Legal Information
The Whiteout Exercise — team judgment simulation
Imprint (Legal Notice)
Information according to § 5 TMG (German Telemedia Act)
Responsible for content:
Urs Mueller
www.urs-mueller.com
Gotenstr. 21
10829 Berlin
Germany
Website:
whiteout-exercise.org
Contact:
Email: admin(at)urs-mueller.com
Purpose: This website is operated for educational and leadership-development purposes. It presents a survival scenario and asks participants to rank 16 items individually and then as a group, in order to support structured debriefs on team decision-making, reasoning quality, and group dynamics.
Disclaimer: Despite careful content control, we assume no liability for the content of external links. Operators of linked pages are solely responsible for their content.
Privacy Policy (Data Protection)
Who is the data controller?
Urs Mueller, Gotenstr. 21, 10829 Berlin, Germany — admin(at)urs-mueller.com
What data do we collect?
From participants
The Whiteout Exercise is designed to be fully anonymous. We do not collect, ask for, or store any of the following:
- Name
- Email address
- Phone number
- IP address (used only in transient memory for request handling; never written to the database)
- Any other directly identifying information
We do store the following, all per submission, not per person:
- Anonymous session token — a randomly generated identifier stored in your browser cookie that links your responses within a session. It is not connected to your identity in any way.
- Session code — the code your facilitator gave you, used to attribute your response to the correct group session. The code is not linked to you personally.
- Your item rankings — your individual ranking of the 16 items and, where applicable, the group's shared ranking.
- Second-stage response — your choice in the optional text-message challenge, if that stage was activated.
- Submission timestamp — the moment your ranking was recorded.
From facilitators (backoffice users)
- Username — for backoffice authentication.
- Password — stored as a SHA-256 hash; cannot be reversed to the original password.
- Session data — names, codes, and configuration of sessions you create.
Legal basis for processing
- Running the exercise and producing group results — Article 6(1)(f) GDPR, legitimate interest in supporting the educational programme in which participants are enrolled. Because the data we hold is not directly identifying, the interference with participants' rights is minimal.
- Backoffice accounts for facilitators — Article 6(1)(b) GDPR, performance of the service arrangement under which the account was created.
How do we protect your data?
- The application is hosted on a server in Germany.
- All data transmission is encrypted using HTTPS/TLS.
- Session cookies are signed with a server-side secret and HTTP-only.
- Access to the backoffice is restricted to authorised facilitators.
- No data is sold, shared with advertisers, or transferred to third parties.
Who has access to your data?
- Facilitators — see aggregate scores and anonymous response-level data for their own sessions. They cannot identify any participant because no identifying data is stored.
- Administrator — has technical access for maintenance and security purposes only.
- No third parties.
Data retention
- Session responses — retained until the facilitator deletes the session via the backoffice, or until the data is no longer needed for the educational purpose, whichever comes first.
- Facilitator accounts — retained until deactivated or deleted by an administrator.
Your rights under GDPR
You have the right to access, correct, delete, port, restrict processing of, or object to processing of your personal data.
Important note for participants: because we do not collect any directly identifying information, we have no way to locate "your" specific response in the dataset. The price of full anonymity is that we cannot retrieve, edit, or delete an individual response on your request. If this is a concern for you, please do not submit a response.
To exercise your rights, contact: admin(at)urs-mueller.com
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. In Germany:
Berliner Beauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit
www.datenschutz-berlin.de
Terms of Use
Permitted use
- This site is provided for educational and leadership-development purposes.
- Each participant should complete the exercise once per session.
- Facilitators are expected to handle anonymous session data responsibly and in line with their institution's policies.
- Misuse — e.g. automated submission, attempting to extract data, or unauthorised access — is prohibited.
Intellectual property
The Whiteout Exercise scenario, benchmark ranking, trap-item design, scoring logic, and source code are original works protected by copyright. The survival-ranking format draws on established facilitation methodology. Commercial use or redistribution without permission is prohibited.
Limitation of liability
This tool is provided for reflective and educational purposes. It is not a validated psychometric instrument and must not be used for hiring, selection, promotion, or any other personnel decision-making. We make reasonable efforts to keep the service available and secure, but make no warranty of uninterrupted availability or fitness for any particular purpose.
Governing law
These terms are governed by German law. Place of jurisdiction is Berlin, Germany, to the extent permitted by law.
Contact for Legal & Data Protection Matters
For questions about your data, to exercise your rights, or for legal inquiries:
Email: admin(at)urs-mueller.com
Response time: within 5 business days.