optionally a first name. Signing up uses double opt-in: the address is only added to the list once you confirm it through the link in the confirmation e-mail (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, Section 174 of the Austrian Telecommunications Act 2021). As evidence of consent we store the time of sign-up, the version and wording of the consent text, the sending of the confirmation e-mail and the time of confirmation; the IP address is not stored, only a daily-rotating salted hash of it for two days to prevent abuse. The address is used only to send the newsletter and to manage it. It is sent through WORLDTECH's mailbox at Google (Gmail, Google Ireland Ltd.); opens and clicks are not tracked. Every issue contains a link to unsubscribe at once and to change the language; withdrawal applies to all further issues. Unconfirmed sign-ups are deleted no later than 7 days after the last confirmation e-mail. After unsubscribing, the address is replaced by an irreversible hash after 30 days; the record of consent and withdrawal remains without the address. Sending logs are deleted after 13 months.
Contact form
Details submitted through the contact form (name, email, topic, subject, message) are stored on the WORLDTECH server only to handle your request (Art. 6(1)(b) or (f) GDPR) and deleted after 12 months at the latest. To prevent abuse, a daily-rotating salted hash of the IP address is stored, never the IP address itself. No external services are involved.
Your rights
Subject to the applicable conditions, you have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection. Consent can be withdrawn for the future. Contact office@worldtech.news. You may complain to the Austrian Data Protection Authority. Page-view counters cannot identify individual visitors; we do not collect additional identifiers solely to identify them.