The management and security of European citizens' personal data is governed by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Since Friday, May 25, 2018, every organization must be able to demonstrate what personal data it collects and how the data is used and secured.
All companies, government departments, organizations and institutions that process, use, record or store personal data in Europe must comply with this directive.
The association "Koninklijke Belgische Filatelie Vereniging Cosmos" complies with these provisions. Personal data is treated as strictly confidential and is neither sold nor passed on to third parties. In close cooperation with our hosting providers, we endeavor to protect the databases as well as possible against unauthorized access, loss, misuse or falsification.

You can exercise the following rights at any time using our contact details:
- Information about your data stored by us and its processing,
- Correction of incorrect personal data,
- Deletion of your data stored by us,
- Restriction of data processing if we are not yet permitted to delete your data due to legal obligations,
- Objection to the processing of your data by us and data portability if you have consented to data processing or have concluded a contract with us.
- If you have given us your consent, you can revoke it at any time with effect for the future.

We process your personal data only for the purposes stated in this privacy policy. Your personal data will not be transferred to third parties for purposes other than those stated.
We only pass on your personal data to third parties if:
- you have given your express consent to this,
- the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with you,
- the processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation,
- the processing is necessary to safeguard legitimate interests and there is no reason to assume that you have an overriding interest worthy of protection in the non-disclosure of your data.

We adhere to the principles of data avoidance and data economy.
We therefore only store your personal data for as long as is necessary to achieve the purposes stated here or as provided for by the various storage periods stipulated by law.
Once the respective purpose no longer applies or these periods have expired, the corresponding data is routinely blocked or deleted in accordance with the statutory provisions.

When you access our website, information of a general nature is automatically collected by means of a cookie. This information (server log files) includes, for example, the type of web browser, the operating system used, the domain name of your Internet service provider and similar information. This is exclusively information that does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about your person. This information is technically necessary in order to correctly deliver the website content you have requested and is mandatory when using the Internet. It is processed for the following purposes in particular:
- Ensuring a smooth connection to the website,
- Ensuring the smooth use of our website,
- Evaluating system security and stability and for other administrative purposes. The processing of your personal data is based on our legitimate interest in the aforementioned purposes for data collection. We do not use your data to draw conclusions about your person. Recipients of the data are only the controller and, if applicable, processors.

Like many other websites, we also use so-called "cookies". Cookies are small text files that are transferred from a website server to your hard disk. This automatically provides us with certain data such as IP address, browser used, operating system and your connection to the Internet.
Cookies cannot be used to start programs or transfer viruses to a computer. Using the information contained in cookies, we can make navigation easier for you and enable our web pages to be displayed correctly.
Under no circumstances will the data collected by us be passed on to third parties or linked to personal data without your consent.
Of course, you can also view our website without cookies. Internet browsers are regularly set to accept cookies. In general, you can deactivate the use of cookies at any time via your browser settings. Please use the help functions of your Internet browser to find out how to change these settings. Please note that individual functions of our website may not work if you have deactivated the use of cookies.

To protect the security of your data during transmission, we use state-of-the-art encryption methods (e.g. SSL) via HTTPS.

On the basis of your consent, we will regularly send you our newsletter or similar information by e-mail to the e-mail address you have provided.
To receive the newsletter, it is sufficient to provide your e-mail address and initials. When you register to receive our newsletter, the data you provide will be used exclusively for this purpose. Subscribers may also be informed by e-mail about circumstances relevant to the service or registration (e.g. changes to the newsletter offer or technical circumstances).
We require a valid e-mail address for registration to be effective. We use the "double opt-in" procedure to check that a registration is actually made by the owner of an e-mail address. For this purpose, we log the subscription to the newsletter, the sending of a confirmation email and the receipt of the requested reply. No further data is collected.
The data is used exclusively for sending the newsletter and is not passed on to third parties. You can revoke your consent to the storage of your personal data and its use for sending the newsletter at any time. There is a corresponding unsubscribe link in every newsletter. You can also inform us of your wish to do so at any time by e-mail.

If you contact us with questions of any kind by e-mail or online form, you give us your voluntary consent for the purpose of contacting you. This requires at least a valid e-mail address. This is used to assign the inquiry and subsequently answer it. Further data is required for consultation requests. The information you provide will be stored for the purpose of processing the request and for possible follow-up questions.

We embed YouTube videos on some of our pages. The operator of the corresponding plugins is YouTube, LLC, 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066, USA.
When you visit a page with the YouTube plugin, a connection to YouTube servers is established. YouTube is informed which pages you visit. If you are logged into your YouTube account, YouTube can assign your surfing behavior to you personally. You can prevent this by logging out of your YouTube account beforehand. When a YouTube video is started, the provider uses cookies that collect information about user behavior. If you have deactivated the storage of cookies for the Google Ad program, you will not have to expect any such cookies when watching YouTube videos. However, YouTube also stores non-personal usage information in other cookies.
If you wish to prevent this, you must block the storage of cookies in your browser.

We reserve the right to amend this privacy policy so that it always complies with current legal requirements or to implement changes to our services in the privacy policy, e.g. when introducing new services. The new privacy policy will then apply to your next visit.

If you have any questions, please contact the webmaster.