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catta GmbH
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catta GmbH — catta.ch and the Aufgabeln app
With this privacy policy, we describe how we process personal data when you use our website catta.ch, communicate with us, subscribe to our newsletter, take part in one of our citizen science projects, or use our Aufgabeln app. We describe in particular what personal data we process, for what purposes, and with whom we share it.
We process personal data in accordance with Swiss data protection law, in particular the Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and the Data Protection Ordinance (DPO). Where and to the extent the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to individual processing activities, we also comply with its requirements. For specific or additional activities and operations — such as individual projects or apps — we may publish additional privacy notices or other information related to data protection; where we do, this policy remains the authoritative document.
1. Controller and contact
2. Terms and legal bases
3. Nature, scope, and purpose of processing
4. Disclosure of personal data
5. Communication
6. Personal data abroad
7. Data security
8. Retention and deletion
9. Rights of data subjects
10. Website use
11. Newsletter and notifications
12. Social media
13. Third-party services
14. Performance measurement and online marketing
15. The Aufgabeln app
16. Final provisions
The controller responsible for the processing of personal data described in this privacy policy is:
For all questions and concerns relating to data protection, including the exercise of your rights as a data subject (Section 9), please contact us at hoi@catta.ch.
“Personal data” means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. “Processing” means any operation performed on personal data, regardless of the means used — in particular the collection, storage, use, disclosure, and deletion of personal data.
Where the GDPR applies, we process personal data on the following legal bases: performance of a contract or pre-contractual measures (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR), compliance with legal obligations (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR), our legitimate interests — in particular in operating our website and communicating with participants, partners, and interested parties reliably and securely (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR), and consent, where we have asked for it (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR).
We process the personal data that we need to carry out our activities in citizen science, science communication, and participatory research in a reliable and secure manner. Depending on how you interact with us, this includes the following categories:
We generally receive personal data directly from you; in individual cases we may also receive it from third parties, such as project or cooperation partners, or from publicly accessible sources. We process this data for the following purposes: to provide and secure our website; to communicate with you; to plan, run, and evaluate our projects, workshops, and courses; to send our newsletter and project updates; to conduct and support scientific and statistical analyses; and to comply with legal obligations.
We disclose personal data to third parties only where this is necessary for the purposes described in this policy, where you have consented, or where we are legally obliged to do so. We do not sell personal data. Recipients or categories of recipients include:
We conclude data processing agreements with our processors that oblige them to process personal data only on our instructions and to ensure appropriate data security. Anyone who transmits personal data about other persons to us — for example when registering colleagues for a workshop — is responsible for ensuring that those persons are informed and that the disclosure is permitted.
When you contact us — by email, phone, contact form, or otherwise — we process your contact details, the content of the communication, and its metadata (such as date and time) in order to handle your enquiry and our correspondence with you. We retain this data for as long as needed to deal with the matter and for a reasonable period thereafter, or longer where legal obligations require it.
Please note that ordinary email is not encrypted end-to-end. If you wish to send us confidential information, contact us first so we can agree on a suitable channel.
We generally process personal data in Switzerland and the European Economic Area (EEA). Data processed for the Aufgabeln app is stored on servers within the European Union. All EEA member states guarantee adequate data protection from the perspective of Swiss law. Conversely, the European Commission recognized in its decision of July 26, 2000 that Swiss data protection law provides an adequate level of protection; this adequacy decision was reaffirmed in the Commission’s report of January 15, 2024.
Where individual service providers process personal data in other countries, we disclose data to such countries only if the Federal Council has determined that they guarantee adequate data protection, or if we have put in place appropriate safeguards — in particular the recognized standard contractual clauses of the European Commission, adapted to Swiss requirements where necessary — or if a statutory exception applies (for example, your explicit consent or the performance of a contract with you).
When we use Google Analytics, the Meta Pixel, Microsoft 365, Zoom, and embedded YouTube content, and when we maintain our presence on Meta and LinkedIn platforms (Sections 12 to 14), personal data may be transferred to the USA. Google LLC, Meta Platforms, Inc., and Microsoft Corporation are certified under the Swiss–U.S. Data Privacy Framework, which ensures adequate data protection for such transfers; where a provider is not certified, we rely on the safeguards described above.
We take appropriate technical and organizational measures, adapted to the risk, to protect personal data against unauthorized access, loss, misuse, and falsification — including transport encryption (TLS/HTTPS) for our website, access restrictions, and careful selection of our service providers. Absolute data security cannot, however, be guaranteed on the internet. In particular, digital communication may be subject to surveillance by security and intelligence authorities in Switzerland and abroad; we have no influence over such processing.
We retain personal data only for as long as necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, or as long as we are subject to statutory retention obligations (for example under commercial and tax law, generally up to ten years). After that, personal data is deleted or anonymized. Specific rules for the Aufgabeln app are described in Section 15.
You have the right, within the limits of applicable law, to:
To exercise these rights, contact us at hoi@catta.ch. Exercising them is generally free of charge; in exceptional cases we may charge a fee, which we will announce in advance. We may take reasonable steps to verify your identity. We may delay, restrict, or refuse the exercise of these rights to the extent legally permissible — for example, where statutory retention obligations prevent deletion.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority. In Switzerland, this is the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC), Feldeggweg 1, 3003 Bern. Where the GDPR applies, you may also contact a supervisory authority in the EEA.
Our website is hosted by Webland AG, Münchenstein, Switzerland, on servers in Switzerland. When you visit catta.ch, technical data is recorded in server log files, in particular the IP address of your device, the date and time of access, the pages and files accessed, and information about your browser and operating system. We process this data to provide the website, to ensure its stability and security, and to detect and investigate misuse. Log data is deleted at the latest three months after your visit.
We use cookies and similar technologies (first-party and, where applicable, third-party). Session cookies are deleted automatically when you close your browser, while persistent cookies remain stored for a certain period. Some cookies are necessary for the website to function; others are used for statistics or convenience. Where required by applicable law, we ask for your consent before setting non-essential cookies via our cookie banner, and you can change or withdraw your cookie choices there at any time. You can also configure your browser to block or delete cookies, although parts of the website may then not function fully.
If you subscribe to our newsletter, we process your email address and, where provided, your name in order to send you information about our projects and activities. We use a double opt-in procedure: you will receive a confirmation email, and your subscription only becomes active once you confirm it. We log subscription and confirmation, including IP address and timestamp, in order to be able to demonstrate consent and protect the process against misuse.
Our newsletters may contain standard technologies such as tracking pixels and click measurement, which tell us whether and when a newsletter was opened and which links were used; we use this to measure and improve the relevance of our communications. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link contained in every newsletter or by contacting us at hoi@catta.ch; unsubscribing also ends this measurement. Our newsletter is distributed via Infomaniak Network SA, Geneva, Switzerland, which processes the associated data on our behalf on servers in Switzerland; the subscription form on our website is embedded from Infomaniak and protected against automated misuse by a privacy-friendly captcha (Altcha), served from servers within the EU.
We maintain a presence on LinkedIn (LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company, Ireland, and LinkedIn Corporation, USA) and on Meta platforms such as Facebook and Instagram (Meta Platforms Ireland Limited, Ireland, and Meta Platforms, Inc., USA) to communicate about our activities. When you visit or interact with our pages on these platforms, the platform operator processes your personal data as described in its own privacy policy (LinkedIn, Meta). For certain page statistics (such as LinkedIn Page Analytics and Meta Page Insights), we and the respective platform may act as joint controllers under the arrangements published by the platform.
Our website contains links to our social media presence; simply following a link does not transfer any personal data to the platform beyond the standard technical data of your visit there. The use of the Meta Pixel on our website is described in Section 14.
We use services from third-party providers to carry out our activities. When you use such services, the provider also processes your personal data under its own responsibility and its own privacy policy. We select our providers carefully and, where they act on our behalf, bind them contractually as described in Section 4.
We use Google Tag Manager, a service of Google Ireland Limited (Ireland), to integrate and manage measurement tools on our website. Google Tag Manager itself does not set cookies; it loads the tools described in this section in accordance with your consent choices.
We use Google Consent Mode, through which the consent choices you make in our cookie banner are transmitted to Google in a structured form (in particular for storage of analytics and advertising data), so that Google services respect your decision. Even if you decline, Google tags may transmit limited, cookieless technical signals to Google in aggregated form, which Google uses for statistical modelling; no advertising cookies are set and no cross-site profile of you is created in that case.
We use Google Analytics, a web analytics service of Google Ireland Limited (Ireland; Google privacy policy), to understand how our website is used and to improve it. Google Analytics sets cookies and measures your individual usage only if you consent to statistics cookies via our cookie banner (Section 10.2). IP addresses are pseudonymized before evaluation, and usage data is retained in Google Analytics for 14 months. We have deactivated Google Signals, so no cross-device or advertising personalization data is collected through Google Analytics. In this context, data may be transferred to Google LLC in the USA; these transfers are safeguarded by Google LLC’s certification under the Swiss–U.S. Data Privacy Framework and by the recognized standard contractual clauses included in Google’s data processing terms. You can withdraw your consent at any time via the cookie banner or prevent measurement with the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.
We use the Meta Pixel of Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (Ireland; Meta privacy policy) on our website. The pixel is only activated if you consent to marketing cookies via our consent banner (Section 10.2). When active, it collects information about your visit — such as the pages you view, your IP address, and technical browser data — and transmits it to Meta, where it may be linked to your Facebook or Instagram account if you have one. We use this information to measure the effectiveness of our communication and advertising on Meta platforms and for advertising purposes, in particular to show our ads to relevant audiences on Facebook and Instagram — including people who have previously visited our website (retargeting) or audiences similar to them.
In this context, personal data may be transferred to Meta Platforms, Inc. in the USA. Meta Platforms, Inc. is certified under the Swiss–U.S. Data Privacy Framework, which the Federal Council recognizes as ensuring adequate data protection. You can withdraw your consent at any time via the consent banner, and you can manage how Meta uses your data in your Meta account’s ad settings or object to personalized advertising in general via Your Online Choices.
Aufgabeln is our citizen science app for measuring food waste in private households. Participants create an account, answer profile questions, and record food waste measurements, thereby contributing to a research project. This section applies in addition to the general sections of this policy whenever you use the app.
The app is designed for use by the whole household, including children. The account should be created and managed by an adult; children participate under the account and responsibility of a parent or guardian. We do not create individual profiles of children, and all research data is subject to the same anonymization rules described below regardless of who in the household contributed it.
We use your research and project data for scientific and statistical evaluation on the basis of your consent, which we ask for in the app. Optionally, and equally based on consent, we send you email updates about the progress of the project. You can withdraw any consent at any time with effect for the future.
Before research data is analyzed or shared with research partners, direct personal identifiers such as your name and email address are removed. This means that the research data we receive and evaluate does not allow us to identify individual participants: catta GmbH cannot see or reconstruct which person or household produced which food waste measurements. Account data is stored separately within the app infrastructure and is used solely to operate your account; it is not linked to the research data we analyze.
The app is developed, operated, and maintained on our behalf by Prototype X UG, Berlin, Germany, as our processor, which through its NOA platform also operates the data infrastructure using the Supabase platform. All app data is stored on servers within the European Union. Our processor is contractually bound to process your data only on our instructions and to maintain appropriate data security.
We retain app data only for as long as necessary for the project or to comply with legal obligations. You can delete your user account at any time in the app or by contacting us; upon deletion, your direct personal identifiers are deleted. Research and project data may continue to be stored in anonymized, non-identifiable form for scientific purposes where you have consented to this.
We may amend this privacy policy at any time, in particular when our processing activities or the legal requirements change. The version published on catta.ch applies; for the Aufgabeln app, the version published in or linked from the app applies. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, please contact us at hoi@catta.ch.
Version: 2.0 — Last updated: 11 August 2026