Privacy

1. Controller

SOUTH Automation Int. GmbH
Wasserweg 19, 64521 Groß-Gerau, Germany
Telephone +49 6152 510806-0
Fax +49 6152 510806-66
info@southautomation.net

Managing directors: Lu Yu, Shiguo Cheng. For privacy requests about this website, please write to the address above.

2. Scope

This notice covers the website southautomation.net, including its language versions.

3. Principles

We process personal data only on a legal basis under the GDPR, only for the stated purpose, and only as long as that purpose or a legal retention obligation requires. We do not sell or rent address data. We do not make automated decisions with legal effect (Art. 22 GDPR) on this website.

4. Visiting the website

You can read all pages without an account. When you open a page, your browser requests files from our host, and the host records a server log entry: IP address, date and time, requested address, status code, amount of data, referring page, and browser and operating system. Our server also counts, per day, how often each page and datasheet is opened and how many enquiries are sent from it, and it notes addresses that were not found. It stores only the address, the date, the visitor's country and, for addresses not found, the referring website. The country is worked out from the IP address during the visit; the IP address itself is not stored, and nothing is stored in your browser, so no visitor can be identified. For visitors from Germany, the approximate city and federal state are determined in the same way and stored as well.

Purpose: to deliver the pages, find errors, detect abuse and keep the server secure. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in a working and secure website). The logs are kept for a limited period and then deleted or anonymised. We do not combine them with form data.

This website uses no analytics, advertising or social media tools, no tracking cookies, no embedded maps or videos from third parties and no externally hosted fonts. That is why there is no cookie banner. We use Google Search Console to see how this website appears in Google's search results. Search Console does not run on this website and sets nothing in your browser; Google only shows us aggregated figures about searches in Google (for example how often a page was shown or clicked), without data about individual visitors. If we add such a tool later, it will only load with your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, § 25 TDDDG), and this notice will name it.

5. Contact and enquiry forms

5.1 What we collect

Contact form: company, name, email address and country (required), phone and message (optional).

“Request more info” on product pages: company, name and email address (required), phone (optional), plus the product name and your answer to a short question about your use.

Service request on the service page: email address, country, and company or name (required); phone, device (model), serial number, error message or description and location (optional).

Fields marked * are needed so that we can answer you. You are not obliged to use the forms; you can also write or call us.

5.2 What happens with it

Your enquiry is sent by email to the team responsible: product and contact enquiries to our sales team (sales@southautomation.net), service requests to our service team (service@southautomation.net). A copy is kept in the inbox of our website's editing system, on our web server and outside the public website, so we can follow it up; it is deleted automatically after 30 days. You receive a short confirmation email at the address you entered. It contains no tracking.

5.3 Legal basis

Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR, steps at your request before a possible contract (information, offer, order). Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest in answering and documenting enquiries. Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR, where an enquiry becomes part of business records we must keep by law.

5.4 Recipients

The SOUTH staff who handle the enquiry, our hosting provider and our email provider (see section 7). We do not pass form data to advertising networks.

5.5 Storage period

The copy in the website inbox is deleted automatically after 30 days. Enquiries that do not lead to a business relationship are deleted or anonymised in our email system after 12 months. Enquiries that lead to an offer, order or customer relationship are kept for the statutory retention periods under German commercial and tax law (generally 6 or 10 years).

5.6 No newsletter

We do not add form addresses to a newsletter or advertising list.

5.7 Postcode check (German service page)

If you enter a postcode to see how far the nearest service location is, our server looks up the approximate centre of that postcode and calculates the driving distance. For the route, only the coordinates of the postcode centre and of the service location are sent to the public route server of the OSRM project (router.project-osrm.org); your IP address and other data are not passed on. The postcode is not stored. To prevent misuse, we keep a pseudonymised form of your IP address (a one-way hash) for one hour to limit the number of checks. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (answering your request, protecting the service).

6. Email and telephone

If you contact us by email or telephone, we process your message to answer it (Art. 6(1)(b) or (f) GDPR). The storage periods in 5.5 apply. Please do not send passwords or payment card data by email.

7. Hosting and email

This website is hosted by IONOS SE, Elgendorfer Str. 57, 56410 Montabaur, Germany, in data centres in the EU, under a data processing agreement (Art. 28 GDPR). Apart from the route server for the postcode check (5.7), which receives no personal data, we use no other service provider to run this website.

Our email runs on a Microsoft Exchange server that our IT service provider operates for us in the EU, under a data processing agreement (Art. 28 GDPR). This applies to enquiries from the forms and to emails you send us.

8. Cookies

This website sets no cookies for visitors. If you choose a language or put machines on the enquiry list, your browser keeps that choice locally (local storage); this is technically necessary for the function you use (§ 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG), is only sent to us with an enquiry you submit and can be deleted in your browser at any time. Only staff who log in to our content management system (/cms/) receive a technically necessary session cookie (§ 25(2) TDDDG).

9. Security

All pages are delivered via encrypted HTTPS. This website does not process payment data.

10. Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right of access (Art. 15), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20) and to object to processing based on Art. 6(1)(f) (Art. 21). To exercise these rights, write to the controller address above or to info@southautomation.net. We may need to confirm your identity before we answer.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The authority responsible for us is:

Der Hessische Beauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit
Gustav-Stresemann-Ring 1, 65189 Wiesbaden
https://datenschutz.hessen.de

You may also complain to the authority in the EU member state where you live or work.

11. Changes

We update this notice when the website or the law changes. Current version: November 2026.