AbsClust Datenschutzerklärung

Our website uses cookies

This website uses strictly necessary cookies only. We do not use tracking, advertising or analytics cookies, and there is therefore nothing for you to consent to or opt out of. You can see full information about the cookies we use in the ‘Cookies’ section below.

We use trusted third-party providers

Most processing takes place within Germany, on infrastructure provided by the University of Rostock. Where we use external service providers, we choose EU contracting parties where they are available: our agreement for AI model access with OpenAI is concluded with OpenAI Ireland Ltd., an EU entity, rather than with its US parent.

Some processing nevertheless takes place outside the EU, in particular in the USA. The USA does not have an adequacy decision by the European Commission, which means it does not provide the same level of data protection as the EU. We enter into data protection agreements with all our providers and rely on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) for those transfers. You can request a copy of the SCCs we rely on with our providers outside the EU/EEA by contacting us at privacy@absclust.com.

You can enforce your data protection rights

You can enforce your data protection rights by contacting us at privacy@absclust.com.

Under the GDPR, you have the following data protection rights:

• The right to access your personal data.
• The right to rectify any inaccuracies in your personal data.

In certain circumstances defined by law, you may also exercise the following rights:

• The right to request the deletion of your personal data.
• The right to restrict the processing of your personal data.
• The right to request the transfer of your personal data to another controller.
• The right to withdraw consent to the processing of your data.

The right to object

When we process your data based on legitimate interest, you also have the right to object to the processing under Art. 21 GDPR.

The right to lodge a complaint

If you believe that our processing of your data infringes European data protection laws, you have the right to file a complaint with a data protection authority. You may lodge a complaint with any supervisory authority, in particular in the EU member state of your residence or place of work. The authority responsible for us is the Landesbeauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Werderstraße 74a, 19055 Schwerin, Germany.

Automated decision-making

AbsClust uses AI models to rank search results, answer questions and extract information from articles. These are research support tools. We do not use them to make decisions that produce legal effects concerning you or that similarly significantly affect you, and we do not carry out automated decision-making or profiling within the meaning of Art. 22 GDPR.

We regularly update this Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes to our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons.

You can always easily contact us

The controller in the meaning of the General Data Protection Regulation is Quiddity Technologies GbR, Lübecker Straße 3, 18057 Rostock, Germany, privacy@absclust.com. See the Imprint for further contact details.

You’re not legally or contractually required to provide us with your information

Unless otherwise stated, providing us with your personal data is not a statutory or contractual requirement. Although you are not obliged to provide it, we will not be able to offer you or guarantee the functionalities described in this Privacy Policy if you decide not to share the requested information.

Processing activities

This Privacy Policy covers both this website and the hosted AbsClust application. Below, you can find more details on how we process your personal data.

Traffic to the application — including sign-in, search queries and uploaded documents — reaches it through a network entry point described under ‘Website Access’ below. That entry point forwards your connection without decrypting it, so the contents of your session are readable only by the application servers themselves. Both machines are operated within Germany.

Website Access

Information — When you visit our website, your web browser transmits the following data to our web server:

• Usage data (e.g. web pages visited)
• Communication data (e.g. browser type, network, device, and IP addresses)

Purpose and legal basis

• Analysis and maintenance of technical operation of the servers
• Security and improvement of the hosting platform

The legal basis for this processing activity is the legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR) in the technical functionality and security of the website.

Recipients — This website is served from a server we rent from Contabo GmbH, Aschauer Straße 32a, 81549 München, Germany. The same server acts as the network entry point for the AbsClust application, but forwards those connections to the application servers without decrypting them; it can therefore see the connection metadata described above, but not the contents of your session. The application servers are operated by the University of Rostock on its own infrastructure. Both providers are located in Germany, so neither serving this website nor reaching the application involves a transfer outside the EU. We do not use any web analytics service.

Retention period — The data is deleted as soon as it is no longer necessary to achieve the purpose for which it was collected. For the data collection to provide the website, this is when the respective session has ended.

Where this data is written to server log files, the logs are rotated daily and deleted after 14 days at the latest.

User Account

Information — Registration is required in the AbsClust application to provide full access to the services. During registration, we will collect the information you entered in the registration form’s input mask. In addition, other communication data, e.g. IP addresses, browser type, or operating system, are processed.

Purpose and legal basis — We process the data you provide during registration in order to create and operate your user account under Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR. The processing of communication data is based on legitimate interest Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR in the secure operation of the service.

Recipients — The service provider: Quiddity Technologies GbR. Application hosting: University of Rostock. Network entry point: Contabo GmbH (see ‘Website Access’ above). All are located in Germany. We have concluded a data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR with Contabo GmbH.

Retention period — We store your data for the full time of user activity and a maximum of 24 months from last user activity or 12 months from account deletion, unless we need to keep it for other reasons, e.g. tax or legal.

Search queries

We use both models hosted on University of Rostock infrastructure and third-party services to provide the core functionality of the AbsClust search engine. This means that your search queries might be processed by the third-party service providers OpenAI Ireland Ltd. and Fireworks.ai, Inc. For this purpose no user-related information is sent to the third party (such as name, email, IP address, etc.), only an anonymous search query string. AbsClust stores the user search queries to provide convenient search history in the user interface.

Purpose and legal basis — This service processes user search queries (possibly including third-party providers) for providing core search functionality. This processing is based on Art. 6 (1)(b) GDPR for meeting our contractual obligations.

Retention period — We store your search queries for the full time of user activity and a maximum of 24 months from last user activity or 12 months from account deletion.

Details of how the third-party providers handle the data they receive can be found in their respective policies:

• OpenAI may retain API inputs and outputs for up to 30 days for the purpose of identifying abuse, after which they are removed. OpenAI does not use this data to train its models: https://openai.com/enterprise-privacy/
• Fireworks.ai operates under a Zero Data Retention configuration, meaning prompt inputs and model outputs are not retained beyond the lifecycle of the individual request: https://fireworks.ai/privacy-policy

Where a query is processed by a model running on University of Rostock infrastructure, no data leaves that infrastructure and no third party is involved.

User uploaded data

AbsClust allows users to upload custom data sources, e.g. scientific articles as PDF, to provide search within custom data sources. The data is securely stored on our servers and is only available to the user who uploaded the data. AbsClust stores this data for the full time of user activity or unless the custom data source is deleted by the user. In addition, for implementing AbsClust functionality, selected chunks of the data might be sent to the third-party providers OpenAI Ireland Ltd. and Fireworks.ai, Inc., or processed by models running on University of Rostock infrastructure. This is necessary to implement the following AbsClust features:

• Basic information search within custom dataset
• Question answering from custom dataset
• Information extraction from custom dataset

For this purpose no user information is sent to third parties (such as name, email, IP address, etc.), only anonymized chunks of information from user uploaded data.

The Terms of Service permit only published scientific articles to be uploaded, and prohibit uploading personal data about identifiable individuals or special categories of personal data within the meaning of Art. 9 GDPR. The Service is not designed to process such data, and we may remove datasets that breach this restriction.

Purpose and legal basis — This service processes user uploaded data for providing basic functionality, which might include sending chunks of this data to third-party providers. This processing is based on Art. 6 (1)(b) GDPR for meeting our contractual obligations.

Retention period — We store the information for the full time of user activity or until the specific custom dataset is deleted. The data is stored for a maximum of 36 months from last user activity, 6 months from account deletion, or 6 months since the specific custom dataset was deleted.

The third-party providers’ own retention terms are listed in the ‘Search queries’ section above.

Cookies

Technically necessary cookies

Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The service cannot function properly without these cookies. We do not set any other cookies.

This marketing website sets no cookies at all. The cookies listed below are set by the AbsClust application when you sign in, and are required to keep you logged in and to protect your session.

Legal basis — Storing and reading these cookies is exempt from consent under § 25 (2) no. 2 TDDDG, because they are strictly necessary to provide the service you have expressly requested. The associated processing of personal data is carried out under Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR, based on the legitimate interest in the secure and functional operation of the service.