Privacy Policy

At Kaplan Scientific ("Company", "we", "us", or "our"), Rotterdam, the Netherlands, we respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy explains which personal data we process when you visit kaplanscientific.nl, why we do so, which services we use for it, and what your rights are under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

1. Information We Collect and Why

• Contact and quote requests. The details you enter in our contact, quote and application-note forms, such as your name, email address, phone number, company, country and message. We use them to answer your request and send you the information or quotation you asked for. A copy is kept on our server and in our mailbox. Legal basis: taking steps at your request before entering into a contract, and our legitimate interest in answering business enquiries.
• AI support chat. Your chat messages are sent to Google's Gemini AI service to generate an answer and are not used by us for anything else. If you leave your contact details in the chat, we receive them by email to follow up. To prevent abuse and to see how the chat is used, we record your IP address, approximate location (city and country, looked up on our own server) and the number of messages, and keep this for 30 days. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in providing and protecting the chat service.
• E-mail campaigns. We occasionally send product news, application notes and event invitations to business contacts who asked to receive them or with whom we have an existing customer or enquiry relationship. We store your name, e-mail address, company and the basis on which we may contact you. Links in these e-mails pass through our own server so we can see which topics interest readers; we do not use tracking pixels. Every e-mail has a one-click unsubscribe link; when you unsubscribe or an address bounces, we keep the address on a suppression list only to make sure you are not mailed again. Legal basis: your consent, or our legitimate interest in informing existing business contacts.
• Website statistics (our own). We log which pages are visited, the referring page and an anonymised IP address with approximate country and city. The location lookup runs on our own server; this data is not shared with third parties. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in improving the website.
• Security. Our server records IP addresses involved in failed sign-in attempts or abusive traffic in order to block attacks. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the website secure.
• Google Analytics and Google Ads (only with your consent). If you accept statistics or marketing cookies, Google Analytics measures how the website is used and Google Ads measures whether our ads lead to enquiries. Without consent these Google scripts are not loaded. You can withdraw consent at any time through "Cookie settings" at the bottom of every page. See our cookie policy.

2. Services That Process Data for Us

We do not sell, trade or rent your personal data. We share it only with the following service providers, which process it on our behalf, or where the law requires us to:

• Hetzner Online GmbH (Germany): hosting of the website and its data.
• TransIP B.V. (the Netherlands): domain and email delivery.
• Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL (Amazon SES, Frankfurt region): delivery of our e-mail campaigns.
• Google (Google Ireland Ltd. / Google LLC): Gemini AI for the support chat, and, only with your consent, Google Analytics, Google Ads and the Google Maps embed. Embedded videos use YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode.

Some Google services may process data in the United States. Google is certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, which the European Commission considers to provide an adequate level of protection.

3. Data Security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorized way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know.

4. Data Retention

Chat usage statistics are deleted after 30 days. Other personal data is kept only as long as necessary for the purpose it was collected for, including any legal, accounting or reporting requirements. Cookie retention periods are listed in our cookie policy.

5. Your Legal Rights

You have the right to request access to, correction, erasure or restriction of your personal data, to object to processing based on legitimate interest, to data portability, and, where processing is based on consent, to withdraw that consent at any time. To exercise these rights, email us at the address below. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens).