Privacy policy

This version applies to fox-directories.ch and to the directories anwalt-verzeichnis.ch, elektrokontrolle-verzeichnis.ch, garage-verzeichnis.ch, gaertner-verzeichnis.ch, immobilien-verzeichnis.ch, kita-verzeichnis.ch, pflege-verzeichnis.ch, physio-verzeichnis.ch, tierarzt-verzeichnis.ch, treuhand-verzeichnis.ch, zahnarzt-verzeichnis.ch. Each directory also publishes the same texts on its own site.

This notice describes which personal data we process in operating fox directories, for what purpose and for how long. It follows the revised Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (revFADP).

1. Controller

Luca Obi – fox directories, Schützenhausstrasse 23, 5612 Villmergen, Switzerland. Contact: luca@fox-directories.ch

We have not appointed a data protection adviser. Please direct questions about the processing of your data to the address above.

2. What data we process

Simply browsing the directory requires no account and we ask for nothing. For technical reasons our server records which page was requested, when, with which browser type and from which IP address. These server logs serve secure operation and troubleshooting.

Beyond that, data only arises if you do something yourself:

Account: email address, a password stored in encrypted form, and your role (visitor or provider). Needed to recognise you.
Reviews: the name you give, the title and text of the review, and the time. Reviews are publicly visible — use a name you are happy to have published.
Saved list: which listings you have saved. Visible only to you.
Claiming a listing: your relationship to the business and the confirmation code we send to the business address held in the listing — if that address comes solely from a business directory, we check the claim by hand instead.
Listing data: what providers maintain in their listing is intended for publication and publicly retrievable.

3. Listing data and where it comes from

The listings in fox directories were not submitted to us by the businesses themselves — we compiled them from publicly accessible sources: public registers and directories, such as professional and commercial registers, association lists and map services.

Where a business has its own website, we supplemented its listing with information from there: contact details, services, opening hours and a short description. The data processed are the name of the business or person, business address, phone, email, website, licences and service features.

The purpose is to give anyone looking for such a business a complete and comparable overview. The basis is the overriding interest of those searching and our interest in a complete directory; the information is already publicly accessible.

Anyone named in a listing can ask at any time for it to be corrected or removed — via “Request removal” on each listing page or by email to luca@fox-directories.ch. If we uphold an objection, we take the listing offline and block it in our database so that it is not re-added in later updates. Businesses can also claim their listing and maintain it themselves.

4. Location in nearby search

If you use the nearby search, your browser asks your permission and determines your approximate position. These coordinates are used solely for the current search, to sort listings by distance. We do not store them and do not pass them on. If you decline, the directory works unchanged — only this one function does not.

5. Purpose and legal basis

We process your data to provide the directory, manage accounts, publish and moderate reviews, verify listings, handle paid services and prevent abuse. The basis is the performance of the user relationship, your consent where we obtain it, and our overriding interest in a secure and functioning service.

6. Cookies

We use technically necessary cookies: one for signing in and one that remembers your language choice. Both are required for operation and allow no conclusions about your behaviour outside this directory. We use no advertising cookies and embed no profiling services. That is also why no cookie banner greets you here.

7. Audience measurement

To understand which pages are found, what people search for and where something is broken, we use Umami to count page views, entered search terms and clicks on contact details. This records the page address, the referring page, browser, operating system, device type, language and approximate location (country, region, town). The software runs on our own server in Switzerland; the data does not leave it. Umami sets no cookie and does not store your IP address — it is used only momentarily to determine the location and, together with the browser identifier, to form a non-reversible fingerprint that changes every calendar month. Repeat visits within the same month can therefore be counted together; recognition beyond the month, or on other websites, is not possible.

8. Statistics for providers

Providers see in their account how often their listing was shown and opened, and how often someone clicked the phone number, website or directions. For this we store only counters per listing and per day — no IP address, no identifier, nothing that leads back to you. A provider therefore learns that thirty people clicked their number, but never which ones.

9. Disclosure to third parties

We do not sell data. We pass it on only as far as operation requires:

Hosting: Infomaniak Network SA, Switzerland. Servers, databases, user accounts and audience measurement are located in Switzerland.
Email delivery: Resend — for confirmations, password resets and listing claim codes. Your email address and the content of the message are transmitted.
Payments: Stripe — only for paid services. Card details are collected directly by Stripe and never reach our servers.
Authorities, insofar as we are legally obliged.

Resend and Stripe process data partly outside Switzerland. The transfer relies on recognised safeguards such as standard contractual clauses.

10. Retention

We keep account data for as long as your account exists. If you delete it, we remove the associated data; published reviews may remain in anonymised form, as they are part of the public record of opinion. Server logs are overwritten automatically after a short time. Business records relating to paid services are kept for ten years, as the law requires.

11. Your rights

You may request information about the data processed about you, its correction or deletion, object to processing, and request the release of your data in a common format. A message to luca@fox-directories.ch is enough. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may contact the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner.

12. Data security

The connection to this directory is encrypted throughout. Passwords are stored only as a non-reversible hash — not even we can read them. Access to the systems is limited to the people who need it to run the service.

13. Changes

We adapt this notice when the service changes. The version published on fox-directories.ch governs.

14. Language versions

This notice exists in several languages. Where the versions differ, the German one governs.