Private schools

Privacy notice

This notice describes which personal data we process in operating Swiss Private School Directory, 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. We also store whether the review was given via an invitation link from the business.
  • Requests to businesses: via “Request an appointment” you send the business your name, email address, optionally your phone number and preferred time, and your request. We store the request, forward it to the business (by email and in its account) and send you a confirmation. Once received, the business is itself responsible for your details. We delete the request after twelve months (health and legal professions: after six months), earlier on request. In the business's statistics it only counts as a number. Please give only what the business needs for a first reply.
  • Applications: via “Apply now” on a job ad you send the hiring business your name, email address, if you wish your phone number, a message, a link and up to three PDF files (for example CV and references). We store the application in Switzerland and make it available to the business in its account. By email it only learns that an application has arrived. You receive a confirmation with a link through which you can withdraw the application at any time. If your documents contain sensitive data, for example about your health or religion, we process it with your express consent, which you give in the form. Once it has taken note of it, the business, as a potential employer, is itself responsible for your data. If it downloads documents, it keeps that copy under its own responsibility. We record whether and when it did so. We delete your application and documents three months after the job ad ends, at the latest six months after receipt, earlier if you withdraw it, the business deletes it or its account is closed. We do not evaluate applications, do not pass them on to any other business and do not contact you about other positions. In the business's statistics your application counts only as a number.
  • 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.

If your request to a dental, physiotherapy or care practice or to a law firm contains details about your health or a proceeding, we process them with your explicit consent, given in the form. The business then only receives a notice of the request by email; it sees the content in its account.

3. Listing data and where it comes from

The listings in Swiss Private School Directory 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.

We write to businesses we hold a listing about so that they can check their details (section 8b). The basis is our overriding interest in accurate listings.

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, clicks on contact details and the steps of checking a listing (section 8b). 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.

In the provider account we count no page views, only single steps: opening the overview, saving the listing, opening “Subscription & billing” and opening the checkout with the chosen level — without the page address and without saying which listing it concerns. We only evaluate these steps across all providers together and do not link them to your account, your listing or your payment.

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.

8a. Presence check for providers

Providers with Lite or Premium can check how their business appears on Google Maps. At their request we send the name and address of their own business to the search service Serper (serper.dev), operated outside Switzerland, and keep the result on our server for one week. No other data is transmitted. The transfer rests on the provider triggering it for their own listing and on the details being publicly accessible (Art. 17(1)(b) and (f) FADP). We use the same service to compare listings with map services.

8b. Messages about your listing

If we hold a listing about your business, we write to you once by email and ask you to check the details. We take the address from your business’s website or from a public directory; beforehand we check in the public telephone directory whether you decline advertising, and if so we do not write to you. Messages are sent via Resend (section 9), without open or click tracking.

The link in the message contains a random identifier. When it is opened, we store the identifier and the time, to learn whether the message reached your business; the link between the identifier and your business is kept separately and deleted after six months. Without the identifier you reach your listing at the same address. If the link also contains a key that lets you take over your listing without a password, we remove it from the address bar; your browser keeps it in session storage (sessionStorage) until the window is closed. We do not set a cookie for this. If, after the click, your listing shows the explanation of the check, our audience measurement (section 7) additionally counts how far you get: each part of the explanation, submitting, requesting and entering the code (whether it was correct), if something fails the type of error and, if you give it, your reason for “Not now”. This count contains neither the identifier nor your name or details. We only evaluate it across all businesses together and do not link it to the identifier link or to your business’s history.

For your business we keep a history: when we wrote, whether the message was delivered and whether its link was opened, and whether you took over the listing or unsubscribed. For this we keep the name, website and phone number of your business in our internal customer management system, as they appear publicly in the listing. We delete the history, the mailing list and these details twelve months after the last step. If you unsubscribe or your address is permanently undeliverable, we keep it only as a check value (hash), and after an objection also your business’s domain, so that we do not write to you again; these details are not deleted.

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, listing claim codes, requests to businesses and their confirmation, notices of received applications and their confirmation, and for messages in which we write to businesses about their listing. The email address, the name and the content of the message are transmitted. For applications we transmit neither documents nor the message to Resend, only the email addresses, the business and the position.
  • Payments: Stripe — only for paid services. Card details are collected directly by Stripe and never reach our servers.
  • Map comparison: Serper (serper.dev) — only for the presence check (section 8a) and to compare our listings with map services. The name and address of a business are transmitted.
  • Authorities, insofar as we are legally obliged.

Resend, Stripe and Serper 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.

Messages about your listing (section 8b): the identifier link for six months, the history, mailing list and the details in the customer management system for twelve months after the last step, the check value of an unsubscribed or undeliverable address and, after an objection, the domain without time limit. The fact that we wrote to you is kept without any further details, so that we do not write to you a second time.

We delete audience measurement data (section 7) after 14 months.

Applications: as described in section 2. Deleted applications disappear from our backups at the latest 30 days after deletion. If we restore a backup, we delete again whatever had been deleted.

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. Application documents are kept in non-public storage in Switzerland. Only the signed-in holder of the listing to which the application was addressed can access them.

13. Changes

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

14. Language versions

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