Privacy

2. Hosting and Server Log Files

This website is hosted by:

STRATO GmbH
Otto-Ostrowski-Straße 7
10249 Berlin
Germany

When you access this website, technical information required to deliver and secure the website is automatically processed. This may include, in particular:

• IP address
• date and time of access
• requested page or file
• referrer URL
• browser type and version
• operating system
• information about the success or failure of the request

The processing is necessary to provide the website reliably and securely and to detect and prevent misuse. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, based on the legitimate interest in the secure and technically reliable operation of this website.

STRATO states that IP addresses collected for the detection and prevention of attacks are stored for a maximum of seven days. IP addresses made available to website operators in STRATO log files are anonymised. STRATO processes hosting data on behalf of the website operator.

3. Contact by Email

If you contact me by email, the information you provide, including your email address and the contents of your message, will be processed for the purpose of responding to your enquiry.

The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, based on the legitimate interest in responding to enquiries. Where communication relates to the conclusion or performance of a contract, Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR may apply instead.

The data will be deleted when it is no longer required for the purpose for which it was collected, unless statutory retention obligations or other legitimate reasons require longer storage.

4. Newsletter

You can subscribe to the 4 Panel Book Club newsletter to receive notifications about new comics and occasional other updates.

For this purpose, your email address is processed together with information relating to your subscription. This may include your subscription status, the date and time of your subscription and confirmation, and the IP addresses recorded when you subscribe and confirm your subscription. These data are used to administer the newsletter subscription and to document your consent.

The legal basis for this processing is your consent pursuant to Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR.

The newsletter uses a double opt-in procedure. After submitting your email address, you will receive a confirmation email containing a link. Your subscription will only be activated after you confirm it using this link.

This website uses MailPoet to manage newsletter subscriptions and send newsletter emails. Subscriber information managed by the MailPoet plugin is stored in the database of this website.

Newsletter emails are delivered using the MailPoet Sending Service. For this purpose, your email address and technical information required for the delivery of the newsletter are transmitted to and processed by MailPoet. MailPoet is a service of the Woo/Automattic group.

MailPoet states that logs of emails sent through its sending service are automatically deleted after three months. MailPoet and Automattic may use service providers or group companies outside the European Economic Area. Automattic states that appropriate safeguards, including standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission, are used where required.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by using the unsubscribe link included in every newsletter. Withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before the withdrawal. Subscription-related information may be retained where necessary to document consent, process an unsubscribe request or comply with legal obligations.

Further information about MailPoet and the processing of personal data is available in the Automattic Privacy Policy and the MailPoet information on data processing.

5. Cookies and Tracking

Apart from the newsletter functions described above, this website currently does not use general-purpose analytics, advertising or marketing tracking tools.

No third-party advertising or social-media tracking technologies are intentionally embedded on this website.

Where technically necessary information is stored on or accessed from your device in order to provide a function expressly requested by you, this may be done without consent in accordance with Section 25(2) TDDDG. Non-essential cookies or comparable technologies will only be used where the legally required consent has been obtained.

6. Book Guessing Feature

This website includes a book-guessing feature that allows visitors to submit a book as their guess for a comic.

When you submit a guess, the website stores information about the selected book and the guess. This includes the relevant comic identifier, the Open Library work identifier, the book title, author, first publication year and the time at which the guess was submitted. These data are used to operate the guessing feature and to create aggregate statistics about submitted guesses.

The guessing feature does not store or associate your name, email address, IP address, user account, cookie identifier or Local Storage identifier with your submitted guess. Ordinary technical server logging that may occur when a request is made to the website is described separately in Section 2 above.

To the extent that information submitted through this feature constitutes personal data in an individual case, the processing is based on Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, based on the legitimate interest in providing and operating the interactive book-guessing feature.

7. Open Library Book Search

The book search used by the guessing feature retrieves bibliographic information from the Open Library API. Open Library is operated by the Internet Archive, a non-profit organisation based in the United States.

When you enter a search term into the book search, the search request is sent from this website’s server to the Open Library API in order to retrieve matching book titles, authors and other bibliographic information. Your browser does not establish a direct connection to Open Library for these search requests, and this website does not forward your IP address to Open Library as part of the API request.

The search term itself is transmitted to Open Library. Search requests are normalised and temporarily cached on this website for up to seven days in order to improve performance and reduce repeated requests to the Open Library API.

The legal basis for this processing is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, based on the legitimate interest in providing an efficient book search as part of the guessing feature and limiting unnecessary requests to the external service.

Because Open Library is operated by the Internet Archive in the United States, information contained in a search request may be processed outside the European Economic Area. Search fields should therefore only be used to search for books and authors and should not be used to enter personal or confidential information.

Further information about Open Library and its API is available on the Open Library API website. Information about the Internet Archive’s terms and privacy practices is available at archive.org.

8. External Links and Social Media

This website contains ordinary links to external services, such as social-media platforms and Patreon.

No content from these services is embedded directly into the website. Therefore, merely visiting 4panelbookclub.com does not cause this website to transmit data to those services through an embedded social-media widget.

If you choose to follow an external link, you leave this website. The respective external provider is then responsible for the processing of personal data on its website or service.

9. Your Rights

Under the GDPR, you have rights regarding your personal data. Depending on the circumstances, these include in particular the right to:

• obtain information about personal data processed about you,
• request correction of inaccurate data,
• request deletion of your data,
• request restriction of processing,
• object to certain processing,
• receive data in a portable format where the legal requirements are met, and
• withdraw consent at any time where processing is based on consent.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a competent data protection supervisory authority.

These rights arise in particular from Articles 15–21 and 77 GDPR.

10. Changes to This Privacy Policy

This privacy policy may be updated if the website or the services used on it change.

Last updated: September 2026