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Terms and conditions

§ 1 Scope

For the use of the website www.locationscout.net of Locationscout.net (including the associated domains like www.location-scout.net etc.) (hereinafter termed as "provider") and the app within the Apple App Store or Google Play Store apply the following conditions. The use of the website and the iOS/Android app (hereinafter termed in short as "platform") is only permitted if you agree to these terms of use.

§ 2 Sign up, Conclusion of Contract

1. The registration via the online form is a prerequisite for the use of the platform. The user is obliged to fill in all given fields in the registration form correctly and truthfully. After signing up via the online form, you get a verification email, with which you can confirm your registration by clicking on the link. With the activation of your account a gratuitous license agreement is created. Multiple registrations are generally not allowed.
2. Contract is the free use of the platform features. For this purpose, we will provice you an "account", which allows you to use all functions of the website and the app.
3. There is basically no legal claim to activation or participation on the platform. It is the full householder's rights of the provider.
4. Your account may be used only by you and you as the owner of the account are responsible for the protection against its misuse. Therefore, you have to protect your data from unauthorized access. The use of trademarked words and internet addresses as your username (nickname) is not allowed.
5. The provider strives to offer the platform as interruption-free as possible. With all diligence downtime can not be excluded, in which the web server due to maintenance or technical / other problems that are not within the control of the provider (force majeure, third party, attacks against the infrastructure by hackers etc.) on the internet is not available. The user acknowledges that a completely uninterrupted availability of the platform is technically not feasible.
6. The provider reserves the right to develop and adapt the structure and content of the platform and the associated user interfaces, if this means the purpose agreed with the user is not or not significantly affected.
7. Our services and fee-based premium accounts are available to users who are either at least 18 years old or at least 14 years old, and who are authorized to access the platform by a parent or legal guardian.
8. It is among the users to ensure a peaceful and respectful treatment without insulting hostility.

§ 3 Duties of the User

1. You as the user agree that you will not publish posts that violate these rules, the morality or otherwise violate applicable German law. In particular, it is forbidden to you,
   • insulting to publish false, harassing, threatening, racist, violent, or offensive content;
   • illegal / criminal or pornographic content, equal to neither kind;
   • the representation of radical political / religious or illustrative world views,
   • to use law, particularly by copyright, personality, performance, trademark or other rights protected content without authorization;
   • depictions of violence and depictions of drug abuse abdomen,
   • to send spam through the system to other users;
   • practices considered as unfair competition;
   • to publish press releases of third parties without the consent of the author on the platform;
   • to sell or transfer your account;
   • to advertise on the site without the express written consent of the provider.
   Similarly, hyperlinks to the above content is prohibited.
   Inadmissible is also the automated retrieval of content or the use of scripts in the use of the platform.
2. You as the user agree that your posts and images before publication to check to see if this may include information that you do not want to publish. Your posts and images can be listed in search engines and thus made ​​available worldwide. Claims against the seller for cancellation or correction of such entries search engines are excluded.
3. You as a user are responsible for ensuring that all published platform contents are free of worms, viruses, trojans or other programs that may affect the continued existence and functioning of the platform.
4. You as a user are obliged by setting your content on the platform to check the above terms and conditions carefully.
5. In violation of the above rules (especially § 3 para 1 and 2), the provider, regardless of any termination, impose the following sanctions against the user:
   • deletion or modification of content that the user entered,
   • Issue a warning, or
   • blocking user access.
6. Also, the provider is entitled to you as a user, if a reasonable suspicion that you have violated against the terms of use, to block access to the platform. You have the ability of these measures to avert, by remove the doubts by documentary proof, at his own expense.
7. If due to possible violations of law of other users or third parties take the provider to claim that a) result of the content posted by you as a user and / or b) arising from the use of the services of the provider by you as a user, you agree as a user to excuse the provider from any and all claims, including claims for damages, indemnify and the provider to reimburse the costs incurred because of the possible infringement. The provider is particularly exempted from the cost of legal defense. Also, the provider is entitled to demand an appropriate advance of you as a user for this purpose. As a user, you are also required to assist the provider in good faith with the documents and information in a legal defense against third parties. All other rights, including damage claims by the supplier shall remain unaffected. The obligations referred to before do not exist, if you do not have to represent the possible infringement.

§ 4 Premium Account

Locationscout provides additional features and content to subscribers of its paid premium accounts. To upgrade to a premium account, you must have a valid account on our platform and be at least 18 years old. The following terms and conditions apply seperately to users who subscribed to any premium services offered by us:

• Additional features and content are offered via "premium accounts" who are available as monthly or annual subscriptions.
• Subscriptions will automatically renew unless canceled within 24-hours before the end of the current period. You can cancel auto-renewal anytime with your iTunes account settings (iOS) or Google Play Store subscription settings (Android). You will still have access to our premium services until the expiry date. Afterwards your account will be downgraded to a free membership.
• Refunds are only eligible for annual memberships within 30 days of the initial purchase. We don't offer refunds for monthly subscription payments. All service fees are non-refundable after these 30 days.
• Locationscout may discontinue, suspend, or modify the services provided to holders of a premium account at any time without prior notice.

§ 5 Transfer of Rights of Use

1. The copyright for your posts and images will remain basically at you as a user if these posts and images are copyrightable. However, you as a user vacate the provider with setting a post or an image the right to permanently save the subject on its platform. In addition, the provider has the right to delete your posts or images, edit, move or close them.
   Furthermore, you are aware that all of your published content is reproduced and made ​​publicly available to third parties. Thus it is also possible to retrieve and download the content posted. This third party use and acts of reproduction made ​​possible that both can not be controlled by the user and the provider.
2. In the event of termination of the account the aforementioned rights still remain.
3. The provider is not responsible for acts of exploitation of users of the platform or any third party.

§ 6 Limitation of Liability

1. For the content placed on this platform, especially for the correctness, completeness and topicality the owner of this site assumes no responsibility.
2. For intent and gross negligence and for breach of a contractual obligation - obligations that enable the fulfillment of the proper execution of the contract in the first and on the fulfillment of the contractual partner may regularly rely - is liable to the provider. The provider is liable under the limitation on compensation for the foreseeable upon conclusion of contract-typical damage for such damages caused by a slightly negligent breach of essential contractual obligations by him or one of his legal representatives or vicarious agents. The provider is not liable for slightly negligent breach of obligations that are not essential contractual obligations. This does not affect the liability for damages that fall within the scope of a providers guarantee or warranty and liability for claims under the product liability act and damages from injury to life, body or health.

§ 7 Party-rights

There may be no vendor's software decompiled, copied or altered in any form.

§ 8 Subject to Alterations

1. The provider reserves the right to change the terms of use and privacy policy. A change will be communicated to the user.
2. The user has the right to object to the changes. In case of an effective opposition existing between the provider and the user the contractual relationship is terminated with immediate effect.
3. The changes are binding and considered as accepted, provided that the user has not objected to the changes.

§ 9 Duration / Termination of the Contract

1. This agreement is concluded for an unlimited period of time.
2. For both parties, there is the possibility to terminate this agreement at any time and without notice.
3. The provider is entitled to termination of this agreement, to terminate the user's access. The provider is entitled but not obliged, in case of termination to delete content created by you as a user, but you as a user are not entitled to transfer the content you have created.

§ 10 In General

For the above terms of use and the entire legal relationship between the provider and the user the law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies. Place of performance is the location of the provider.

These terms were last updated on October 8, 2024.

Terms and Conditions for Premium Gift Cards

§ 1 General

1. These Terms and Conditions ("Terms") govern the purchase, use, and redemption of Locationscout Premium Gift Cards ("Gift Cards").
2. By purchasing or redeeming a Gift Card, you agree to these Terms.

§ 2 Purchase of Gift Cards

1. Gift Cards can be purchased exclusively on the Locationscout website.
2. Gift Cards are available in different amounts and can be redeemed for Locationscout Premium.
3. Gift Cards are non-refundable and cannot be exchanged for cash.
4. Each Gift Card includes a unique code and a custom background image selected by the purchaser.

§ 3 Redemption of Gift Cards

1. Gift Cards can be redeemed on the Locationscout website.
2. To redeem a Gift Card, users must enter the unique code in the provided redemption field.
3. Gift Cards can only be redeemed by users with a valid Locationscout account.
4. Upon successful redemption, the user will receive Locationscout Premium for the duration specified on the Gift Card.
5. Gift Cards cannot be redeemed for cash or anything else than Locationscout Premium.
6. There are no additional fees to redeem a Gift Card.

§ 4 Validity and Expiration

1. Purchased Gift Cards do not expire and can be redeemed at any time.
2. Gift Cards are valid for the duration specified on the card and cannot be extended.
3. Promotional Gift Cards are usually only valid for a specified time. After the expiration date, these unused Promotional Gift Cards will no longer be redeemable, and the remaining value will be forfeited.
4. Gift Cards cannot be reactivated, extended, or exchanged once expired.

§ 5 Single-Use and Transferability

1. Gift Cards are single-use and can only be redeemed once.
2. Gift Cards are transferable and may be given as a gift, but once redeemed, they are tied to the account used for redemption.

§ 6 Non-Renewing Premium Access

1. Redemption of a Gift Card grants a non-renewing Premium subscription for the specified duration.
2. At the end of the Premium period, users will revert to the free plan unless another Gift Card is redeemed or a subscription is purchased.

§ 7 Restrictions

1. Gift Cards cannot be used to purchase other Gift Cards.
2. Gift Cards cannot be exchanged for cash, refunded, or resold.
3. Any resale or unauthorized distribution of Gift Cards will void the Gift Card.

§ 8 Refunds and Cancellations

1. Gift Card purchases are final and non-refundable unless required by law.
2. Locationscout reserves the right to cancel or refuse any Gift Card order in cases of fraud, misuse, or breach of these Terms.

§ 9 Donations

1. For every Gift Card purchased, Locationscout will donate €1 to wildlife and nature conservation initiatives.
2. Donations will be made to certified organizations on an annual basis and announced on the website, the newsletter, and the What's New page.

§ 10 Liability

1. Locationscout is not responsible for lost, stolen, or misused Gift Card codes.
2. Locationscout is not liable for any errors, delays, or interruptions in the purchase, redemption, or use of Gift Cards.
3. In case of issues with purchase or redemption, please contact Locationscout support.

§ 11 Changes to Terms

1. Locationscout reserves the right to change these Terms at any time without notice.
2. Changes will be effective immediately upon posting on the website.
3. By continuing to purchase or redeem Gift Cards, users agree to the updated Terms.

§ 12 Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of Germany.

Privacy

By accessing the website or the app on iOS or Android, data is collected by us, which is passed to us by your device (eg. your browser). The processing of this data on Locationscout takes place for the purpose, to enable the use of the services (connection, retrieval of data), for system security, for technical administration and optimization of our services. The data we collect can be separated into two types: Data provided by you and data, that is automatically gathered by us to provide and optimize our services.

Personal data provided by you

Registration
If you sign up to our platform to use more than the basic services we offer to anonymous users, we require certain personal information. We do this to be able to communicate with you and to provide our services in a secure and user oriented way. Therefore we collect only a very limited amount of data from you like your name, the email address, the country you are from and your personal password so that you are able to login to Locationscout. We are saving the email address and your name for the purpose of the communication with you. The country is required to personalize the feed of our homescreen.

Profile
Based on the data we collected during the sign up process, we created a user profile for you, which can be used to share your own photos from spots around the world or to bookmark spots so that you can save and find them later again. The user profile can be edited by you, so that you can individualize it by adding details about your gender, the hometown you are coming from, a description about you, a profile photo and by adding links to your website and/or social media profiles. You can even set a "displayed name", which will override the standard (first name + last name) and show this name in your profile in case you prefer to show only your first name or an artist's name. All this information about you is optional and you have the right to edit, update, access and delete your personal information if you are terminating your registration on Locationscout.

Automatic data

View Counter [website + app]
Locationscout is counting the views on profiles, spots, country-, theme- and location-pages. To count every view only once, we are anonymously saving the pages you visited within a cookie. This data isn't stored on our servers and it's only used to count the correct amount of views on these pages. The profile counter is shown to you in your profile to give you a feeling on how often somebody else saw your profile or one of the spots/photos you shared. We don't save which profile you viewed. Any other anonymous counter is used internally to calculate the relevance of each page, for example used to order the search results based on pages that are viewed more often than others.

Profile [website + app]
If you registered for our services, we additionally save the time of your last activity and your IP address for security reasons. IP addresses are used to transport data from sender to the intended recipient. Similar to the mailing address on an envelope data packets are provided with an IP address that clearly identifies the recipient.

Plausible Analytics [website + app]
We use Plausible Analytics to track overall trends in the usage of our platform. Plausible Analytics collects only aggregated information, which does not allow us to identify any visitor. No cookies are used and no personal data — not even an IP address or browser user agent — is stored. For more information, please visit the Plausible Analytics Data Policy.

Google Maps [website + app]
This platform uses Google Maps to display geographical information within locations and countries in a visual way. By using Google Maps as an embedded service within Locationscout, Google is gathering data about the API users and the usage itself. You can find more information about this in the privacy statement of Google: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en

Apple Maps [website + app]
This platform uses Apple Maps to display geographical information within spots, locations and countries in a visual way. By using Apple Maps as an embedded service within Locationscout, Apple is gathering data about the API users and the usage itself. You can find more information about this in the privacy statement of Apple: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/

YouTube [website only]
This website uses YouTube plugins on very few pages to display additional video content. YouTube is provided by Google Inc. ("Google"). As soon as you visit a page with an embedded video player, a connection to the YouTube servers needs to be established to load the data. Within this process, the YouTube-server gets information about which page you visited and if you are logged in with your YouTube-account, you are enabling YouTube to match your web usage behavior to your YouTube-account. You can prevent this by logging out of your YouTube-account.
You can find more information about this in the privacy statement of Google: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en

Vimeo [website only]
This website uses Vimeo plugins in the Learn Section to display video content. Vimeo is provided by Vimeo.com, Inc. 555 West 18th Street, New York 10011 ("Vimeo"). For embedded videos, all third-party and 'non-essential' cookies have been removed from the Vimeo player. Any remaining cookies are characterized as 'essential' for the operation of the streaming video player. As soon as you want to watch a video, a page with an embedded video player is opened and a connection to the Vimeo servers needs to be established to load the data. Within this process, the Vimeo-server gets information about the video you requested and your player settings. Besides that, anonymous data is collected to give us some insights about which embedded videos are watched the most or how far they are being watched. This helps us to improve our video content for you.
You can find more information about this in the privacy statement of Vimeo https://vimeo.com/privacy and their Cookie Policy https://vimeo.com/cookie_policy

Apple Search Ads [app only]
The iOS app uses Apple Search Ads to promote the app in the Apple App Store to the right audience. Apple Search Ads is provided by Apple Inc. ("Apple"). Apple Search Ads uses the Apple Advertising Identifier (IDFA) to track the performance of the ads and to attribute the downloads to the ads. The IDFA is a unique identifier for each iOS device and is used to track the user's behavior within the app store. This helps advertisers to deliver targeted ads to customer segments, which are groups of people with similar characteristics. Each segment must contain at least 5000 people, which ensures that no customer can be individually targeted. You can reset the IDFA in the settings of your iOS device or simply deny the permission request inside the app to prevent tracking by Apple Search Ads.
You can find more information about this in the privacy statement of Apple: https://searchads.apple.com/privacy

Meta Pixel (formerly known as Facebook Pixel) [app only]
The iOS and Android app uses Meta Platforms to promote the app on Facebook and Instagram to the right audience. Meta Platforms is provided by Meta Platforms, Inc. ("Meta"). This allows the behaviour of users to be tracked after they have been redirected to the app by clicking on a Facebook ad. This enables us to measure the effectiveness of Facebook adverts for statistical and market research purposes. The data collected in this way is anonymous to us, which means that we do not see the personal data of individual users. However, this data is stored and processed by Meta, which is why we are informing you of this based on our knowledge of the situation. Meta may link this information to your Facebook account and also use it for its own advertising purposes, in accordance with Facebook's Data Usage Policy. You may allow Meta and its partners to place adverts on and off Facebook. A cookie may also be stored on your device for these purposes.
You can find Meta's privacy policy here: https://www.facebook.com/privacy/policy/

Cookies

Locationscout uses essential cookies only - small files with configuration information. They help to identify individual settings and to realize special user functions. The cookies contain a unique number that has no meaning outside of our site. Through its use, the use of websites can be more enjoyable and user friendly for you. Locationscout doesn't process any personal data through the use of cookies. Locationscout does not use any tracking or marketing cookies.

Email

There are two different ways how we may receive your email address. The first way is by signing up for a user profile. The second way is when you signed up to our newsletter, which is independed from the user profile and described later within this section. Protecting your data from any third parties is extremely important for us. For this reason, your email address will never be shown in your profile and will only be visible to you. Some partners are able to contact you through a special contact form, which we implemented to protect your personal data, but to still enable these partners to contact you. This is for example the case, if the publisher we are cooperating with, wants to ask for your permission to publish your work in their monthly printed magazine. In this case you will receive an email from us and the third party won't be able to see your email address until you answer them. We are only providing this service to third parties if we think that contacting you might be benefitial for you. This protected contact form can not be used for advertising and is only used in very specific and approved cases.

In addition, we will send you notifications by email if, for example, another user has commented under a spot you have created or a comment you have written. These types of notifications can be disabled by you in the profile settings. However, there are emails that you can't unsubscribe from until you terminate your registration. This is the case for the benefitial emails from third parties we described in the paragraph above or for emails that are relevant for protecting your rights, which is the case when we want to share one of your uploaded photos via our social media profiles. In this case, you will receive an email from us with details about the image we want to share, so that you have the opportunity to contradict us. Your rights as a photographer are important for us (because we are photographers ourselves), so that's why we will never share any photo from you without naming you and - if possible and set in your profile - adding a link to your website or social media profile.

Detached from the system and notification emails, we are also using Sendinblue as a service provider to send a monthly newsletter with spot & article suggestions and for transactional mails that welcome you to the platform and give you some hints on where to get started. You can sign up for the newsletter during your registration process or by enabling it in your profile settings. If enabled, you will only be added to our newsletter list, which is secured by a double-opt-in. This means, that your mail address needs to be verified first in order to receive these mails from us. This secures that we won't send emails to anybody who doesn't want to receive them. In case you want to stop receiving this monthly email, you can unsubscribe without any reason by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the footer of each email or by disabling it in your profile settings. The same applies to the transactional mails since we hate spam as much as you do and we only want to send you valuable content that you want to receive.
You can learn more about Sendinblue's privacy policy here: https://www.sendinblue.com/legal/privacypolicy/

Hosting

Our website and images are hosted on DigitalOcean, a cloud infrastructure provider with data centers around the world to ensure high/fast availability via CDNs (content delivery networks) and failure safety for internationally operating platforms like Locationscout. All data and images are hosted in Frankfurt, Germany to fully implement the strict requirements of the German data protection authorities. DigitalOcean operates under the Privacy Shield Agreement (EU-US data protection shield), which means that the requirements of the Privacy Shield Agreement are similar to the data protection level of the European Union and that the data is treated accordingly. You can learn more about their Privacy Policy here.
Images are also backed up via S3 servers in Germany provided by Amazon Web Services to ensure high availability and failure safety. Amazon Web Services is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. (their privacy policies may be found at https://aws.amazon.com/privacy/ and https://www.amazon.com/privacy respectively), which participates in the EU-US and Swiss-US Privacy Shield frameworks.
Additionally, this website uses Cloudflare as a content delivery network (CDN) to ensure fast loading times and high availability of the website. Cloudflare is provided by Cloudflare, Inc. ("Cloudflare"). Cloudflare may use cookies or other technologies to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis. This cookie, if set, does not correspond to any user ID in the web application and does not store any personally identifiable information.
You can find more information about this in the privacy statement of Cloudflare: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/

Premium account

With the launch of the app for iOS and Android, Locationscout is offering premium subscriptions to finance our services. The payments for these monthly or annual subscriptions are processed via RevenueCat, making it possible to provide a seamless user experience to you where you can use your upgraded account on iOS, Android and the website without having to purchase the service for each device. Therefore RevenueCat is collecting the payment information, processing it and transferring it to Apple or Google to make the eventual purchase via the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Technically we are generating an individual and anonymous identifier for each user of the platform which is then used to recognize your user status to check if you are eligible to use the premium services. Besides that, we are storing your accounts nameUrl as a property in your RevenueCat transaction to make it easier for us to help you with payment issues. You can learn more about RevenueCat's privacy policy here: https://www.revenuecat.com/privacy

If you sign up for Premium directly on the website, we are currently using Stripe as our payment processor. Stripe uses and processes your complete payment information in accordance with Stripe's privacy policy. If you sign up for Premium as an in-app purchase via a mobile app store, please see Google's privacy policy and Apple's privacy policy for information about how they use and process your payment information.

Protection of personal data

Locationscout will have appropriate technical and organizational actions in place to safeguard your (personal) data against loss or any other form of unlawful processing. We are using SSL (HTTPS) to secure all communications between our servers and your web browser or the iOS / Android app. For your privacy and security your Locationscout account information is protected by an encrypted password. You can also prevent unauthorized access to your account by logging off once you have finished using a shared computer. Your personal data is not shared with any third party and only visible to employees who need personal information to perform a specific job (for example, our customer service who needs to contact you) are granted access to it. All of our employees are kept up to date on our privacy and security practices.

Disclosure of personal data

Locationscout doesn't pass your personal data to third parties in principle. Due to legal requirements, however, Locationscout could be legally obliged to, in exceptional cases, user data of visitors to our platform at outside bodies (eg. compensation to law enforcement agencies when suspected of having committed an offense or misuse of our platform). To the extent legally possible, we protect your information in strict accordance with the legal provisions against any third-party access otherwise.

Deletion / disabling of data

In the event that Locationscout stops the service, all personal data will be deleted. Excluded from the deletion is data in respect of which statutory retention periods are observed.
Alternatively, you can instruct the support team to delete your account. Once you delete your account, you will not be able to recover your personal data.

Consent / Withdrawal

Decisive for the use of your data, the applicable statutory provisions, in particular the federal data protection act and the telemedia act. Unless you make voluntary information, you grant Locationscout implied consent to storage of such personal data. Locationscout indicates that this consent is revocable at any time with effect for the future. The withdrawal of consent is either by email (can be found in the imprint) or by post to: "der-Webdesigner GmbH, Hospitalstr. 13a, 53567 Asbach, Germany"
On inquiry we will provide you the data we collected about you. Excluded from the deletion is data in respect of which statutory retention periods are observed. This data is locked by us.

Minimum Age

You must be 14 years or older to sign up and use Locationscout. For this reason, Locationscout does not specifically collect information about children. If we get informed that we have collected data from a child under the age of 13, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. We recommend that minors between the ages of 14 and 18 ask for permission from a legal guardian before using Locationscout.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

Locationscout may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time due to new features or laws. These changes will be notified through the services and/or on www.locationscout.net. In order to be as transparent as possible, this privacy policy contains a change log so that changes are even easier for you to recognise.

Questions or comments about this privacy statement

If you have any questions or comments about this privacy statement or the processing of data by Locationscout, you can directly contact us by writing an email to

This privacy policy was last updated on Oktober 8, 2024.