The portal www.arbeitsagentur.de of the Federal Employment Agency (hereinafter referred to as "BA") allows you to view information on the entire range of services and use eServices. The following regulations apply to the use of the portal and the apps. These regulations also apply to all services operated by the BA as part of its website (e.g. arbeitsagentur.de, jobcenter.digital, familienkasse.de, you-connect.de, mein-now.de) or integrated into it (e.g. studiencheck.de). The BA reserves the right to make additional regulations for individual offers.
2. Overarching regulations
2a Use of the portal
(1) Any natural or legal person is entitled to use the portal and the apps. The portal can be used for family benefits purposes from the age of 18 (see Section 79(1) of the German Fiscal Code (AO)). Use of the portal is free of charge.
(2) We reserve the right to amend these Terms of Use, e.g. due to new legal regulations.
(3) Activities that do not serve the intended purpose of the portal and apps and may place a heavy load on the infrastructure are prohibited. It is not permitted to:
- use robots, web spiders or similar technologies,
- or to use existing communication or programming interfaces contrary to the BA's intended purpose, and thus to read out content from the portal or apps for the purpose of data collection and evaluation, or to import content/data into the portal or apps,
- or to attempt to circumvent or breach security measures, for example by scanning or testing account passwords.
2b Registration as a user
(1) The use of certain offers and eServices requires prior registration. To do this, you must provide the relevant registration data in accordance with the Privacy Policy. The minimum age must be observed for the use of the offers and services.
(2) Users are obliged to set up a suitable and secure password and a second factor as an additional login procedure.
Several alternative methods are available as options:
- TOTP (Time-based One-time Password) or
- Passkey (see Privacy Policy, point 12).
In addition, the BundID can be used with eID (electronic identity card or officially approved digital identification means of EU member states) or the Elster certificate.
When logging in using the passkey method, you do not need to enter your user name and password. Users must ensure that their passwords and all other authentication data remain confidential. This applies, for example, to two-factor authentication and PINs.
(3) Users may only provide email addresses that they are authorised to use and to which they have regular access. You are responsible for ensuring that your email address is correct and that your email inbox is ready to receive messages. Users must confirm their email address. The multiple use of an email address for different accounts is not permitted. Users can change their email address at any time in their account settings.
(4) Employers, education providers and private employment agencies may only register once on the BA portal. The registration of local branches from which no business activities are conducted with local contact persons (e.g. letterbox companies or so-called virtual offices that can only be reached electronically) is not permitted.
(5) Registration can only take place and is only permitted if users have read and accepted the Terms of Use.
(6) The account will be automatically deleted in its entirety if users have not logged into the portal or apps for 24 months.
2c Online notification service (email notification)
(1) Email notifications require the user's consent. This also applies in cases where users have declared their consent to being contacted by the BA on the basis of a statutory obligation to cooperate.
By giving their consent, users agree to receive emails and accept the Terms of Use. The email address stored in the account is generally used for notifications.
Once they have given their valid consent, users will receive an email via the BA's online notification service as soon as new notifications are available on the portal. For reasons of social data protection, the emails are completely anonymised.
(2) Users may activate and deactivate the email notification option via their profile at any time. Deactivation is also possible by telephone, in person or in writing via the relevant office responsible for users (Employment Agency, joint institution/job centre, family benefits office). The deactivation takes effect immediately. Due to system limitations, emails that have already been sent cannot be retrieved at this point.
(3) In the event of repeated unavailability (e.g. "mailbox full", "email address invalid"), the BA reserves the right to automatically deactivate the email notification without further notice.
(4) The BA is constantly expanding its portal offerings, so that email notifications will gradually be extended to include new offerings. Users can view the email notifications currently offered in their profile. An existing deactivation remains unaffected by new offers. An existing activation will be applied to the new offers.
(5) For legal reasons, the "Online delivery of notices, certificates and letters" service can only be offered with activated email notification. Deactivating email notifications will result in the deactivation of online delivery and postal delivery. Users will not be disadvantaged in any way if they decide not to use the online services.
2d Identity verification
When using certain eServices (e.g. online unemployment registration), identity verification is required. For further information on identity verification, please refer to the "Identity Verification" section of the Privacy Policy.
3. Copyrights
(1) The copyright to the portal, the underlying structure of the portal, the content of the portal, including the forms used on the portal, and the apps is held in its entirety by the BA.
4. Measures and compensation
The BA provides the portal, including the apps, as a service. In the event of confirmed or obvious misuse and violations of the Terms of Use, BA is entitled to immediately delete the account or profile without notifying the user, to temporarily or permanently deactivate access to the portal and apps, and to interrupt the active session.
If there are indications of a violation of the Terms of Use, BA is also entitled to deactivate the account for the duration of the investigation without notifying the user.
In order to investigate these suspected cases, the BA may require users to provide evidence that is sufficient to refute the suspicion.
If the requested evidence is not provided or if the evidence provided is not sufficient to dispel the suspicion, the BA is entitled to permanently deactivate or delete the account or profile.
The BA reserves the right to assert claims for damages against perpetrators in the event of misuse of the portal or apps.
This rule also applies in the event of misuse of individual eServices on the portal.
5. Liability
(1) Users bear sole responsibility for content posted on the portal or in the apps by them or on their behalf. In the case of underage users, responsibility lies with the parents or other legal guardians.
(2) The posting and distribution of content that is illegal, immoral or discriminatory, or that has been obtained by illegal means, is prohibited (see in particular 4d). By agreeing to the Terms of Use, users declare that they have taken note of this requirement.
Users are responsible for ensuring that they have the right to use all content they post (e.g. text, images, application photos, video recordings), which entitles them to use and apply the content on BA websites and in apps free of third-party rights.
If users are not authorised to use the content they have posted or if this content infringes the legitimate interests of third parties, they shall be liable to the BA for any damages incurred by the BA as a result of the unauthorised posting of content; in particular, they shall indemnify the BA against any claims for damages by third parties.
(3) The BA shall not be liable for the accuracy, timeliness, completeness, legality or admissibility of information posted on the portal or in the apps by registered users.
(4) The BA is not liable for the content of third-party websites to which users link in the posted content. The BA does not endorse the content of these external and linked sites and accepts no responsibility for them.
(5) The BA shall not be liable for any material damage or financial loss incurred by users of the portal or apps as a result of computer viruses or other harmful mechanisms that do not originate from the BA.
6. Specific regulations governing the use of the portal for publishing job and applicant offers as well as events
6a Specifics regarding use
Access to user data is protected by an authentication procedure. By giving their consent, users agree that the data they have entered regarding the applicant or job profile and, if applicable, photographs, if users publish them, may also be viewed by third parties. Section 5(2) of the Terms of Use applies. Users are responsible for the content they publish or make accessible.
6b Rights of use for job and applicant offers as well as events published on the portal
By signing an agreement on the use of the HR-BA XML interface, users grant the BA and their selected cooperation partners the simple right to use the posted offers for their own job and training placement purposes. Users select their cooperation partners independently within the scope of the publication options in the job advertisement on the BA portal, or in consultation with the responsible employer service, which selects the cooperation partners in the internal VerBIS (placement, counselling and information system) system. By doing so, users give the BA their consent to forward job vacancies to selected cooperation partners.
6c Special features of anonymously published offers
A registered employer can receive placement suggestions from the BA for job vacancies they are managing. Data on the proposed candidates can be viewed via these placement proposals. This also applies to applicant profiles with the status "published anonymously". The employer may only use this data for the specific purpose of filling the vacancy and may not pass it on to third parties (see Section 78(1) SGB X). In this regard, section 6d, paragraph 5 of the Terms of Use must be observed. In the event of violations or suspected violations, Section 4 shall apply.
6d Inadmissible offers and content – employers/event organisers/private employment agencies
(1) With regard to the objective of accelerating and reducing bureaucracy in job placement associated with the establishment and operation of the portal and apps, users may not post any content that is not related to job placement and is not aimed at establishing training or employment relationships.
(2) The BA shall randomly check the content posted by users. It conducts systematic searches for violations of the Terms of Use and follows up on any relevant reports. Information can be provided via the portal's hotline. In the event of violations and suspected cases, section 4 of the Terms of Use applies.
(3) The following offers or events may not be posted on the portal or apps:
- Offers/events that violate applicable legal provisions or public decency or official prohibitions or infringe on the rights of third parties (e.g. minimum working conditions, minimum wages, minimum wage thresholds, unethical wage offers, prohibitions on discrimination, provisions of the Unfair Competition Act, the Copyright Act, the General Equal Treatment Act or the State Treaty on Gaming).
- Offers/events that advertise erotic services, seek employees for positions in the erotic/erotic-related/pornographic/prostitution and prostitution-related industries, or violate public decency or human dignity (e.g. offers for telephone sex, etc.).
- Offers/events that serve wholly or partly for advertising or business purposes or promote products or services (promotion of courses, books, insurance or financial services, etc.).
- Paid offers of any kind (this also includes offers that can only be accessed by dialling costly 0900 numbers or by registering on websites for a fee) – unless the cost is regulated by law. Offers that are subject to a charge also include those that appear to be free of charge but only grant certain advantages or benefits in return for payment (for example, offers that include the purchase of lists of employers' addresses).
- Offers that promise prospective customers cash or bonus payments if they present an activation and placement voucher in accordance with Third Book of the German Social Code (Drittes Buch Sozialgesetzbuch).
- Offers that require the conclusion of an agency agreement that violates Section 296 of the Third Book of the German Social Code,
- offers/events that contain incorrect, inaccurate or misleading facts or mislead about the identity of the provider.
- Offers/events that are in fact non-existent or do not correspond to reality, e.g. because they are only intended to build up a pool of applicants or to recruit partners as part of a pyramid scheme.
- Offers/events that include further training or school education (these must be published via KURSNET).
- Events that provide information about becoming self-employed or taking up freelance work.
- Job vacancies must not be deleted and immediately reposted. If there are any changes to the content, these must be updated in the existing offer. Updating offers without changing their content is not permitted.
- Offers/events where
a. the job title provided by the system does not match the description created.
b. the conditions, requirements, duties and working conditions of the position are not clearly recognisable to the applicant.
c. the correct profile type ("type of enquiry") has not been selected.
d. an offer with identical content or an event with identical content has already been published.
(4) Providers of self-employed positions are obliged to treat incoming applications confidentially. Applications may not be passed on to third parties without the express consent of the applicant and may be subject to criminal prosecution. Companies that have downloaded and stored data and offers or recorded them in any other way are obliged to delete them after completion of the respective recruitment process, unless there is a legal obligation to retain them for a longer period.
(5) Private employment agencies and temporary employment agencies are expressly prohibited from using the portal to build up their own pool of jobs or applicants. This includes, in particular, a prohibition on posting offers on the portal for the purpose of pooling (see Section 6d (3), No. 8 of the Terms of Use).
It is also prohibited to post multiple versions of an advertisement that is based on a single existing advertisement (e.g. by changing or rearranging the text, by specifying multiple contact persons, by referring to different locations).
(6) If a vacancy notice refers to several positions to be filled at different locations, these must be summarised in one vacancy notice and specified in detail. Offers with identical content that differ in terms of the client (in the case of temporary employment agencies and private employment agencies) must be combined.
If there are more than 10 potential work locations in an offer, only the relevant federal states/regions should be included.
A city with multiple postcode areas should be treated as one place of work. The place of work must be specified as the town, region or country where the work will actually be carried out in future.
For activities where the place of work is not yet determined at the time of the job advertisement or where the place of work is based on the place of residence of the potential applicants, only the relevant country or region in which the potential places of work are located should be selected. Self-employed activities that are to be carried out on a supra-regional basis or self-employed activities that are offered throughout the whole of Germany should not be posted multiple times, but rather as a single offer with a "regional" place of work or place of work "Germany" with additional information on willingness to travel/work on site.
(7) It is not permitted to publish job advertisements without appropriate labelling if these are to be filled on behalf of a third party through recruitment agencies or within the framework of temporary employment. The labelling is required regardless of the company's industry and is done via the respective control fields "Position within the scope of personnel recruitment" or "Position within the scope of temporary employment" in the job advertisement.
(8) The BA points out that unsolicited email advertising is illegal and justifies costly warnings. Unacceptable use for one's own business purposes also occurs when applicants are contacted in an inappropriate manner in terms of quality and quantity (e.g. via the mailbox function) with regard to the positions they are applying for.
6e Quality of events published by employers
(1) The BA attaches great importance to ensuring that the events published on its website meet certain quality requirements. When entering events, the marked mandatory fields must be filled in comprehensively so that interested parties receive clear and unambiguous information about the content and possible costs or services of an event.
(2) It is not permissible to circumvent the mandatory entries by filling in mandatory fields with single characters only or by copying redundant information into several fields.
(3) The use of unfamiliar abbreviations and technical terms that impair comprehensibility should be avoided. The entries in the fields for an event must be related in terms of content.
(4) If events are marked as subject to a fee, the corresponding comment must clearly state what the costs are for and how much they amount to.
6f Inadmissible offers and content – employees
For customers seeking training and employment, Section 6d (1) and (3), No. 1 of the Terms of Use apply analogously to published job applications.
7. Specific regulations in the case of using "eServices with document upload"
7a Conversion and storage of documents
For IT security reasons, documents uploaded by customers are converted into a secure PDF-A format and transmitted exclusively in this format. Users agree to the conversion of the documents and check the PDF-A format again for correctness and completeness.
Documents uploaded by customers are saved with the document name that was submitted with the document. Once the file has been uploaded, this document name cannot be changed, even by agency and job centre staff.
8. Contact
Please direct any questions, suggestions, criticism or complaints regarding the Terms of Use to:
Federal Employment Agency Service Area 50
Regensburger Str. 104
90478 Nuremberg
Email: hotline@service.arbeitsagentur.de
Date 29 April 2025
