Privacy

This page says plainly what happens to your information. No legal fog.

Short version: the website measures which pages get read. If you give me your email, I keep it so I can send you what you asked for. If you become a coaching client, you get a private space where your session notes live, and you can take everything out or delete all of it yourself at any time.

Who is responsible

Peter Ploetner, Towards Joy and Peace, Herzfelder Steig 28, 12589 Berlin, Germany. There is no data protection officer, because a one-person practice is not required to appoint one.

Reading the website

The site measures which pages are read and which links are followed, using PostHog. This is to work out which writing is useful, not to build a profile of you. It stores an anonymous identifier in your browser.

The legal basis is my legitimate interest in knowing whether the site works (Article 6(1)(f)). Inside the client portal, this measuring is switched off completely.

Giving me your email

If you take the Spec Check or sign up for the essays, I store your email address, the language you read in, and where you signed up from. I use it to send you what you asked for and the occasional note.

The legal basis is your consent (Article 6(1)(a)), given by the line next to the button when you sent it. You can withdraw it at any time by replying to any email or writing to me, and I delete the address.

Your Spec Check answers are worked out in your browser. The answers themselves are not stored, only the address you gave.

The client portal

Coaching clients get a private space. It holds a short note after each session, the documents you have signed, and a checklist of where we are in the work.

Session notes are about your life. They can touch on stress, work, family and how you are feeling. Because that is sensitive, I do not write a single note until you have separately and explicitly agreed to it, in a document you read and sign in the portal itself.

The legal basis is your explicit consent (Article 9(2)(a)) alongside our coaching contract (Article 6(1)(b)). You can withdraw consent at any time, and that means the notes go.

I keep some private preparation notes as well. Those are still about you, so they are included whenever you ask for your data, and they are deleted along with everything else.

I do not send notes by email. Email copies sit in inboxes forever and cannot be recalled. Notification emails from the portal say only that something is waiting, never what it says.

• Stored in a database in Frankfurt, Germany, inside the EU.
• Only I can open it. There are no other staff.
• There is no password to steal: sign-in is a one-time link sent to your email.
• Never sold, never shared, never used to advertise anything to you.

How long I keep things

Coaching notes, signed documents and checklists: three years after we stop working together, then deleted. If you want them gone sooner, there is a button in your account and you do not have to ask me first.

Email addresses on the list: until you unsubscribe or ask me to remove you.

Website measurements: kept in an anonymous form, not tied to your name.

Invoices and accounting records are kept for ten years, because German tax law requires it. These hold your name, address and what you paid, and nothing about the content of our sessions.

Your rights

You can ask to see everything I hold about you, correct anything wrong, have it all deleted, limit what I do with it, object to it, and take it elsewhere in a machine-readable file. You do not need to give a reason.

If you have a portal account, two of these are self-service: a download button that gives you everything in one file, and a delete button that removes your account and every note attached to it. Deletion cannot be undone, and I cannot get it back for you.

For anything else, write to me and I will answer within a month.

Who else touches your data

These companies process data on my behalf, under a contract that limits them to what I instruct. Nobody else gets it.

Getting in touch

For anything on this page, including asking for your data or its deletion, write to me at the address in the imprint. [enable JavaScript to see email]

If you are not happy

You can complain to a supervisory authority. The one for Berlin is the Berliner Beauftragte fuer Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit, Alt-Moabit 59-61, 10555 Berlin. You can also go to the authority where you live.