Welcome to SPOTTERON!

The following terms of use and our privacy policy govern your use of the SPOTTERON platform and its software, apps, products, services and technologies, and your interaction with the partners, who administer a project you contribute to. If not stated expressly otherwise, only these terms apply. Please read these Terms of Use carefully.

Purpose:

SPOTTERON provides smartphone applications, web applications, websites and media for partners, based on the service of the SPOTTERON platform and as associated media like video, animation or data visualization or homepages for projects and initiatives. We are constantly extending and improving the platform’s set of features and possibilities to create a topic related network of project's apps, websites, tools and media, which offers innovative and unique features to users and project partners alike.

The Service:

The service includes all the features, applications (both smartphone and web applications), websites, technologies, products and software that we provide and constantly evolve to create a user-driven platform for custom projects in the fields of science, environmental protection, communities and social agendas in collaboration with partners from institutions, organizations or companies.

SPOTTERON provides the service as platform to enable these partners to run own projects on a common platform. For users like yourself, the SPOTTERON platform enables you to actively participate in such projects by providing geo-located data points (aka “spots”) or answers in questionnaires in apps or in interactive web-applications and to be part of a topic related community.

The apps and software on the SPOTTERON platform are designed for sharing observations, user interactivity, for participating in projects and to create communities in topic related environments. By nature, such applications and software allow you to submit user-generated content, for which you are fully responsible and liable for, including its compliance with the applicable laws and regulations of your country and the European Union.

You may only use the service if:

• you agree with these terms of use and the privacy policy as a binding contract,

• you are not a person prohibited to receive services under the laws of the applicable jurisdiction,

• you are at least 18 years old or if you provide a written statement of permission/declaration of consent by your parents or legal guardian when you are between 13 and 17 years old at registration,

• you have not prior violated our terms of use nor have a prior account which has been disabled for violation of the law, of this agreement or any additional agreements with the partner(s) of a project in the past.

If you are accepting these terms on behalf of a government or non-government organization, university, company or other legal entity, you represent and warrant to be authorized to do so.

Use with responsibility, use with caution

Please always take care of your surroundings and never put yourself into danger while using the service or any of the applications. Never record or contribute to observations in unsafe conditions. Always consider your safety first. You agree to indemnify and hold harmless SPOTTERON and the respective project partners in the event of damage or accidents occurring during the use of an application. The service is not intended to be used as a navigation tool or for emergencies. Please always contact the authorities directly in dangerous situations. The use the applications and of any content, locations, maps or materials on the service by you is completely at your own risk.

The Project-Partners

The projects on the platform are administered by one or more partner organizations, which are displayed in every app in the information section (“About [project name]” in the main menu) and/or in the imprint of a project website. The partner organizations have access to your contributions (“spots”), user generated content, and all publicly available information you share in the application of a project like your comments or descriptions. Every partner has agreed to use the service only in the way as defined by the SPOTTERON Partner Agreement.

Additional terms & conditions of partners

Particular projects on the SPOTTERON platform can have the necessity to agree to additional terms of use on a per-project basis. Such additional Terms of Use are displayed on the first start of an App for your informed consent. Please read them also carefully, with your approval and by using the apps of the listed projects on your own device you give your informed consent to accept these additional terms of use. By accepting the additional Terms of Use of a project, you enter a binding agreement with the partner organization(s) of the according to project to completely fulfil the partner’s terms as stated, and you confirm to comply with the additional Terms of Use of the Partner(s) and to indemnify and hold SPOTTERON harmless.

Your User Account

With our service we want to connect people with similar interests, scientists and project teams and contribute to a common dataset of a project. This dataset is used to research the respective topic, generate knowledge and jointly better understand our world.

A user account is required to use the service and platform. Registration is possible on SPOTTERON with only a minimal amount of data - all you need is an active email address. SPOTTERON allows the use of pseudonyms and fantasy names. With the registration of a new user account you create a publicly visible user profile, which you can design according to your wishes. Apart from your user name, all information is optional and voluntary. You can change or correct your user profile at any time. Other users on the platform can network with you ("following") and you can interact with other users within the app community.

By registering and agreeing to these terms of use, you give us permission to store and process your personal data. Please refer to our Privacy Policy for information on the locations of data processing and our involved processors: https://www.spotteron.net/privacy - By registering and accepting this Terms of Use, you consent to the processing by the listed processors and external services, such as online map providers, server and cloud hosting providers, integrated services and other necessary system components.

You may withdraw your permission to process your personal data on the platform and your consent to these Terms of Use at any time by deleting your SPOTTERON profile in any project app and ceasing to use our online services. You can delete your user account in any project app in the "Settings" area without delay. You can also download a copy of your stored data in a machine-readable format in this area at any time. Please note that the deletion of your SPOTTERON user account also includes the deletion of your user profile and that you will no longer be able to log in to any project app on the platform.

To contribute to projects on SPOTTERON, the following user account types are available:

Personal account

You can register a personal user account either by choosing Miss, Mister or “Not specified” at the registration. To use the service of SPOTTERON with a personal user account, you must be at least 18 years old or at least 13 years if you provide a written parent or guardian consent to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with indication of your username in form of a signed document by the parent/guardian as PDF or Doc file before registration.

School Class

If you are a teacher/organizer of a school group, you can register a school class account. Your pupils can use a school class account login provided by you to login in any of the project’s apps on multiple devices. No personal data of single users, which can lead to clearly identify a person, is processed when doing so. To register a school class account, please provide your name and birthday as the responsible representative to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with the username given in the email.

You agree to always monitor the contributions of the organization’s team in the app and delete or report contributions with sensitive data or cases of abuse of the service. Please also inform the participants of the school class(es) that no one should delete the account without your consent. SPOTTERON accepts no liability for contributions made by your school class or for data loss in the event of account deletion by participants.

Organization

If you are a representative of an organization, you can register a shared account for your team. The team members can use an organization account login provided by you to them to login in any of the project’s apps on multiple devices. No personal data of single users, which can lead to clearly identify a person, is processed when doing so. To register an organization account, please provide your name and birthday as the responsible representative to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with the username given in the email.

You agree to always monitor the contributions of the organization’s team in the app and delete or report contributions with sensitive data or cases of abuse of the service. Please also inform the participants of the organization that no one should delete the account without your consent. SPOTTERON accepts no liability for contributions made by your organization or for data loss in the event of account deletion by participants.

What personal data we store:

In order to provide and operate the SPOTTERON platform, websites, software and our online offer, it is necessary to process personal data. We always take care to store as little personal data as possible, or to use personal data as optional, voluntary information as far as possible. You do not have to use real names for your user account, we support pseudonyms as user names or display names to protect your privacy also in the public view as best as possible.

We do not implement external tracking software such as analytics or external scripts from social media platforms in our applications and we do not create usage profiles about you or other users of the platform. We do not monetise your personal data or pass it on to third parties for this purpose.

User account data / profile data (required basic profile information)

This type of processed personal data is used for logging into the platform and your user account. This information includes your email address, user account type and user name. We also store your IP address and the date of registration in log files. We do not automatically pass on this data to the respective partners of the project, your data is safe with us.

To comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we store changes and requests of your personal data with your IP address in log files. Our privacy policy and procedure complies with the standards and requirements of the GDPR. We have the necessary internal measures in place to fulfil our responsibilities and obligations with a focus on the best possible privacy and user rights in the design of the platform.

Extended user account information

In order to personalise your SPOTTERON user profile, which can be found via user search and is linked to in your posts, you have access to advanced optional fields. These optional fields include your display name, your date of birth, a quote, your interests, your date of birth, your education, the tools you use, your workplace, your city, postcode and country. All these details are voluntary and are publicly displayed in your user profile and are used for personalisation purposes or to make your account easier to find in the platform's user search. By using these voluntary fields, you give your consent within the framework of these terms of use that we may store and process this information about you. You can also upload a user profile picture (aka "avatar").

For school classes and organisations, as the responsible representative, you can provide non-personal data about the size, structure and nature of the class/organisation.

While the required profile information is mandatory, all of this extended profile information is voluntary and optional. You can correct, reduce or delete this information at any time in profile edit mode.

Informed Consent to process your personal data

By creating your user account and agreeing to these Terms of Use, you give us unrestricted permission to process and store your information and personal data and to display your information publicly on the Platform's apps, services, websites and online content.

Updating your personal data:

You can change and update your personal and general data of your user account in all project apps of the platform at any time. A change is automatically applied to all project apps.

Requesting a copy of your personal data

You can request and immediately download a copy of all your data stored on the platform in all project apps on the SPOTTERON platform in the "Settings" section. The download is machine-readable and includes not only your profile data, but also all your amounts and comments in all project apps.

Deleting your personal data aka “Right to be forgotten”

You can delete your stored personal profile data at any time in all project apps on the platform by entering your password in the "Settings" area and using the button to delete. Your personal data and community interactions will then be deleted and your project contributions anonymised.

Using the service without a user account

You can always use the applications of the projects on the SPOTTERON platform without registering or logging in for browsing, displaying and reviewing of the spots and contents - however, if you want to participate actively or make contributions, you have to create your own user account or log in to be able to be part of the community.

Exceptions are projects, which by their partner’s own choice offer the option to also contribute anonymously. By using the service without an account, all your contributions and media uploads are assigned to an anonymous user account. By contributing anonymously in these projects, you agree that you have obtained all necessary rights and that you respect privacy and intellectual property laws. Please note that your IP address and date of the contribution are still recorded for documentation purposes.

Multiple projects - one login

Once you have created your own user account, you can use it in all project apps on the SPOTTERON platform as your login. With your first contribution, you agree that your username and user ID will be shared with the project’s partners for research and analysis of the collected data-set and its contributions. Some projects have additional terms of use, which are displayed at the first start of a project’s app. You have to agree/give your consent to that projects to be able to contribute to them.

Sharing of your profile data:

For certain features and services, you may allow us to share your profile data with project partners. Some projects send newsletters or information via email to participants. In the project apps of such projects, you can agree to the transfer of your profile data to the project partners (e.g. for newsletter registration or to be contacted by the project) in a separate dialogue box when you start the app. If you give your consent, we will provide your user name or display name, account type, your user-ID and e-mail address to the respective project partner.

In some projects you can log in to the project's website or web application with your SPOTTERON user account. This may be necessary, for example, for active participation in a user forum, participation in an external project application or to access non-public areas on a project website ("website login"). In the case of a login to a project website or an external application, after clicking on the login button you will be asked whether you agree to your profile data being passed on to the website or the project partners. If you consent, a user account will be created within the website or application with your profile data. You can revoke this consent to processing separately from the project apps by contacting the administrator of the respective project website or by using the account deletion functions provided for this purpose on the respective project website or in the external application.

Under no circumstances will your profile data be passed on without your consent or without any action on your part, such as logging into a project website or application. Please contact the respective project partner or website administrator of a project to correct your details, to obtain a copy of the personal data processed by the project partner or to withdraw your consent or have your personal data deleted by the partner. This does not affect your account on the SPOTTERON platform or in the apps on the platform.

Contributions

In the project apps, you can upload your contributions (aka "spots") and locate them on maps to create a data set on the topic of the project together with other users. Your contributions are always publicly viewable and are displayed in the respective project app together with your author information (user name or optionally display name) and other content you provide, such as free texts, descriptions and classifications. When you actively contribute to a project app, you acknowledge that all users and unregistered visitors to the app can view your content.

The apps allow you to restrict the visibility of your contributions with the additional options "Hide coordinates" and "Hide spot". This limits the visibility of their posts to regular users of the platform. Project leaders, admins and moderator users will still be able to see all the details and localisation and interact with their restricted post.

Please always respect applicable laws, copyright, trademark and licensing laws, the privacy, personal rights and property rights of others and spatial restrictions on locations for your contributions. You are solely liable for your contributions as author and confirm with these terms of use to indemnify and hold SPOTTERON and/or project partners harmless in all cases.

Geo-spatial restrictions

You may not share any contribution, information or media on the Platform that conflicts with the property or privacy of others or that is located in restricted areas. When you upload and/or locate a new contribution or content, you assume full and complete legal responsibility for your post. You confirm that it is legal under local laws to create and share a public post in that location, and that no third parties will be limited or harmed, or that the value of any third party property will be diminished by your contribution.

Pictures, content and other media objects

You may share media such as images, photos, audio, text such as comments and descriptions and other types of media or content as part of your posts, comments, user profile or community interactions. All such media and content (“"unique-creative works") contributed by you is licensed by you exclusively under the Creative Commons CC0 Licence. By uploading and agreeing to these Terms of Use, you confirm that you are releasing your media and original content under this licence and that you waive any claims under copyright, media rights or exploitation rights. To be able to do so, please ensure that you have all necessary rights, such as copyright, or personal rights, such as the written consent of any identifiable people in the media, to license your media or original content under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) and to share it with others.
You can find out more about the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licence here: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0

You may not share on the Platform any media or content that infringes the copyright, trademark or licensing rights of any third party or any applicable laws, or that is protected under copyright, exploitation rights, personal rights, media rights. You further may not share any media or content that can be seen as hate posting, which includes sexism, racism, any other form of discrimination, explicit nudity, prohibited symbols, extremism, public shaming, invasion of privacy, or any focused advertising outside of a project topic relevant documentation. We reserve the full and unlimited right to remove content at any time and without notice if there is a violation, or suspected violation, of these terms.

If you share media objects or content that include the likeness or sound recordings of other persons, you must ensure that you have obtained prior documented consent from all relevant persons before uploading and that you are able to provide such consent at any time in the event of a complaint. ("Model Agreement")

You agree to be fully and solely legally responsible for all of your contributed media objects, content and uploads, to hold all necessary rights and consents for CC0 licensing, public display and sharing on the Platform and to indemnify and hold harmless SPOTTERON, the Project Partners or the Service in all cases. In addition to licensing under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licence, you grant us a transferable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, third party licensable and worldwide right to store, use, modify, distribute, modify, publicly display, translate or create derivative works based on such content for all content and media published by you in the Contributions on the Platform.

Please note that all media, content and unique-creative works in "contributions" are and remain licensed under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) even after the deletion of your user account.

Community

The SPOTTERON platform enables users like yourself to discover new things, learn, communicate and explore our world together through the interactive apps. A user community is integrated in the project apps on the platform and also in other areas of our online offer/service. You can post your own content and comments, share information, create networks and groups, participate in events and give digital hearts in recognition of content within the community with your user account. All your interactions with the community functions are always publicly visible. We therefore ask you to always be careful never to create content that could be embarrassing or shameful to you or others in the future.

Communication and networking

With the ability to follow other users in the project apps and other communication features, we support the creation of project-related communities and communication among each other. We make these features and tools available to all users and project partners to encourage the exchange of thoughts, ideas and opinions and interaction with each other. For project partners, we provide additional tools to contact you directly via messages or emails for news, updates, information exchange and for requests.

You agree to use the communication features responsibly only. We also do not allow any forms of discrimination, bullying, explicit nudity, banned symbols, extremism, public shaming, belittling, invasion of privacy or any focused advertising away from project-relevant documentation in communications and community activities on the platform.

You agree that you are solely and fully responsible for your content and contributions to the Platform's user community and that you have all necessary rights and consents for your content. Do not share your personal account or access data with others. In case of use by others, you are fully legally responsible for the contributions, content and community activities of another person and you confirm with these terms of use to hold SPOTTERON, the project partners or the service harmless in all cases. Please inform us immediately if you suspect that your user account is being or has been used by other persons.

If you have set up a group account (school class, organisation) as the responsible representative, please ensure that all participants are informed about the legal basis and your responsibility for the community activities, communication, but also about the legally correct use of media and content, as well as the licensing of these under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licence. Please maintain the posts and community activities of the user account you represent on an ongoing basis, use the delete function for posts in the event of misuse or suspicion of a breach of these terms of use by participants in your group account and report these to us immediately. As a representative, you are responsible for the community activities of the participants via the user account you have set up and you confirm with these terms of use that you will indemnify and hold harmless the project partners or the service in all cases.

Your Community Content

You agree that you are solely and unconditionally responsible for your content and contributions to the Platform's user community and that you have all necessary rights and consents for your content and that you do not violate any copyrights, trademark rights, licensing rights, personal rights or applicable laws. For all content and media you post on the Platform's community features, you grant us a transferable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, third party licensable, worldwide right to store, use, modify, distribute, alter, publicly display, translate or create derivative works based on such content. You assume exclusive and full liability for all Community Content created and/or uploaded by you in our online offerings and, by agreeing to these Terms of Use, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless SPOTTERON and the Platform's project partners in all cases of violation of applicable law, misuse, or claims for damages by third parties.

Violations of these Terms of Use

We respect the copyright and intellectual property rights, privacy of third parties, trademarks and licensing rights and expect them to do the same.

We and the partners of the respective project app reserve the unrestricted right to delete any content at any time due to violation of these terms of use, of licence terms or of applicable law without prior warning and without being liable to them or third parties. This also includes the unrestricted right to modify or delete any content that is not uploaded in the appropriate context of the project theme or that does not meet our quality standards.

We may delete your user account at any time for violations of these Terms of Use or our community standards if you post profanity, insults, hate speech, advertising, discrimination or other content that is not appropriate for our community or violates these Terms of Use.

Report violations

You can point out and report violations of these terms of use, against the community standards or copyright violations at any time via the eMail address This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or contact us by postal mail with SPOTTERON Gmbh, Faßziehergasse 5, 1070 Vienna, AT.

We know that mainly women and non-bias genders are affected by bullying or harassment online. For gender-relevant violations or harassment in the context of the applications or our online offer, you can contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. This email address is only accessed and maintained by female or non-bias team members.

External services, Contractors, Storage and Encryption:

We use TLS/SSL encryption to protect the transfer of your personal data.
Your information, contributions, interactions and data are stored in the cloud servers we use for the Platform and Service. For more information about the storage locations of personal data, integrated services and external processors, please see our privacy policy: https://www.spotteron.net/privacy

Data Breaches:

We have implemented industry-standard measures to identify, assess and investigate data breaches. Our team is sensitised to the topic of data security and procedures are defined on what to do in the event of a data breach or suspicion thereof. We inform the partners of project apps about data protection, data security and data protection ethics and their importance.

International data transfers & data transfer to third parties

If it is necessary for us to process data in a third country (i.e. outside the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area (EEA)) or the processing takes place in the context of the use or implementation of third-party services or the disclosure or transfer of data to other persons, bodies or companies, this is done exclusively in accordance with the legal requirements.

Subject to express consent or a contractually or legally required transfer, we process (or let process) the data only in third countries with a recognised level of data protection, the contractual obligation through so-called Standard Contractor Clauses (SCC) or standard protection clauses of the EU Commission, or in the presence of certifications or binding internal data protection regulations. (Art. 44 to 49 DSGVO, information page of the EU Commission: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/international-dimension-data-protection_en). You can find out more about this in our privacy statement: https://www.spotteron.net/privacy

Information on Security & Technical/Organisational Measures

We take the privacy and security of our users and their personal information very seriously and take every reasonable measure and precaution to protect and secure the personal data that we process. We have robust information security policies and procedures in place to protect personal information from unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure or destruction and have several layers of security measures, including:

• SSL/TLS encryption of all transfers of personal data in applications and websites

• Encrypted and secured access to project administration for partners with password guidelines

• Deletion concepts for project-specific and platform-specific data

• Server & cloud storage at high quality standards with established providers

• Password-protected and encrypted access incl. multi-factor authentication to data storage and systems

• Security measures according to industry standards of cloud hosters for cloud environments incl. logging access controls, encryption and firewalls

• Role concepts and technical/organisational implementation for input control

• Measures for the technical/organisational implementation of transfer control

• Measures for the technical/organisational implementation of availability control

• Strict separation of project-specific data and platform-specific data (separation requirement)

• Procedures for restoring the availability of project-specific personal data after a physical or technical incident

• Substitution arrangements for IT managers and training of staff in relation to personal data.

• Resilience testing of systems

• Internal rules to avoid external services, card services or scripts (e.g. analytics, social media platform buttons and scripts, etc.) as far as possible, both in the applications and in website projects.

Other terms

By using any of the applications based on the SPOTTERON service you agree not to interfere or misuse our service or using a method other than the tools and interfaces we provide for use.

You may not do any of the following while accessing or using the services:
1) probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of any system or network or breach or circumvent any security or authentication measures;
2) access, tamper with, or use non-public areas of the services, SPOTTERON’s or its partner’s computer systems, or the delivery systems of SPOTTERON’s providers or partners;
3) access, search or attempt to access or search the services by any means (automated or otherwise) other than through our officially published current interfaces that are provided by us (and only in the range of SPOTTERON’s terms and conditions) unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with us. Crawling the service by robots for search indexing is permitted in accordance with the robots.txt file, however, scraping the services without the prior consent of SPOTTERON and its partners is expressly forbidden);
4) interfere with, do or try to disrupt the access of any user, host or network, including (without limitation) sending malicious software, flooding, mail-bombing or spamming or by scripting the creation of content.
5) forge any TCP/IP packet header or any part of the header information in any email or posting, or in any way use the Services to send altered, deceptive or false source-identifying information;

Ending These Terms

You may terminate your legal agreement with SPOTTERON GmbH to these Terms of Use at any time by deleting your user account in the "Settings" section of any Project App after entering your password and by stopping the use of the Service and our online services.

Your account may be terminated due to prolonged and continuous inactivity, or if we are unable to provide the Service, or due to a breach by yourself of these Terms of Use. We will take reasonable steps to notify you at the email address associated with your account or by public posting. In all such cases, the contract shall be deemed terminated and no obligation or liability shall arise on our part or any claim for damages on your part.

We grant ourselves the unrestricted right to terminate this Agreement to use the Service at any time and for any reason, including but not limited to, if we suspect that you are using the Service, Platform, Applications, Websites and/or our Online Offerings in violation of these Terms of Use or creating a potential legal exposure. Such termination shall not give rise to any claims for damages on your part.

GDPR and our employees

Our team is informed about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and its obligations. We continuously train our team on data protection, personal rights, copyright, trademark and licensing rights and aspects of digital privacy, in particular also on a lived data protection ethic in a modern, connected world.

Severability

If any one or more section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase, word, provision or application of this Ordinance shall for any person or circumstance be held to be illegal, invalid, unenforceable, and/or unconstitutional, such decision shall not affect the validity of any other section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase, word, provision or application of this Ordinance which is operable without the offending section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase, word, provision or application shall remain effective notwithstanding such illegal, invalid, unenforceable, and/or unconstitutional section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase, word, provision or application, and every section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase, word, provision or application of this Ordinance are declared severable. The legislature hereby declares that it would have passed each part, and each provision, section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase or word thereof, irrespective of the fact that any one or more section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase, word, provision or application be declared illegal, invalid, unenforceable, and/or unconstitutional.

SPOTTERON Terms of Use | 24th September 2021
SPOTTERON Gmbh, Faßziehergasse 5, 1070 Vienna, AT; FN: 488215p | UIN: ATU73129349 | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.