Privacy policy

• No tracking cookies, no ad networks, no user accounts. Visitor statistics run on our own server (Umami), without cookies, and are shared with nobody.
• Our server keeps access logs with shortened IP addresses. The site is delivered through Cloudflare’s network.
• Album artwork is loaded from Apple’s servers. Everything else (photos, fonts, scripts) comes from our own server.
• If you e-mail us, your message passes through Cloudflare’s mail forwarding into a Google mailbox. Postal mail is received by our imprint service.

Responsible for data processing on chukkae.com (controller within the meaning of Art. 4(7) GDPR):

The site runs on a server rented from Hetzner Online GmbH, Industriestr. 25, 91710 Gunzenhausen, Germany, in Hetzner’s data centres in the EU. Hetzner acts as our processor under a data processing agreement (Art. 28 GDPR).

For every request the web server writes a log entry containing: your IP address, shortened before it is written so that it no longer identifies you; date and time; the page requested; the referring page, if your browser sends one; browser and operating system (user agent); the response status and the amount of data transferred.

Purpose: delivering the pages you request, keeping the site secure and stable, and diagnosing errors. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in a working and secure website, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. The log files are rotated automatically and overwritten; they are only looked at when something breaks or the site is attacked.

All requests to chukkae.com pass through the network of Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend St, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA, which provides DNS, TLS encryption, caching and protection against attacks. Cloudflare processes your IP address, request metadata and technical headers and keeps short-term security logs.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in fast and secure delivery, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. Cloudflare is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework; its data processing addendum additionally contains the EU standard contractual clauses. Details: Cloudflare privacy policy.

To learn which pages are read and how people find the site, we run the open-source statistics software Umami on the same Hetzner server as the site itself. It is our own installation: nothing is sent to Umami’s makers or to any other company, and the small script (about 2 KB) that reports a page view is delivered from chukkae.com, so your browser opens no connection to another host.

Recorded for each page view: the page, the referring page or domain if your browser sends one, the country, region and city derived from your IP address, browser, operating system, device type, screen size, language and the time. The IP address itself is not stored. To tell one visit from the next within a day, Umami combines your IP address and browser signature with a secret that changes every day into a hash; the hash cannot be turned back into your address, and the next day it is a different one, so no history of your visits builds up.

Two more things reach the same statistics, tied to nothing but that daily hash. When you vote in the fan poll on a group page, an event records which group and which member you picked and whether it was your first vote or a change – not your poll id. And your browser reports the loading times it measured for each page (how soon the page appeared, how quickly it reacted to a tap, whether the layout jumped) so we can see where the site is slow on real devices. These are timings, not content: nothing you typed or scrolled is included.

Umami sets no cookies, writes nothing to your browser’s storage and does not follow you to other sites. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in understanding how the site is used so we can improve it, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. Because nothing is stored on or read from your device beyond what displaying the page requires, no consent under § 25 TDDDG is needed.

If you would rather not be counted, use the switch below. It stores a single flag in this browser’s local storage that tells the script to stay silent; nothing else changes, and you can turn it back on the same way.

Don’t count my visitsChecking this browser’s setting…

Album and single covers are not stored on our server. When you open an artist page, your browser loads them directly from Apple’s content delivery network (is1-ssl.mzstatic.com). Apple therefore receives your IP address and the usual request data (page, browser, time). Provider: Apple Distribution International Ltd., Hollyhill Industrial Estate, Hollyhill, Cork, Ireland, together with Apple Inc., USA.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in showing licensed artwork without copying it, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. Details: Apple privacy policy.

Photos, fonts and scripts are served from our own server. Photos originate from Wikimedia Commons (credited on each page) but are stored and delivered by us, so no request goes to Wikimedia when you browse.

The comeback calendar and an artist page with an announced record offer the artist’s own teaser or music video. Until you press play, the frame shows a photo from our own server and nothing is requested from YouTube. When you press play, the video is embedded in YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com); from that moment Google receives your IP address and the usual request data, and sets cookies only once playback starts. Provider: Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland, together with Google LLC, USA.

Legal basis: the playback you start yourself, Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR. Details: Google privacy policy.

We set no cookies ourselves, and there is no consent banner because nothing on this site needs one; the visitor statistics described above use neither cookies nor local storage, apart from the opt-out flag you can set yourself. If you switch between light and dark mode, that choice is saved in your browser’s local storage so the site remembers it. If you take part in the fan poll on a group page, your pick and a random poll id (see below) are stored the same way. Both can be deleted through your browser settings.

Cloudflare’s protection may set purely technical security cookies (named __cf_bm, cf_clearance or _cfuvid) when a request looks automated or a challenge has to be solved. They contain nothing but a random identifier and are used only to tell browsers from bots. __cf_bm expires after 30 minutes, _cfuvid at the end of the session, and cf_clearance after up to a year once a challenge has been passed. Legal basis for both the theme setting and these cookies: § 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG, as they are strictly necessary for a service you asked for.

Group pages let you vote for your favourite member and then show how everyone voted. To count each browser once and let you change your pick, your browser generates a random id and sends it with the vote; we store that id together with the chosen member and the time. The id is random, is not linked to your IP address or anything else about you, and cannot be traced back to you by us. To keep the poll from being flooded, our server briefly counts requests per IP address in memory (a few minutes at most) and rejects excess; nothing of that is written to disk. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (running a fair poll) and § 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG for the stored id, as it is necessary for the vote you asked to cast. You can delete the id and your pick from local storage at any time; the vote itself is then no longer attributable to you. A cast vote is also counted once in the visitor statistics (group, member, first vote or change – see above), without the id.

When you write to us we process what you send (typically your name, e-mail address and message) to answer your enquiry. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (our interest in responding), or Art. 6(1)(b) where your request concerns a contract. Messages are deleted once the matter is settled unless we are legally required to keep them.

• E-mail to [email protected] is delivered via Cloudflare Email Routing (Cloudflare, Inc., see above) into a mailbox hosted by Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland (Google privacy policy).
• The contact form on our imprint hub (mein.online-impressum.de) is operated by Clear-Media UG (haftungsbeschränkt); what you enter is forwarded to us by e-mail.
• Postal mail to our c/o address is received, opened and scanned by our imprint service Clear-Media UG (haftungsbeschränkt), Europaring 90, 53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany, which acts as our processor under a data processing agreement and is bound by postal secrecy.

Chukkae publishes names, stage names, birth dates, group line-ups, discographies, chart positions, awards and photos of K-pop artists, who are people in public life. This information is compiled from public sources such as Wikipedia, official announcements and chart publications, and is published for journalistic and documentary purposes. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, taking Art. 85 GDPR into account. We do not publish private contact details.

If you are an artist or represent one and something is wrong, write to [email protected]. We correct promptly.

Under the GDPR you have the right to:

• access the personal data we hold about you (Art. 15);
• have inaccurate data corrected (Art. 16);
• have data erased (Art. 17) or its processing restricted (Art. 18);
• receive data you provided in a portable format (Art. 20);
• object, for reasons arising from your particular situation, to processing based on Art. 6(1)(f) (Art. 21).

To exercise these rights, e-mail [email protected]. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority. The authority responsible for us is the Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht (BayLDA), Promenade 18, 91522 Ansbach, Germany; you may also contact the authority at your own place of residence.

You do not have to provide any personal data to use this site. We make no automated decisions and build no profiles. Where this policy names a legal basis, the processing is required for the purpose stated; without it, that part of the site would not work.

We update this page whenever the site changes in a way that affects your data, for example if advertising were ever added or the statistics tool changed. The date at the top shows the current version. Questions about it: [email protected]. Who runs the site is stated in the Impressum.