Version 01 May 2018

Certagen GmbH and VHLGenetics take protecting your privacy very seriously: so, we treat your personal data as confidential and as carefully as possible. Our Privacy policy covers all personal data we gather and use, including customer data you provide, but also data on who visits our website and subscribes to our newsletters, for example.

Certagen GmbH and VHLGenetics will not use your data unless you consent to us doing so or if we need it to supply you with products or services or have already done so. Certagen does not sell your personal data to any third parties. Certagen only provide this data to third parties involved in performing the agreement between Certagen GmbH and yourself, such as data processors at our webshops and communications between laboratories in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany if required to conduct tests.

To serve organisations better, we offer our DNA services under the brands CombiBreed®, CombiGen®, VHLGenetics® and SNPExpert, whose websites you can visit at www.combibreed.com, www.combigen.com, www.snpexpert.com, www.vhlgenetics.com and www.certagen.de respectively. We also use our brands' local domain names sometimes, such as combibreed.fr in France and combibreed.it in Italy. Certagen and VHLGenetics cannot process this data in any other way without your (express) consent.

VHLGenetics's contact details are as follows:

Dr. Van Haeringen Laboratorium BV, Agro Business Park 100, NL-6708 PW Wageningen, the Netherlands

Dr. Van Haeringen Polygen bvba, Kasteellaan 7, BE-2390 Malle, Belgium

Certagen GmbH, Marie-Curie-Strasse 1, D-53359 Rheinbach, Germany

If you have any questions, you can also reach our customer service at info@Certagen.de. To find out more about the underlying brands, please go to www.dnaisourcore.com.

Privacy policy

1. If you place an order with us, Certagen gathers data you provide, such as your name, e-mail address, home address and payment details, including your bank account or credit card data, but uses them only to invoice you for using our services and providing them and to keep you up to date with relevant developments.

2. If a third party, like a company or veterinary practice, places orders and/or pays invoices under an agreement between you and that party, Certagen will send the order results to that party.

3. If you use our websites, data is gathered automatically by the technology platforms which make this possible. Your web browser or mobile device may share certain data with Certagen if these devices communicate with our website, for example.

4. We use your data to inform you electronically (via e-mail, for example) about special offers and campaigns by Certagen and about new relevant products by our partners until you deregister.

5. If you register for our newsletter or request information, we will keep your name, address and e-mail address and will send you details of our campaigns and/or promotions by e-mail and/or we may contact you about offers and promotions.

6. Certagen does not sell your data. Certagen will not sell or provide your personal data to third parties, and will only provide this data to third parties involved in delivering the services agreed. Our staff and third parties we engage must respect the confidentiality of your data.

7. Partners. Certagen uses partners to manage and store our data. These partners may be both inside and outside the EU. Certagen and VHLGenetics as a whole choose partners who can protect personal data adequately, either by following the EU-US privacy shield, the Binding Corporate Rules or signing processor agreements. Certagen and VHLGenetics as a whole conclude processor agreements with all our partners if we need to.

8. Retaining data. Certagen keeps written documents clients send for six years. We will return written documents to clients if they ask, but we may make copies of them. We will destroy materials and items client send once we have performed contracts unless we believe these need to be kept longer. We will remove your personal data if you ask us to, but bear in mind that copies of this data may be kept in back-ups.

9. Security. Safeguarding your data is also important. If you enter your bank details to collect your subscription automatically, we ensure these details are encrypted with SSL (Secure Socket Layer). Remember no security is 100% safe, however, and that Certagen and VHLGenetics cannot guarantee it. We have taken organisational and technical measures within our organisation to make using your data secure.

10. Payments via the webshop. If you enter your credit card details or other bank details in our webshop, please be aware that an external payment processor will process your payments.

11. Changes to Privacy policy. This Privacy policy may be updated in response to changes to applicable legislation or to changes within our business or in the services we provide. We will inform you of any changes via this page; so we advise you to read this Privacy policy regularly to keep up to date. Should we make any changes which affect you seriously, we will inform you by e-mailing you or via our services.

12. Your rights to your personal data. You have the right to revoke your consent to our using your personal data; and you can also examine your data to correct or remove it if the data we have stored is incorrect or unlawful otherwise.

If there's anything you'd like to know about Certagen’s and/or VHLGenetics' Privacy Policy, you can get in touch with us via our website of via our contact details above. If you have any complaints about how we use your data which we have not resolved correctly, you can complain to the German Data Protection Authority.

Cookies

Certagen uses cookies to recognise you if you visit our websites. Cookies are bits of data which your browser stores on your computer, and which enable us to gather information about how people use our services so we can improve them and adapt them to suit your wishes. Our cookies provide details of personal identification. You can set your browser not to accept cookies.

We will inform you about the cookies law on this page as well and clearly as we can.

What are cookies?

Cookies are very small text files which are stored on your hard drive or in your computer's memory. They are linked to the web browser (Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) on the computer you use to visit a website.

What do cookies do?

Cookies can be used to save your personal preferences, like language settings or font sizes, to remember what products you put in your shopping basket at a webshop or let you log in to a website faster by remembering your user name and pre-entering it.

Websites also use cookies to gather statistics about those who visit them, so publishers can see what parts or products are popular or help visitors navigate their way around or see what web browsers or hardware they are using, so publishers can continue improving their websites and tailor their contents to their user groups.

Cookies can also be used to build up a picture of your interests, such as by remembering what kind of articles you read or headings you visit. This helps publishers offer you relevant information, such as extra news articles on subjects in which you showed an interest before or ads which relate to your interests. So publishers can avoid burdening users with irrelevant advertising and ensure you don't end up seeing the same ads or videos time and time again.

Do cookies tell publishers who I am?

No, definitely not! Cookies are held in your computer's web browser, and are not linked to you personally: so they can only tell publishers what computers they are dealing with, not who is using them. Nor can cookies be used to get your personal data, like your e-mail or home address. So they have absolutely nothing to do with unwanted sales calls, spam or viruses.

How does Certagen (VHLGenetics) use cookies?

VHLGenetics's websites (www.vhlgenetics.com, www.certagen.de, www.snpexpert.com, www.combibreed.com and www.combigen.com) use cookies. Many of these cookies are needed for our sites to work, such as by ensuring you can log in without having to enter your username and password each time.

We use other cookies for statistical purposes, like measuring how often visitors use our sites, what articles they like reading, what web browsers they use and what search terms they enter in their search engines to find our websites, so we can optimise and improve both their form and content. These cookies do not hold personal data, so they do not record who you are or what your e-mail address is.

Lastly, our sites also use cookies for advertising purposes. These cookies don't record any personal data either, and are linked to your browser, not to you yourself. We use these cookies to use to match our websites to your interests as far as possible, and sometimes to remember that you've seen an ad already. So we can ensure visitors don't see the same statements, time and time again.

Why should I allow cookies? 

Cookies help Certagen and VHLGenetics improve our websites constantly. We use the users' statistics we gather to improve our users' experience and the quality of the content of our sites.

Certagen's websites could not work without cookies, in a number of ways. We use them to let you log in, for instance. If you disable cookies, some parts of our websites won't work well any longer.

How can I reject cookies, though?

You can opt to delete cookies from your web browser's settings completely, or only allow cookies which are offered by the website you are visiting at the time, so third party cookies will be blocked.

Either way, these settings don't then just apply to Certagen's websites, but to the Internet as a whole; and your settings will always be linked to your web browser. So you need to tell each browser and each computer you use what you want.