Atlas

Privacy

Last updated: 8 October 2026

This is a translation of our German privacy policy. If the two versions differ, the German version applies.

1. The essentials in brief

mappp is an atlas of politics, processes and participation. You can use it without registering, without creating an account and without telling us your name.

  • We do not show advertising and we do not sell data.

  • We do not track you across other websites and we do not build usage profiles.

  • We only use three technically necessary cookies. That is why you do not see a cookie banner here.

  • We only load content from other providers when you explicitly ask for it. At present this applies only to the donation form.

Below we explain, as briefly and clearly as possible, what data is processed nonetheless.

2. Who is responsible

Gestaltungszentrale Politik e. V.
Breite Straße 94, 22767 Hamburg, Germany

Email: mappp@gestaltungszentrale.org (Opens in new tab)
Phone: +49 152 59723784

Hamburg Local Court (Amtsgericht Hamburg), Register of Associations VR 25597
Represented by the board: Philipp Cartier, Frederik Kampe, Jule Helene Leinpinsel

For any question about data protection, an informal message to the email address above is sufficient.

3. When you visit the website

For your browser to display a page, it has to request it from our server. The following is necessarily transmitted in the process:

  • your IP address,

  • the date and time of the request,

  • the page or file requested,

  • the page you came from (referrer),

  • information about your browser and operating system.

We process this data only for the duration of the request, in order to deliver the page to you. We do not keep access logs: web server logging is switched off, and we do not store your IP address.

If a technical error occurs on the server, an error message is logged so that we can fix it. These error logs contain no IP addresses and are deleted automatically after 14 days. Critical error messages are additionally forwarded to the development team of our technical service provider; these too contain no IP addresses and are deleted after 14 days.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a secure and functioning service (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

4. Hosting and technical operation

The website is developed and technically operated on our behalf by the agency visuellverstehen GmbH, Nordergraben 70, 24937 Flensburg, Germany. We have concluded a data processing agreement with visuellverstehen in accordance with Art. 28 GDPR.

The server is located in the Nuremberg data centre of Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestraße 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany. Hetzner is engaged as a sub-processor via visuellverstehen. No further service, such as a content delivery network, sits in front of our server.

For backup purposes, a full copy of the server is created daily and kept for seven days. Only visuellverstehen and Hetzner have access to it.

Our content management system (Statamic) runs on the same server. Content is delivered exclusively from there; your browser does not retrieve any data from third parties for this. Fonts, graphics and software libraries also come entirely from our own server.

No data is transferred to countries outside the European Union in connection with hosting.

5. Cookies

We only use cookies that are technically necessary for operating and using the website (essential cookies). None of them is used to recognise you across several visits, for statistics or for advertising.

mappp-session (storage period: 2 hours) Session cookie of the framework we use (Laravel). It technically links the requests of one session to each other and serves the security of the application.

XSRF-TOKEN (storage period: 2 hours) Security cookie. It prevents other websites from sending requests to our site in your name.

sidebar_state (storage period: 7 days) Remembers whether the sidebar in the atlas is open or closed, so that the view stays the way you set it when you move between pages. It only contains the value “open” or “closed”.

The legal basis is Section 25(2) no. 2 of the German Telecommunications Digital Services Data Protection Act (TDDDG) and our legitimate interest in a secure and usable website (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Consent is not required for this.

You can delete or block cookies at any time in your browser settings. The atlas remains usable; in that case the sidebar will not remember its state.

6. Audience measurement with Plausible

We want to know which parts of the atlas are used, so that we can improve it and show our funders that it is being used. For this we use Plausible Analytics, a service of Plausible Insights OÜ, Västriku tn 2, 50403 Tartu, Estonia.

How it works: When you open a page, your browser loads a small script directly from Plausible and then sends a count notification there. In the process, your IP address and information about your browser are transmitted to Plausible. Plausible uses the IP address only to generate a daily changing counter value that cannot be traced back, and does not store it.

What is recorded:

  • the page visited,

  • the page you came from,

  • device type, operating system and browser,

  • the country the request comes from,

  • how far a page was scrolled and how long it was open in the foreground.

What does not happen:

  • No cookies are set and no identifiers are stored in your browser.

  • You are not recognised across several days, devices or websites.

  • No usage profiles are built.

  • We do not evaluate clicks on external links, file downloads or forms.

Plausible processes the data on servers in the European Union. The script is delivered via a European delivery network (bunny.net, Slovenia). Plausible is engaged as a sub-processor via our agency visuellverstehen; a data processing agreement is in place.

The legal basis is our legitimate interest in designing the service according to actual needs (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can object to this processing at any time (see section 12).

7. Search in the atlas

When you use the search, your search term is sent to our server so that it can return matching content. We do not store search terms and we do not evaluate them.

8. Donations

Donation by bank transfer

If you donate by bank transfer, we receive the details of the transfer via our bank (GLS Gemeinschaftsbank eG): name, account details, amount, date and payment reference. We process them in order to record the donation. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) and (c) GDPR. Under German tax law we have to keep accounting records for up to ten years.

Online donation form (twingle)

On the “Donate” page you can use an online donation form. It is provided by twingle GmbH, Prinzenallee 74, 13357 Berlin, Germany.

The form is not loaded automatically. At first you only see a notice. Only when you click the button is the form retrieved from twingle's servers. Before that, no data is sent to twingle or to payment service providers.

By clicking, you consent to

  • your browser establishing a connection to twingle, in the course of which your IP address, information about your browser and device, and the address of the page you are on are transmitted,

  • twingle keeping its own usage statistics within the form (using the Matomo software on twingle's servers) and being able to store or read information in your browser for this purpose,

  • the form immediately loading components of the payment service provider Stripe (Stripe Payments Europe Ltd., Dublin, Ireland) to prepare the payment and prevent fraud. In the process Stripe receives your IP address and information about your browser and device and sets its own cookies (__stripe_mid, stored for one year; __stripe_sid, stored for 30 minutes). Stripe may also process data in the USA.

The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, Section 25(1) TDDDG). We do not store this decision: each time the page is opened again, the form is blocked again. You can withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by leaving or reloading the page and not activating the form again. You can delete cookies already set by twingle and Stripe in your browser settings.

If you fill in and submit the form, twingle processes on our behalf the details you provide there: name, email address, address where applicable, donation amount, purpose, frequency and payment details. The payment itself is handled via the payment method you choose (for example SEPA direct debit, credit card or PayPal); the respective payment service provider receives the data needed for this and processes it under its own responsibility. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) and (c) GDPR. A data processing agreement is in place with twingle. Under German tax law we keep donation data for up to ten years.

You can find further information in the privacy policies of twingle (https://www.twingle.de/datenschutz/) and Stripe (https://stripe.com/privacy).

You do not have to use the form: a bank transfer is possible at any time without any data being transmitted to twingle or Stripe.

Donation receipt

If you would like a donation receipt and send us your name, address, amount and date of the donation by email for this purpose, we use these details to issue the receipt. Under German tax law we have to keep a copy of the receipt for ten years (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR).

9. When you write to us

There is no contact form on the website. If you send us an email (mappp@gestaltungszentrale.org (Opens in new tab)), we process your email address, your name and the content of your message in order to reply to you. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in answering enquiries (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). We delete the message as soon as your request has been dealt with and no statutory retention obligations apply.

10. Links to other websites

In many places the atlas refers to other sources, above all official sources such as the German Bundestag, and journalistic articles. We want to make it clear where our information comes from. External links are marked with a symbol.

These are simple links, not embedded content. As long as you do not click a link, no data is transmitted to the provider concerned. As soon as you click, you leave our website; the privacy policy of the other provider then applies, over which we have no influence.

11. What we do not use

mappp.de currently has no embedded videos, no map services, no social media plugins, no externally loaded fonts, no newsletter and no captcha. Should we later integrate content from other providers, such as videos, we will likewise only load it after your click and will update this policy beforehand.

12. Your rights

You have the following rights in relation to us:

  • Access to information on whether and which data we process about you (Art. 15 GDPR),

  • Rectification of inaccurate data (Art. 16 GDPR),

  • Erasure (Art. 17 GDPR),

  • Restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR),

  • Data portability (Art. 20 GDPR),

  • Withdrawal of consent you have given, with effect for the future (Art. 7(3) GDPR),

  • Objection to processing that we base on a legitimate interest (Art. 21 GDPR).

For any of these requests, an informal message to mappp@gestaltungszentrale.org (Opens in new tab) is sufficient. Please note: because we do not store any data during your visit to the website that we could attribute to you, we will generally be unable to provide information about your visit.

13. Right to lodge a complaint

If you believe that we are not processing your data lawfully, you can lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority. The authority responsible for us is:

Der Hamburgische Beauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit (Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information) Ludwig-Erhard-Straße 22, 7th floor, 20459 Hamburg, Germany Phone: +49 40 428 54 4040 Email: mailbox@datenschutz.hamburg.de (Opens in new tab)

14. Changes

We continue to develop the atlas. When new features are added, we will update this privacy policy. The version available here at any given time applies.