Privacy Policy, Survey Research US

Most recent update: August 1, 2019

This privacy policy is applicable to online respondent survey research, telephone survey research, in person interviews performed by Kantar Consulting LLC, a company located in the United States. Kantar Consulting LLC is part of the WPP Group. Learn more about Kantar at Kantar.com.

Lawful Collection and Use of Data

Research serves an important function in helping promote the flow of information in open societies. Through survey research, businesses, political organizations and governments learn from representative samples of people. As a survey participant, your opinions help inform the development and improvement of new products and services, customer service programs, and public and social policies. We conduct survey research for the benefit of our clients, who include for-profit companies, non-profit organizations and governmental institutions.

When we contact you, generally by email invitation, we do so to invite you to participate in online respondent survey research. When you participate in our research, we may ask you for a range of information, including, for example, your personal opinions, and demographic information, such as your age and household composition. You may decline to answer any questions or withdraw from participation in a study at any time.

When you participate in survey research with us, these principles apply:

Your survey responses are not attributed to you in client reports unless you permit otherwise
We will not sell your contact information to anyone or present you with offers for our clients’ products or services
Occasionally, we may re-contact you to validate your responses. We will not misrepresent ourselves or what we are doing in such cases
Your participation in a study is voluntary.

Other Lawful Collection and Use of Data

Case	Purpose	Data collected/processed	Legal Basis
Fraud Protection	Protection of our business interests against fraudulent behavior or behavior not in line with our Terms and Conditions	IP address, browser specifications, device specifications, postal addresses, email addresses	Legitimate interests – we have a legitimate interest in protecting our business against fraud or other prohibited behavior.
Survey Participation Uniqueness	Prevention of multiple entries in surveys by the same individuals in line with our Terms and Conditions	IP address, browser specifications, device specifications	Legitimate interests – we have a legitimate interest in preventing multiple entries by the same individual, in contravention of our Terms and Conditions.
Tracking of the Answers of Recurring Respondents (special research design projects)	When you participate in our surveys, we typically use a temporary ID which makes your answers in the survey anonymous to our clients. However, some of our clients have the specific research design need to understand how your opinion has evolved over a period of time. For this specific project type that we call “tracking” projects we will use persistent IDs and we will make this clear at the beginning of each of these surveys. Your survey responses will be considered as personal data and you will have the right to access them. Such projects will contain a notice on the very first page of the survey, so that you can identify them and decide whether or not to take part.	Persistent unique project-specific identifier	Legitimate interests – we and our clients have a legitimate interest in determining how the opinion of Panelists evolves over time.
Data Matching and Enrichment	We utilize matching services (i.e. third parties who are specialized in data management) to acquire additional information about you from public and private data sources (such as social networks, retailers and content subscription services with whom you have an account) or to use your personal data as an aid to develop additional or new types of anonymous data sets (i.e. we compile your aggregate data with data from other consumers to create a new lifestyle segment). The matching service (our partner) holds the personal data we share for a short time, uses it to assemble the additional information, and then return the combined information to us. Partners are contractually bound to delete the data we share with them or and are not authorized to use it in any way other than for this specific purpose.	Persistent unique identifier, contact details, email address, social login, cookie, mobile device ID	Consent – If applicable to the research objectives in a survey you participate in, we will only perform data matching techniques using 3rd parties with your consent. Consent will be freely given by you and obtained via a survey question clearly describing the purpose of collection and processing and with whom we share your information with.
Advertising Targeting and Media Buying Research	We use your personal data to help our clients and vendors enrich their data by using lookalike modelling techniques. Thanks to your participation in our surveys and your profile data, we can help our clients to improve their advertising targeting, and to create better online advertising models, through lookalike modelling or similar research methodologies. We will use your personal data we collect about you through profile building, participation in research surveys or data matching to match with third-parties and platforms (our partners). We include contractual safeguards to ensure that you will not automatically be targeted as a result of your data being used to help create a lookalike audience, and that our partners cannot use your data for any other purpose.	Persistent unique identifier, contact details, email address, social login, cookie, IP address, mobile device ID	Consent – If applicable to the research objectives in a survey you participate in, we will only perform data matching techniques using 3rd parties with your consent.Consent will be freely given by you and obtained via a survey question clearly describing the purpose of collection and processing and with whom we share your information with.
Ad Exposure and Measurement	We may use personal data you provide to us, such as email address, in a direct matching process with third parties (our clients and partners) to determine if you are a user of that service (such as social networks, websites, mobile apps) for advertising measurement research purposes. We will identify what advertisements you may have been exposed to on those sites and platforms and measure how brand attitudes or brand recall have impacted sales. The third parties that we work with are not allowed to use the data for any other purpose.	Persistent unique identifier, contact details, email address, social login, cookie, IP address, mobile device ID	Consent – If applicable to the research objectives in a survey you participate in, we will only perform data matching techniques using 3rd parties with your consent.Consent will be freely given by you and obtained via a survey question clearly describing the purpose of collection and processing and with whom we share your information with.

We will not misrepresent ourselves or what we are doing. If you receive an email that concerns you, purporting to be from us, please let us know as shown below and in the ‘How to contact us’.

Kantar is a member of the Insights Association which is a US Market Research Membership Society and supports the Association’s Code of Standards and Ethics.

If you have any questions about this policy, please contact privacy@kantarconsulting.com

Data Transfer

When participating in the research we’ve contacted you about, we may transfer your information to other companies and countries as described in the section “Information We Share or Transfer”.

Kantar Consulting LLC may conduct research in other countries globally, including the European Economic Area (EEA), only for the purposes described above in the “Lawful Data Collection and Use of Data” section. Kantar Consulting LLC will take reasonable steps to keep your information secure and treat it in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Information We Collect

When you participate in our surveys, we may ask you for your opinions and also your personal information such as your age and household composition. You may refuse to answer certain questions or discontinue participation in a study at any time.

When our interviewers reach respondents by telephone or in-person, they identify themselves and state the purpose(s) of their contact. Our mail delivered or emailed survey invitations clearly identify us as Kantar Added Value and explain the purpose(s) of our contact.

When we contact you, we will generally do so for one of the following purposes:

To conduct a survey research interview
To validate answers, you gave in a survey we conducted
To update our records on the accuracy of your personal information
Much more occasionally, we may contact you for one of these other purposes:
To notify you if you have won a sweepstakes we sponsored
To ask for your permission to use your personal information for a purpose that was not identified to you when we first collected your personal information.

Information We Share or Transfer

Your survey responses are confidentially handled. We combine your survey responses in a given survey with the responses of others who participate and report the aggregated responses (without identifying the individual respondents) to the client that commissioned the study.

We will not make your personally identifiable information available to anyone without your agreement unless if required by law. This includes your name and e-mail address. The only exceptions when we may disclose your identifiable information or survey responses to un-affiliated third parties are as follows:

You consent to sharing your identifying information and individual responses with an unaffiliated third party for a specified purpose

In accordance with industry (Insights Association) guidelines, we work with a third party who is contractually bound to keep the disclosed information in a confidential and protected manner and use it only for research or statistical purposes

In the rare but possible circumstance that the information is subject to disclosure pursuant to a subpoena, or similar legal process or when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request

Your survey responses and personal information may be collected, stored, transferred or processed by our sister companies within the WPP Group, or 3rd party service providers for research-related purposes, such as data processing, and fulfilment of prize draws or other incentives both within and outside the United States. They are all contractually bound to keep any information they collect and disclose to us or, we collect and disclose to them, confidential and must protect it with security standards and practices that are equivalent to our own.

Your personally identifiable information may be transferred if Kantar Added Value is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of its assets. In such cases, the receiving entity would be required to comply with our privacy policy requirements.

Security of personal information

We take appropriate technological and organizational measures to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. Our security procedures are consistent with generally accepted commercial standards used to protect personal information.

Unfortunately, no data transmission can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal data, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or from our online products or services, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we will take reasonable steps to ensure our systems are secure.

All our employees are contractually obliged to follow our policies and procedures regarding confidentiality, security and privacy.

Accuracy of personal information

We make reasonable efforts to keep personal information in our possession or control which is used on an ongoing basis, accurate and complete, current and relevant, based on the most recent information made available to us by you and/or by our client

We rely on you to help us keep your personal information accurate, complete and current by answering our questions honestly and you are responsible for ensuring that the data controller (which may be us or – more often – our client) is notified of any changes to your personal data.

Unsolicited Email or SPAM

We do not intentionally “spam” email addresses to seek their participation in surveys. Rather, we send e-mail invitations only to people who we believe have “opted-in” (i.e., affirmatively agreed to receive invitations) to our communications.

We will give every person who receives an e-mail invitation the opportunity to “opt-out” of that invitation and all future e-mails.

Children’s Data Collection

We do not knowingly invite children under the age of 13 to participate in research studies without taking measures to obtain parental consent.

If it is necessary and appropriate to a particular project to directly involve children under the age of 13 years for the United States, and 16 years for EU participants, we take measures to ensure we have been given permission by the parent or legal guardian.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files stored on your computer by a website that assigns a numerical user ID and stores certain information about your online browsing. They are used by web developers to help users navigate their websites efficiently and perform certain functions. The website sends information to the browser which then creates a text file. Every time the user goes back to the same website, the browser retrieves and sends this file to the website’s server.

As is true of most online surveys, we gather certain information automatically and store it in survey data files. This information may include things like Internet Protocol addresses (IP address), browser type, Internet service provider (ISP); referring/exit pages, operating system and date/time stamp.

We use this automatically collected information to analyze trends such as browser usage and to administer the site, e.g. to optimize the survey experience depending on your browser type. We may also use your IP address to check whether there have been multiple participations in the survey from this IP address.

Access to personal information

To request access to personal information that we hold about you, we require that you submit your request in writing to the e-mail address shown below under “How to contact us”. You may be able to access your personal information and correct, amend or delete it where it is inaccurate, except as follows:

The burden or expense of providing access would be disproportionate to the risks to your privacy in a given, individual case
Providing access to your personal information would be likely to reveal personal information about others
Disclosing the information would reveal confidential information about our clients
We will respond to your request within 30 days of receiving it. If we cannot fulfill your request, we will provide you an explanation for it.

Data subjects covered under current EU data protection laws

To request access to personal data that we hold about you, you should submit your request in writing to the e-mail address or postal address shown below in “How to Contact Us”.

You have the following rights in relation to your personal data:

Right to change your mind and to withdraw your consent
Right to access your personal data
Right to rectify your personal data
Right to erase your personal data from our systems, unless we have legitimate interest reasons for continuing to process the information
Right to port your personal data (portability right)
Right to restrict processing of your personal data
Right to object to the processing of your personal data

We shall also notify third parties to whom we have transferred your personal data of any changes that we make on your request. Note that while we communicate to these third parties, we are not responsible for the actions taken by these third parties to answer your request. You may be able to access your personal data held by these third parties and correct, amend or delete it where it is inaccurate.

Data Storage and Retention

Personal information will be retained only for such period as is appropriate for its intended and lawful use, unless otherwise required to do so by law. Personal information that is no longer required will be disposed of in ways that ensure their confidential nature is not compromised

As part of the Company Business Continuity plan and in certain instances the law, our electronic systems are backed up and archived. These archives are retained for a defined period of time in a strictly controlled environment. Once expired, the data is deleted and the physical media destroyed to ensure the data is erased completely.

How to contact us

Questions regarding this policy or access requests should be directed to contact

privacy@kantarconsulting.com

Links to Other Sites

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Notification of material changes to this policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review and it may be amended from time to time. We will always have the most up-to-date policy on this web page. We will record when the policy was last revised.

Last revised: 1 August 2019