Third Party Panel Privacy Notice

LAST UPDATED: NOVEMBER 2, 2020

SurveyMonkey uses third party trusted partners (“Panel Providers”) to source individuals who are willing to complete surveys (“Panelists”) so that we can then deliver surveys from SurveyMonkey and its customers to those Panelists.

This Third Party Privacy Notice (“Notice”) applies to you as a Panelist completing a survey from SurveyMonkey customers, through one of our Panel Providers

When you complete surveys for SurveyMonkey or the creator of a survey who has used SurveyMonkey (“Creators”), through one of our Panel Providers, SurveyMonkey Inc. in the United States, SurveyMonkey Brasil Internet Eireli in Brazil or SurveyMonkey Europe UC in the rest of the world collects information about you. In instances described in this Privacy Notice, SurveyMonkey will be a data controller of your personal information and will be responsible for holding and keeping your personal information in compliance with data protection law. In other instances, specifically with respect to survey responses, we simply process your data on behalf of Survey Creators. You will find our contact details at the bottom of this Notice under “Contacting Us” if you want to get in touch.

The most likely scenario is that you have signed up to take surveys through a third party Panel Provider in return for some type of incentive. SurveyMonkey partners with Panel Providers who source panelists like you to take surveys for SurveyMonkey and for Creators. We do not get your personal contact information or your name from our Panel Providers. They facilitate us (or the Creator) forwarding surveys to you to take.

The Panel Provider who forwards you to a survey to complete will also be responsible for protecting your personal information and will likely have its own privacy notice which you should consult.

We provide our Panel Provider with a profile of the type of panelist we wish to use for a particular survey. This may include requirements such as (on a non-exhaustive basis) panelists of a particular gender, age or age range, income bracket or location. If you respond to a particular survey, we will know that you have (or that it is likely you have) the characteristics or match the details listed in the panelist profile.

We collect your survey response data which may directly identify you or which, when used with other information which we hold about you, may identify you. For more details of how we treat survey responses generally and the appropriate controller of your responses see our main Privacy Notice.

We also collect your IP address (and certain cookie data) when you take surveys. Please see our Cookies Notice for more information.

We may infer information about you (including your location and your preferences) from the personal information which we collect about you.

We may use your personal information to:

We also may use techniques like machine learning on your survey responses for determining their quality and compliance with the relevant terms of service between SurveyMonkey and Panel Providers so that SurveyMonkey can maintain consistent and reliable Panelists.

Your survey responses will be shared with the Creator of the survey that requested the survey. While in limited cases the Creators may be able to identify you based on your responses and your IP address, generally SurveyMonkey prohibits these parties from: (i) asking survey questions which elicit responses with your name, email address and contact information; (ii) contacting you for marketing or any other purpose (unless you have voluntarily agreed to this); or (iii) from disclosing your identity to other third parties. In limited circumstances, SurveyMonkey permits the Creator to ask you for additional information (name, email address and contact information) which you may give voluntarily, to allow you to further participate in research with that Creator outside the SurveyMonkey platform. If the Creator asks you for information other than name, email or contact information, please contact SurveyMonkey as collection of additional data is not permitted by SurveyMonkey.

The information which we collect about you will be shared with other companies in the SurveyMonkey group from time to time.

SurveyMonkey may publish our analysis of survey responses and the results of our research. Such publications will not contain your personal information.

We will process your personal information in order to provide you with the surveys which you have selected to receive from our Panel Providers.

We will process your personal information to provide you with surveys which it appears you are interested in receiving based on your previous survey-taking activities and the profile we have developed for you as a result of this usage history.

We also have a legitimate commercial interest to use your personal information in order to administer the survey and to improve both the content and frequency of future surveys and how these surveys are presented to you.

In the event of a corporate transaction involving the SM Group (or any part of the SM Group) such as a merger or sale of assets, we may share your personal information with a prospective purchaser.

We may disclose your personal information to comply with laws applicable to us or to respond to legal process or lawful requests, including from law enforcement and government agencies.

In rare events, SurveyMonkey may disclose your personal information where it believes in good faith that access or disclosure is necessary to protect the personal safety or vital interests of SurveyMonkey employees, customers or the public.

To the extent SurveyMonkey independently keeps any data about you which it collected from you as a respondent to surveys sent from our service, we will retain that data to facilitate our data lifecycle models. To the extent that your survey responses are stored in one of our customer accounts, that data is retained for as long as our customer’s account remains active or until our customer has deleted those survey responses. Where an account is inactive for 3 or more years we take steps to close those accounts and delete any data contained in them.

Your personal information may be stored and processed in the United States, Australia or any other country where the SurveyMonkey group or its service providers maintain facilities. Please see here for a list of countries where SurveyMonkey maintains offices. We enter into standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission with our international group companies to ensure the safe transfer of your personal information to include the US (you can contact us for further information).

Our parent company, SurveyMonkey Inc., has also certified its compliance with the U.S. Privacy Shield for non–EU data transfers and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield (please see SurveyMonkey Inc.'s entry on the Privacy Shield list here for further information).

The table below sets out the rights which you have to address any concerns or queries with us about our processing of your personal information:

You can find out what kind of personal information SurveyMonkey holds about you and what we do with that information. You can also get a copy of this information.

You can have SurveyMonkey update or correct any inaccurate personal information which we hold about you.

Receive a copy of the information which you have provided to us in a form which makes it easy for you to give this information to a different organisation.

You have a right to stop SurveyMonkey from using your personal information in certain cases, including if you believe that the personal information we hold about you is incorrect or our use of your information is unlawful. If you exercise this right, we will store your personal information and will not carry out any active processing unless your issue is resolved.

Where we rely on our legitimate business interests to use your personal information, you have a right to object to this use and to have your personal information deleted. We may disagree with any objection you raise but we will stop processing your personal information until we sort out the issue with you.

In certain circumstances, you may also have your personal information deleted, for example if you exercise your right to object (see above) and we do not have any overriding reason to process your personal information or if we no longer require the your personal information for the purposes set out in this notice.

For panelists outside the US, if you are not satisfied with any response you receive from us or have an issue with the way we handle your personal information, you can make a complaint to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland. You can contact this office by emailing info@dataprotection.ie.

For panelists in the US please contact our support team here.

SurveyMonkey may occasionally update this Notice to reflect customer feedback and changes in its business or to comply with applicable law and regulations. When SurveyMonkey makes such an update, SurveyMonkey will revise the “last updated” date at the top of this privacy notice. If there are material changes to this privacy notice concerning how SurveyMonkey will handle your personal information, SurveyMonkey will notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes before they take effect or by directly sending you a notification.

For general SurveyMonkey privacy issues, or to submit feedback or ask SurveyMonkey questions about its privacy practices and this Notice, please contact the SurveyMonkey Data Protection Officer here or by mail at Attn: Data Protection Officer, 2 Shelbourne Buildings, Second Floor, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.