Data protection

The Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) takes the protection of your personal data very seriously. For this reason, we have taken measures, which ensure that the regulations on data protection are observed both by us and by our external service providers.

Personal data is all information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. An identifiable person is a natural person, who can be identified directly or indirectly, in particular by association with an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data or an online identifier.

Please refer to this privacy statement for more information on what data is collected, for what purpose and on what basis, how you can contact the responsible authority and the data protection officer(s) and what rights you have in relation to the processing of personal data.

Changes to this privacy statement can also become necessary in the course of further development of our Internet offer and the technologies used. We therefore recommend that you re-read the privacy statement from time to time.

Purpose of this website

The website of the BMG Initiative Long COVID informs those affected by Long COVID and those interested in it about the current state of knowledge about Long COVID and about regional treatment options. Moreover, it provides answers to the most frequently asked questions on the topic. You can also contact a service telephone.

Responsible authorities / Data protection officers

Responsible authority for processing personal data is the

Federal Ministry of Health
53123 Bonn
Telephone: +49 (0)228 99441-0
Email: poststelle(at)bmg.bund.de
DE mail: poststelle(at)bundesgesundheitsministerium.de-mail.de

The data protection officer at BMG is also available to answer any specific questions you may have on the protection of your data and to also provide further information on the handling of personal data at the BMG:

Federal Ministry of Health
- Data Protection Officer -
11055 Berlin
DSB(at)bmg.bund.de

Access to the Internet option

Every access to the www.bmg-longcovid.de website as well as every retrieval of a file is stored and processed in a log file exclusively for the purpose of preventing and tracking security-relevant access to the option and is subsequently deleted as a rule after 7 days.

The log file contains information on:

the IP address used
the name of the page/file accessed
date and time
the volume of data transmitted
message whether the access/retrieval was successful.

We are obligated to store data beyond the time of your visit on the basis of Article 6 paragraph 1 lit. e of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (DSGVO) in conjunction with § 5 of the BSI Act. This is done to protect against attacks on the servers of this website. This data is analysed and required to initiate legal and criminal prosecution in the event of attacks on communications technology.

This data is stored in log files beyond the time of the visit, not only by us but also on external servers, at our service providers “die wegmeister gmbh” and “Hetzner Online GmbH”.

Data logged when accessing this website will only be transmitted to third parties if we are legally obligated to do so or if the transmission is necessary for legal or criminal prosecution in the event of attacks on the Federal government's communication technology. There will be no disclosure in other cases. The Federal Ministry of Health does not merge this data with other data sources. The BMG user information is evaluated statistically in order to design and further develop its Internet option as required. Please refer to the Web Tracking/Web Analytics section of this privacy statement for detailed explanations.

Contacting the BMG

Contact by email

Contact by letter

Postal address:

Head office Bonn: Federal Ministry of Health, 53107 Bonn

Head office Berlin: Federal Ministry of Health, 11055 Berlin

Contact by telephone or fax

Federal Ministry of Health

Telephone: +49(0)228/99441-0 or +49(0)30/18441-0

Fax: +49(0)228/99441-4900 or +49(0)30/18441-4900

If you contact the Federal Ministry of Health in writing via one of the contact channels mentioned above, the data you provide (e.g.: name, first name, address or e-mail address) as well as the information contained in the message (may be personal data provided by you) will be stored for the purpose of contacting you and processing your request in accordance with the time limits applicable to the storage of documents as set out in the Registry Guideline, which supplements the Joint Rules of Procedure of the Federal Ministries (GGO).

If you contact us by telephone, no personal data will usually be recorded, unless this is necessary to process your request (call back, written notification).

We would like to point out that the data is processed on the basis of Article 6 paragraph 1 lit. e DSGVO in conjunction with § 3 Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) within the scope of the fulfilment of the BMG tasks. Processing of the personal data transmitted by you is necessary for the purpose of processing your request.

Optional information is processed on the basis of your consent in accordance with Article 6 paragraph 1 lit a) DSGVO.

You can revoke your consent at any time. The legality of the processing based on your consent shall remain unaffected until receipt of your revocation.

The BMG uses the services of Telemark Rostock Kommunikations- und Marketinggesellschaft mbH, Am Hechtgraben 1b, 18147 Rostock (Telemark Rostock), a multimedia communication centre, to answer inquiries from citizens by telephone and electronically via the contact form. Telemark Rostock collects, processes and uses personal data only within the limits specified by the DSGVO and the BDSG. It has taken a variety of technical and organisational measures to ensure compliance with legal regulations.

This applies to the same extent to the service providers working within the scope of order processing (more on this in the “Order processors” section).

Order processor

We employ external service providers (order processors), e.g. for the implementation, provision or maintenance of this website. Separate order processing agreements have been entered into with the service providers to ensure the protection of your personal data.

We work together with the following service providers:

die wegmeister gmbh, Hallstraße 25, 70376 Stuttgart
ifok GmbH, Berliner Ring 89, 64625 Bensheim
Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen

The data is stored exclusively in Germany. There is no data transfer to non-European third countries.

Use of cookies

Cookies are small text files that are stored on your computer when you access certain pages or certain functions.

A prerequisite for the storage is that the acceptance of cookies is activated in your browser settings (e.g. Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple Safari).

It is generally possible to use this website www.bmg-longcovid.de without cookies. However, in order to be able to use all functions (e.g. embedded content from external platforms), you must allow the storage of third-party cookies at the respective location.

MATOMO (web tracking - self-hosted)

We use MATOMO. MATOMO is an open-source web analytics platform. We use MATOMO to measure, collect and analyse visitor data to understand and optimise our website. We host the data collected via MATOMO on interactions with our website ourselves with our order processor Hetzner Online GmbH. We have configured Matomo such that no personal cookies are used (“cookie-less”).

Processing authority: Federal Ministry of Health

Purposes of data processing: Analysis of website usage; optimisation of the web option

Technology used: technically necessary cookies and device and browser fingerprinting

Data collected: 

User IP address (anonymised by shortening)
User ID
Date and time of the query
Title of the accessed page (Page Title)
URL of the accessed page (Page URL)
URL of the page that was called up before the current page (referrer URL)
Screen resolution used
Time in the local user's time zone
Files were clicked on and downloaded (Download)
Links to an external domain that were clicked on (outlink)
Page generation time (the time it takes the web server to generate the pages and then download them from the user: Page speed)
Location of the user: Country, region, city, approximate latitude and longitude (geolocation)
Main language of the browser used (Accept-Language-Header)
User agent of the browser used (User-Agent-Header)
Browser, operating system, the device used (desktop, tablet, mobile phone, TV, car, console, etc.), the brand and model
Interactions of the visitor with our website (e.g. search entries or mouse movements)

Legal basis: § 25 para. 2 no. 2 TTDSG, Art. 6 para. 1 lit. e DSGVO

Place of processing: EU

Retention period: Technically necessary cookies (especially for storing opt-outs) are stored in your browser for a maximum of 13 months. Furthermore: We will only process your data for as long as is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected and for as long as there are no legal archiving obligations to the contrary.

Data recipient:  Hetzner Online GmbH (order processor)

Disclosure to third countries: There is no disclosure to third countries.

Objection to web tracking

According to Article 21 DSGVO, visitors to the website can object to the creation of usage profiles based on their anonymously recorded visitor data, so that it will no longer be collected in the future. You can declare your objection by unchecking the activated checkbox below. This will place a - non-personal - opt-out cookie on your end device, which will prevent future data processing. The legal basis in this respect is § 25 paragraph 2 no. 2 TTDSG. If you delete the cookies in your browser, the opt-out cookie will also be deleted. In this case, you will have to make the objection again in the manner described.

Check your data

You can view the data automatically transmitted by your browser to our server.
You can use any Internet browser to see whether cookies are set and what they contain.

Detailed information is available on the website of the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information and the Federal Office for Information Security.

Your rights

You have the following rights in relation to the personal data concerning you:

Right of access, Article 15 DSGVO

The right of access gives the concerned person access to the data concerning him. The exceptions to this right regulated in § 34 BDSG are applicable.

Right of rectification, Article 16 DSGVO

The concerned person has the option to have inaccurate personal data concerning him corrected.

Right of rectification and deletion, Article 17 DSGVO

The right to deletion includes the option for the concerned person to have data deleted from the persons in charge. However, this is only possible if the personal data concerning him is no longer necessary, is being processed unlawfully, consent in this regard has been revoked and none of the legally regulated grounds for exclusion apply, cf. Article 17 paragraph 3 DSGVO, § 35 BDSG.

Right to restriction of processing, Article 18 DSGVO

The right to restriction of processing includes the option for the concerned person to prevent further processing of personal data for the time being. A restriction is possible mainly in the exploratory phase of other perceptions of rights by the concerned person.

Right to data portability, Art. 20 DSGVO

The right to data portability includes the option for the concerned person to receive his personal data in a common, machine-readable format in order to forward it to other responsible persons if necessary. In accordance with the restrictions of Article 20 paragraph 3 of the DSGVO, this right does not apply, inter alia, if the data processing serves the performance of a government task. At BMG, this is only not the case if data processing is for fiscal purposes.

Right to object to the collection, processing and/or use, Art. 21 DSGVO

The right to object includes the right to object to the further processing of personal data in a specific situation. Pursuant to § 36 BDSG, this right does not apply if a public body is obligated to process data by law.

Right to revoke consent

Insofar as processing is carried out on the basis of your consent in accordance with Article 6 paragraph 1 lit. a DSGVO, you may revoke this consent for the relevant purpose at any time. The legality of the processing shall remain unaffected until receipt of your revocation.

You can assert the aforementioned rights at poststelle(at)bmg.bund.de or poststelle(at)bundesgesundheitsministerium.de-mail.de.

Right to complain to a supervisory authority, Article 77 DSGVO

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority for data protection (Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information):

Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information,

Graurheindorfer Straße 153, 53117 Bonn,

Email: poststelle(at)bfdi.bund.de

Protection of minors

Persons under the age of 16 should not transmit any personal data to the BMG without the consent of their parents / legal guardians. We consciously do not process any personal data of this group of persons without the consent of the parents and do not pass them on to third parties.

This privacy statement is valid as of: 4th July 2023