Bauland-Scout

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 10 November 2026 · applies to the website bauland-scout.ch (home page, plot search, scope of services) and the customer area with account page app.bauland-scout.ch

This translation is provided for information only. The German version is authoritative (Massgebend ist die deutsche Fassung.)

1. Controller

Responsible for the processing of your personal data:
Roland Hafner, sole proprietorship Bauland-Scout
Wannenstrasse 83
8610 Uster, Switzerland
UID: CHE-462.526.448

E-mail: kontakt@bauland-scout.ch · further details in the legal notice. The Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP, DSG) applies.

2. Hosting in Switzerland

The website, the customer area and all databases run on a server that we rent from Infomaniak (Infomaniak Network SA, Geneva). The server is located in Switzerland. Infomaniak provides the infrastructure; we process the data on the server ourselves.

3. Visiting the website

When you call up a page, your browser transmits, for technical reasons, information such as IP address, time, the address called up and browser type. Requests to the application (for example submitting the contact form or using the customer area) are logged by our server with IP address, time and the address called up. We use these logs only for operation, troubleshooting and the prevention of misuse. The logs are continuously overwritten (at most 3 × 10 MB per service, in practice a few weeks). They are not analysed to create profiles.

4. Contact form

If you write to us using the form, we process your name, company (optional), e-mail address and your message in order to answer your enquiry. The information is stored on our server in Switzerland and answered by us personally. To protect against large-scale misuse, the server remembers your IP address for one hour when the form is submitted, in working memory only.

We delete contact enquiries 90 days after they have been dealt with; if an order results, section 7 applies.

Success stories: We publish a story that you send us using the «Your story» form only with your consent and after our approval; we store a voluntary contact address only if you expressly tick the checkbox, and delete it 30 days after approval or rejection (without a decision, a story is deemed rejected after 90 days).

5. E-mail

Our mailbox kontakt@bauland-scout.ch is also hosted by Infomaniak. E-mails that you write to us and e-mails that we send to you (for example replies or invoices) pass through Infomaniak's mail servers.

History per customer or company. So that we have the entire exchange together in the event of queries or complaints, our server assigns e-mails that clearly belong to a customer or to a company we have contacted to that customer or company. We store the date, direction, subject and the shortened text (at most 5'000 characters), without attachments; we do not store e-mails that cannot be assigned. The entries are kept on our server in Switzerland. For customers with orders, we retain them as business correspondence for 10 years, otherwise for 2 years. Following an objection, we delete the text immediately and keep only the date and subject as evidence.

Inbox in our administration. We also read and answer e-mails to kontakt@bauland-scout.ch in our own, non-public administration app. It displays the e-mails directly from the Infomaniak mailbox and does not store their content; only the assignment to customers or companies described above remains. Markers such as «read», «answered» or «done» are set in the mailbox itself. The app automatically deletes from the mailbox e-mails without a business connection (such as advertising or one-off enquiries) after 2 years, business correspondence after 10 years and copies of automated e-mails (section 7) after 30 days; apart from that, nothing is deleted or moved.

Advertising and sales e-mails. Our administration app sorts such e-mails into a separate section; nothing changes in the mailbox as a result. If we turn a sender down or exclude them from the filter, we store only a check value of their address (not the address itself), for at most 24 months.

New e-mails from our administration. We also write new e-mails to customers, authorities or advisers in this administration app. Like replies, they go through the Infomaniak mail servers and are then kept in the «Sent» folder of our mailbox. We store unfinished e-mails (drafts) on our server in Switzerland and delete them when they are sent, at the latest 90 days after the last change. Only invoices and delivery packages from our app are sent as attachments; a delivery package only to the customer of the order concerned and an invoice only to the invoiced customer.

Automatic acknowledgement of receipt. When it is switched on, anyone writing to us for the first time receives a short automatic confirmation (during an absence, an out-of-office notice) in the language of the message. For this purpose, we read the subject and the beginning of the message without storing it. To ensure that nobody is contacted more than once, we store, instead of the address, only a check value with a timestamp and delete it after 30 days. Newsletters, automated e-mails and replies within an ongoing exchange do not receive a confirmation.

Calendar. As soon as our calendar is connected, we keep our own appointments (occasion, company, place, participants, type of appointment and municipality, plot or order, without internal notes) in the calendar ‘Bauland-Scout’ at Infomaniak in Switzerland. If we delete an appointment in our administration, it is also deleted there. Other entries in this calendar are mirrored into our administration and deleted 2 years after the appointment has ended.

Invitations to appointments. If we invite you to an appointment, we store your name, your e-mail address and the state of your reply (invited, accepted, declined, tentative) with the time for this appointment. The invitation is sent by e-mail via Infomaniak, with a calendar file (.ics). It contains the time, place, occasion, the list of invitees and, where applicable, a description for the participants, never our internal notes. We read your acceptance or refusal automatically from the reply to kontakt@bauland-scout.ch; only the state and the time are stored, not the content of the e-mail. We delete this data together with the appointment (for customer appointments with the customer data, otherwise 2 years after the appointment or immediately upon objection) or as soon as you are removed from the appointment.

Language. We store the language you choose on the customer account or on the order, solely in order to send system e-mails (for example confirmations and invoices) in that language.

Notification when purchasing opens. As long as purchasing is not yet possible, you can leave your e-mail address where you would buy. We then send you exactly one e-mail as soon as purchasing opens; no advertising, no sharing. We store only the address, the language and the date. The address only counts once you confirm it via the link in our e-mail (valid for 48 hours). We delete it right after sending, at the latest after 6 months, and immediately if you unsubscribe. To prevent misuse, the server briefly checks a check value of your IP address without storing it. The legal basis is your consent.

6. Purchase without an account (payment in advance by TWINT or card)

When you purchase without an account, we do not request any personal details — no name, no address, no e-mail. No registration is required. Payment is processed by the Swiss payment service provider Payrexx (Payrexx AG), by TWINT or card. Payrexx processes your payment data; we do not see any card numbers or TWINT credentials. From Payrexx, we receive only the confirmation that payment has been made: amount, payment method (TWINT or card), payment reference and our order number. The processing by Payrexx is additionally governed by its privacy policy.

We retain the order number, the selected plots, the amount and the Payrexx payment reference (accounting record, 10 years), as well as the logs under section 3. If you would also like to receive the download link by e-mail, we use the address only for this single dispatch and do not store it (in the dispatch log it appears masked, in the copy under section 7 it is made unreadable).

Risk notice and check status. Before every purchase (including on invoice), you confirm with a separate tick box that you have read the risk notice. For this, we store on the order only the version of the notice and the time, no IP address and no personal details. On the order, we also record for each plot purchased the check status at the time of purchase (sources checked, result, date), so that a later complaint can be assessed fairly. Both are part of the order and are kept like it (10 years).

Voucher and credit codes. On the order we record only which code was redeemed with which discount. When redeeming a code, you provide an e-mail address so that a code applies only once per person; a purchase without a code needs no e-mail. We store only a check value of it (not the address), use it for nothing else and delete it after 3 months at the latest. Your browser remembers redeemed codes locally (entry bs_code_, only on your device). Codes for single use are locked after the first redemption; further attempts are only counted as a number, without any link to you. We do not store any IP address and do not use any tracking. If we send you a code by e-mail, we use the address only for this dispatch (made unreadable in the copy under section 7).

After confirmed payment, you receive a personal download link that is tied to the order, valid for 48 hours and limited to a restricted number of downloads. Expired links are deleted.

7. Purchase by invoice (business customers)

Purchasing by invoice requires a business account with company, name, address, business e-mail address, password and, optionally, a telephone number. We store this information in our customer database on the server in Switzerland and use it exclusively for processing, for the invoice with QR code and for accounting. To verify business accounts, we query the public company index of the commercial register (Zefix) — only once you have confirmed your e-mail address; no further research on individuals takes place.

Automatic verification of business customers. We verify business customers automatically using public registers: the commercial register (Zefix), the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (SHAB) and the UID register of the Federal Statistical Office — when the account is confirmed and, for companies purchasing by invoice, weekly. Only company details are recorded (e.g. status, legal form, registered office, UID, date and type of a publication such as bankruptcy or liquidation), never details about individuals. Private individuals are not verified. Only the company name or the UID is sent to these official bodies as a search term. We do not use any paid credit rating services and do not pass the results on to third parties. The result is an indication for our decision; it never automatically leads to a rejection.

Opening and confirmation. After the account has been opened, we send a confirmation link. Until you open it, no account exists yet: your details are held only with the link (the password as a hash value) and are deleted when the link expires after 48 hours.

Users of a business account. Whoever opens the account administers it. The administrator can invite employees by e-mail; for this purpose, we process their e-mail address and, once the invitation has been accepted, also their name. The invitation states the name of your company and is valid for 48 hours. Invoices, the user list (name, e-mail address, role, last login) and the blocking of users are available only to the administration. For every order by invoice, we record which user placed the order.

Your dossiers in the business account. In the business account you can download the dossiers of your paid orders or orders released on invoice again for 24 months from purchase: the administration all of the company's, staff members those they ordered themselves. We do not create an additional copy for this; we use the delivery package that we keep anyway as evidence for warranty and complaints and delete at the earliest 2 years after delivery (longer only while, for example, a complaint is open). Only persons logged in to an active business account can download; once the account has ended, downloads from the account are no longer possible. A download link from the thank-you page or the delivery e-mail expires independently after 48 hours. We do not log any personal data when you download.

System e-mails. For confirmation, password links, invitations and notifications concerning the account (e.g. activation, end of account), we send automated e-mails via the Infomaniak mail servers. They state neither your name nor your address (the invitation only the company name). The recipient address and text remain in our dispatch queue only until delivery; thereafter, the type of e-mail, the masked address, time and result remain, for at most one year. If an e-mail cannot be delivered, we retain the address and text for at most 30 days for a further attempt. Of automated e-mails (except one-time links such as the password link), our administration app files a copy in the folder «Gesendet automatisch» of our mailbox, so that we can check in case of questions, and deletes it after 30 days. For purchases, vouchers and complaints without an account, your address is made unreadable in it.

Deletion periods. If you terminate your business account (or we terminate it), all logins are blocked immediately. 30 days after the end of the account, we delete the users, names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers and notes; until then, the account can be reactivated on request. What is required for accounting (company, billing address, invoices) remains until the end of the retention period; thereafter, 10 years after the last invoice and with no outstanding claim, we delete the customer together with their orders.

Dormant accounts. If nobody has logged in to a business account for 24 months, we ask by e-mail whether you would like to keep it. Logging in within 30 days is sufficient; otherwise we terminate the account, and the deletion periods above apply.

Area watch. In your business account you can switch on an area watch for a municipality, a district or a canton. We then write to you at most once every seven days for each area watch, when new plots appear in the results list for that area or a plot in that area covered by a purchased dossier is no longer listed in the search. If you administer the business account, we check purchases made by the whole account; otherwise, we check only your purchases. For this we store your e-mail address, the link to your business account, the language, the chosen area and timestamps. For comparison, we store check values for previously known results, purchased plots and removals already reported. This comparison list contains no plot identifiers (EGRID) in plain text. For purchased dossiers, we read the EGRID and order number from your order records and include them in removal notifications. We process these data with your freely given consent, which you provide by ticking the box when switching on the area watch. You can switch off the area watch at any time in your account or with the link in every e-mail; we then delete it immediately, as we do when the business account ends. Deletion includes the area watch data and their check values. Copies of e-mails already sent and backups follow the retention periods in sections 7 and 9.

Area watch without an account. On the municipality pages and in the search, you can sign up without an account for at most three municipalities. We first send you an e-mail with a confirmation link; the area watch is only switched on after you confirm (double opt-in). Without confirmation, we delete the entry after 48 hours. After that, we write at most once within seven days per municipality when new plots appear there in the results list, with the number, size class and zone. For this we store your e-mail address, the language, the chosen municipality, points in time (sign-up, confirmation, term, reminder, last e-mail), the version of the consent text and check values of the links and known results. We do not store your IP address; protection against misuse runs only in working memory. We process this data with your voluntary consent (tick box and confirmation). The area watch runs for twelve months; two weeks before it ends, we ask by e-mail whether you would like to extend it. Without an extension, we delete it together with your address automatically at the end. With the link in every e-mail you can switch it off immediately; we then delete it immediately. Copies of e-mails already sent and backups follow the retention periods in sections 7 and 9.

We retain invoices and accounting records for 10 years, as required by Art. 958f of the Swiss Code of Obligations (OR) — a statutory obligation, not voluntary storage. No disclosure to third parties, no sale, no advertising, no profiling.

7a. Complaints and credits

Complaints. If you send us an e-mail with the subject "REKLAMATION" and your order or invoice number, our administration recognises the message and opens a case. We store the number, the parcels concerned, the check status shown at the time of purchase, your text (shortened to 5000 characters), the names of any attachments (not their content), the recognised language and the date. We check the parcels concerned again against the official sources. Every complaint is decided by a person, never automatically. We send an automatic confirmation of receipt in your language.

Purchase without an account. We use your sender address only to reply to you: it is deleted as soon as our reply (e.g. a credit code) has been placed in the sending queue (made unreadable in the copy under section 7), where the period for system e-mails applies (section 7). Without a decision we delete it after 90 days. To recognise repeated complaints, we keep only a check value instead of the address. We delete the case itself 2 years after our decision.

Business customers. The case appears in your customer history. If you receive a credit note or a credit (invoice already paid), we store the amount, reason and date with your customer account; a credit is deducted from the next invoice, where it appears as a separate line. Cases with a credit note, credit or cancellation are kept as accounting records for 10 years (Art. 958f OR), other cases 2 years after the decision. If your customer account is deleted, we delete the text of your complaint immediately.

Improving our checks. From justified complaints we create anonymous test cases for our quality control: only the parcel (EGRID), the municipality and the check status, never your text, your address or your name.

8. Login to the customer area

Anyone who logs in to the customer area receives the cookie bs_session. It is technically necessary: it keeps you logged in and contains a signed session token with an expiry time (30 days by default), which can only be read by our server. We never store passwords in plain text, only as a cryptographic hash value. For visitors and customers, we set no other cookies apart from the language cookie sprache (see section 3, which also covers the entry bs_intro_gesehen in the browser). If you change your password or if access is blocked, all existing logins end.

Protection against password guessing. To prevent anyone from trying out passwords, the server counts failed login attempts as well as requests to open an account, for password links and for invitations, per IP address and per e-mail address. Only a non-reversible key value is stored, neither the IP address nor the e-mail address in plain text; we delete the entries after 24 hours. Links in our e-mails (confirmation, password, invitation) are valid only once and only for a short time (password link 45 minutes); we hold only their hash value.

9. Backup

The customer database, contact enquiries and access data (hash values only) are backed up daily in encrypted form; only the owner holds the key. We retain the last 7 daily backups and one monthly backup each for 12 months; an encrypted copy is kept on a device belonging to the owner in Switzerland. Deleted data thus disappear from the backups as well after 12 months at the latest.

10. Data from public official sources

The platform prepares official geodata (factual data on plots of land). In the «Who is building here?» section, it also shows information on building applications from the official publication bodies (official gazettes), i.e. information that the authorities themselves have published, with the source stated and without any further profiling. Under «Who is building here?», we name companies only, never private individuals. We do not collect or store any data on landowners and do not carry out serial queries; the platform only shows the official route for an individual query at the land registry office (Grundbuchamt). Data subjects can contact us at any time (section 12).

Requests from property owners. On the page For property owners you can ask that a plot no longer appears in the search, report an error, request information about your data or ask a question. For this we store the type of request, the municipality, optional plot details, your message, your e-mail address, the language and the dates of receipt and decision. You confirm your e-mail address with a link; we delete unconfirmed requests after 48 hours. The owner of Bauland-Scout decides on every request personally, never automatically. Before removing a plot he may ask for proof (for example a land register extract or a power of attorney), which you send by e-mail and which we delete after the decision. To match a proof e-mail reliably to your request, we keep a non-reversible check value of your e-mail address until then, no longer than 90 days after the decision. We delete your e-mail address as soon as our reply has been placed in the sending queue; e-mail address, message, municipality and plot details no later than 90 days after the decision. We delete the rest of the case (type, plot, decision, dates) 2 years after the last decision; as long as the plot is removed from the search because of your request, we keep it. We do not store any IP address; to prevent misuse, the server counts requests only briefly in working memory.

Initial contact with companies. In order to draw the attention of companies and organisations in the construction, real estate and pension fund sectors to Bauland-Scout on a one-off basis, we process public company data from the commercial register (company name, UID, registered office, website) and the general contact address that the company itself publishes on its website (e.g. info@), together with aggregated information on the municipalities in which and the type of buildings (e.g. apartment buildings, commercial) the company has built according to the official gazette, or lists as properties on its own website — place names, year, type and number only, no addresses or plots. Each company receives a message at most once, by e-mail or by letter to the address in the commercial register. In the case of housing cooperatives, we write to the president personally: name and function are taken from the commercial register, a personal e-mail address only if the cooperative itself publishes it as a contact. In the case of companies limited by shares (AG), limited liability companies (GmbH) and foundations, we address the message to the person whom the commercial register names as chair of the board of directors or board of trustees or as management — likewise only name and function. We derive the website of a company from its name (without search engines) and adopt it only if it states the UID or the company name and registered office; we respect notices such as «no advertising». We send an e-mail only to a person who is entered in the commercial register as an officer (or who is entered there with signing authority and named on the company's website, in their own job title, as responsible for real estate), and only to their personal address if the company itself publishes it on its website together with their name (team, about-us or contact page) and the address recognisably belongs to that name — no third-party portals, no inferred addresses. If someone notifies us of a mix-up, we delete the personal details; name and address are kept only as a blocking note, so that we never again use this incorrect assignment. We do not use general addresses such as info@ for this purpose. We store the name, function, source and date of retrieval. Without such an address, we do not write by e-mail; in that case we store only company data for the company (name, UID, registered office, website) and delete automatically determined personal details. We delete automatically determined personal details concerning companies that we have never contacted after two years at the latest. If no general address can be found, we use at most the only contact address that the company itself publishes, as a note on the company card. If a message is returned as undeliverable, we evaluate this bounce and record only «undeliverable» with status code and date; we no longer use the address thereafter and delete the note after 12 months. We do not record any further information about individuals, nor any landowner data. You can object to this at any time – by replying «No thank you», with the unsubscribe button of your e-mail program or by writing to kontakt@bauland-scout.ch. We then delete names and addresses and place the company permanently on our blocking list, so that we never contact it again.

Business contacts (business cards). If you hand your business card to the owner in person, we record the details on it: name, function, company, business e-mail address, telephone number and business address. The purpose is to maintain the contact and for personal correspondence — no advertising: a company recorded in this way does not receive any advertising messages; the owner writes personally. The card is read using text recognition on our own server; we do not store the photo itself (a large upload is technically held only briefly on a temporary basis and is deleted immediately); only the confirmed details are stored. We match the company against the commercial register (Zefix). We retain the details until you object, at most 2 years after the last contact; if you become a customer, the periods for customer data apply. Objections and requests for information at any time to kontakt@bauland-scout.ch.

11. Disclosure

We do not sell or rent personal data. Personal data are received only by the recipients named in this policy, to the extent necessary for the respective purpose: Infomaniak (hosting, e-mail, calendar), Payrexx (payment), our bank (receipt of payments). In the event of late payment, invoice data may be passed to the debt collection office; for accounting and tax purposes, to our fiduciary and the tax authorities.

12. Your rights

Under the Federal Act on Data Protection, you have in particular the right to

To do so, write to kontakt@bauland-scout.ch or use the contact form; we reply personally and within the statutory time limit. You may also lodge a complaint with the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC, EDÖB): www.edoeb.admin.ch.

If it concerns a plot that Bauland-Scout shows, the easiest way is the page For property owners.

13. Changes

This policy is updated when our operations change. The version published here at the time is authoritative.

Legal notice · Terms and conditions

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