The Gelsenkirchen police are currently represented on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and WhatsApp. With our social media offerings, we inform you about current events, prevention tips, events, unusual incidents and much more from everyday police life.

If you are interested in our offerings on social media, you can access the individual platforms via the links opposite.

How to recognize the real police on social media

Unfortunately, there are many offerings on social media that look deceptively similar to real police offerings. Press releases, images and emblems are used to give the impression that it is a police page. The NRW police are taking all legal steps against the operators of these pages.

A police page can be recognized by the following features:

• a uniform naming convention (NRW police and name/name abbreviation of the police authority),
• a uniform address convention
  • Facebook: facebook.com/polizei.nrw.ge, user name @polizei.nrw.ge
  • X: @polizei_nrw_ge
  • Instagram: instagram.com/polizei.nrw.ge
  • WhatsApp: Polizei NRW Gelsenkirchen
• usually certified by the platform provider (tick in colored circle),
• a police star with authority logo (GE in blue circle)
• Data for contacting outside the social network are provided.

General information on data protection

You can find information on the topic of "data protection" on the website of the competent supervisory authority for data protection in North Rhine-Westphalia, the State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information of North Rhine-Westphalia. www.ldi.nrw.de

Data protection in social media

Data protection in social media is important to the NRW police. You should therefore read the following data protection information before you use the links to the police services on social media.

Data protection information for Facebook

By clicking on "Like", you become a fan of the police page, which is visible to the administrators of the page as well as to your friends and possibly other Facebook users. This applies in particular to "likes" or comments on our posts, which are also visible to non-registered visitors and non-fans of this fan page. Even if you are not or do not become a fan of this page, you can leave comments or "Like" information on our posts that are visible to others and the administrators of the fan page.

However, this information is neither analyzed by the administrators nor recorded elsewhere. The statistics that Facebook makes available to administrators are displayed in aggregated form and do not allow administrators to draw any conclusions about personal data.

In this context, please also note the data usage guidelines at https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/ and make the appropriate privacy settings in your account! Please check exactly what information you publish!

What Facebook learns:

What data Facebook stores in detail and how the company uses this data is not exactly known. What is certain is that Facebook not only stores data that is entered directly by users, but also records the actions of Facebook users.

Facebook also

• records the most important data of the computer system from which a user logs into the network - including IP address, processor type and browser version including plug-ins and
• every visit to websites (widget data) on which a "Like" button is installed. The IP address is also transmitted. If the visitor to the third-party site is a Facebook user and has already logged in to Facebook from the same computer, Facebook can also determine their identity.

This enables Facebook to investigate the preferences, inclinations and contacts of its users very precisely and beyond Facebook usage.

Important note:

If you would like to contact us with information that affects your or other people's personal rights, please use the option to contact us confidentially. You can contact your police at the police stations, by telephone or by email at Poststelle.Gelsenkirchen [at] Polizei.NRW.de (Poststelle[dot]Gelsenkirchen[at]Polizei[dot]NRW[dot]de).

We expressly reserve the right to remove comments from this page that violate applicable law or morality and to report this to the platform operator. In cases of criminal relevance, this will also result in criminal investigation proceedings. Comments that are not written in German will be deleted if necessary. If comments contain links and/or references to other pages, these will be deleted for security reasons.

Data protection information for X (formerly Twitter)

By clicking on "Follow", you become a follower of the police account, which is visible to the administrators of the page as well as to your friends and possibly other users of X.

However, this information is neither evaluated by the administrators of the police account nor recorded elsewhere. The statistics that X makes available to the administrators of the police account are output in aggregated form and do not allow the administrators to draw any conclusions about personal data.

In this context, please also note the data usage guidelines at https://twitter.com/de/privacy and make the appropriate privacy settings in your account! Please check exactly what information you publish!

What X learns:

What data X stores in detail and how the company uses this data is not exactly known. What is certain is that X not only stores data that is entered directly by users, but also records the actions of X users - presumably without gaps - and passes them on to third parties.

X also learns

• the most important data of the computer system (log data) from which a user logs into the network - up to the IP address, processor type and browser version including plug-ins and
• every visit to websites (widget data) on which an X button is installed. The IP address is also transmitted. If the visitor to the third-party site is an X user and has already logged in to X from the same computer, X can also determine their identity.

This enables X to investigate the preferences, inclinations and contacts of its users very precisely and beyond X usage.

Important note:

If you would like to contact us with information that affects your or other people's personal rights, please use the option to contact us confidentially. You can contact your police at the police stations, by phone or by email at Poststelle.Gelsenkirchen [at] Polizei.NRW.de (Poststelle[dot]Gelsenkirchen[at]Polizei[dot]NRW[dot]de).

We expressly reserve the right to report posts on X that violate applicable law or morality to the platform provider and, if necessary, to have them removed from this page. In cases of criminal relevance, this will also result in criminal investigation proceedings. In the case of posts that are not written in German, we will arrange for the platform operator to check/delete them if necessary. If posts on X contain links and/or references to other sites, we reserve the right to report these to the platform provider and, if necessary, to delete them for security reasons.

Privacy Policy for YouTube

YouTube is a subsidiary of Google, therefore the Google Privacy Policy also applies: www.google.de

What is the data collected for?

• User authentication
• Targeted advertising
• Analysis and research of user behavior
• Disclosure to third parties: The user accounts of all Google services converge centrally. The data collected is automatically linked to other Google services. Anonymized data is passed on to advertising partners and other third parties, e.g. to visualize trends and statistics

All settings can be managed centrally in the Google Dashboard.