HarrisX Privacy Policy

Effective Date: December 31 2019

For decades, we have been surveying consumers like you to create insights on mobile and technology usage and preferences. Our data are based on representative samples of the population and help our clients (e.g., manufacturers, retailers, media companies, non-profits and governments) learn about what consumers want and need. Your participation in a study helps companies understand your behaviors and preferences, which helps them provide better consumer products and services.

We take the privacy of our survey participants, visitors to our websites, and users of our apps very seriously. This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect from or about you, how we use and protect that personal information, and the choices and controls we offer with respect to your personal information.

HOW TO CONTACT US. Harris Telecom LLC (“HarrisX”) is a Stagwell Company. You can find more information about us here: https://harrisx.com/

If you have questions related to this Policy, please contact us via our webform.

 

If you would like to communicate with our Data Protection Officer, please contact privacy@harrisx.com.

  1. Our Privacy Commitment
  2. What This Privacy Policy Covers
  3. The Personal Information We Collect
  4. How We Use Personal Information
  5. Cookies and Other Digital Technologies
  6. When We Share Your Personal Information
  7. Your Choices and Your Legal Rights
  8. About Children
  9. Retention of Personal Information
  10. Updates to this Policy

1.   OUR PRIVACY COMMITMENT

HarrisX complies with all applicable U.S. privacy laws. But it’s not just the laws that keep us concerned about your privacy, it is a business imperative: for HarrisX it is critical that research participants’ personal information be kept confidential in order to prevent any interference with participants that could affect their behavior and the accuracy of our data. We will NOT use data that identifies you to advertise, promote, market or sell third-party goods or services directly to you or members of your household; we do not allow our clients to do so either.

2.   WHAT THIS PRIVACY POLICY COVERS

This Privacy Policy applies to the personal information we collect when you participate in a HarrisX survey or visit the HarrisX website and personal information we receive from third parties. Note that any personal information that we collect through your participation in HarrisX’s Telephia program is covered by a separate Privacy Policy.

So what do we mean by “personal information”? We mean any information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with you or your household.

“This Privacy Policy does not apply to personal data collected by or in connection with your use of the Telephia App.  The Telephia App Privacy Policy is available at https://harrisx.com/passive-tos-privacy/#privacy

3.  THE PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT

  • Personal information you actively provide to us. If you voluntarily participate in any of our research studies, you will be actively providing us with personal information—that is, giving us your personal information by telling it to us. You might also actively provide us with information in other ways, such as by emailing HarrisX with questions. This may include the following categories of personal information:
    • directly identifying personal information like your name, physical address, email address, telephone number, or username;
    • demographic personal information such as your age, gender, marital status, occupation, and income range;
    • your behaviors and preferences to help us better understand consumer behavior, use, and trends. “Behavior data” is when, why, or how you do things such as how frequently you use your computer, smartphone, TV or the Internet, or spend time in your car. “Preference data” means the choices you make, such as which companies you choose when using technology, which types of services you use and why, and which apps or websites you visit;
    • any content or material you choose to submit, upload, or transmit to HarrisX, including photos, videos, text, or images submitted in connection with your participation in market research activities;
    • voluntarily provided or disclosed Sensitive Information. “Sensitive Information” means personal identifying information that discloses or reveals health or medical conditions, biometric or genetic data, sexual orientation or sexual activities, political opinions and views, race and ethnic origin, religious and philosophical beliefs, and trade-union membership;
    • payment information if you are a customer of ours and buy products from us.  All payment information goes directly to a secure payment processor; we do not retain or access payment information.
  • Personal information that we collect through automated means, including cookies.

We may use automated means to collect personal information about you or your device. These automated means may include cookies (both session and persistent), pixel tags, web beacons, or similar technologies on some of our website pages and HTML-formatted email messages. As described in further detail below, we may use this automatically collected personal information to, among other things, manage studies and to enhance your experience as a participant. We may also use these technologies for security purposes, to facilitate navigation, to display information more effectively, and to better serve you with more tailored information, as well as for site administration purposes, e.g., to gather statistical information about the usage of our websites in order to continually improve the design and functionality, to understand how users use our websites, and to assist us with resolving questions regarding use of the websites. To learn more about the use of cookies and automated collection of personal information in general, please visit http://allaboutcookies.org/.

We may automatically collect the following categories of personal information:

  • Information about your device, network, and internet connection, such as your IP address(es), MAC address, other device ID (UDID), device type, operating system type and version, and client version;
  • Information about your use of our sites and apps, such as the pages you most commonly visit;
  • Information collected from other HarrisX measurement products, including information on what you watch or buy and your exposure to advertising;
    • Certain profile information stored in your social media platform account, should you voluntarily agree to participate in market research activities through a third-party service such as Facebook or Twitter.
  • Personal information we get from other sources. We may receive additional information about you from other sources, including your panel provider and sometimes including outside sources. We obtain contractual assurances relating to the lawfulness of non-publicly available personal information we obtain from outside sources. These outside sources could include, for example:
    • census data;
    • publicly available data, (e.g., from public databases, or data that you make public online);
    • the manufacturers or sellers of the products you purchase or use;
    • organizations that collect consumer data;
    • data suppliers;
    • companies that combine purchased personal information; and
    • other entities that have a legal right to provide such information to us, such as companies that provide data and data-matching services commercially.

We may combine the information we obtain from you with information from these additional sources. We will use it only for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.

We do not collect survey respondents’ driver’s license number, social security number, health insurance account information, financial or bank account numbers, credit card information, or other similar information.

4.   HOW WE USE PERSONAL INFORMATION

  • Personal information we collect in any context

We may use certain identifiers that you provide to us in order to contact you. When we contact you—by phone (including mobile phone), email, SMS, or postal mail depending on what data you provide to us—we usually do so to:

  • respond to your inquiries;
  • validate or clarify answers you gave to a survey;
  • send you information regarding your participation such as how to redeem rewards;
  • provide notice regarding changes to our terms, conditions, and policies.

By participating in our research studies, you agree that we may contact you by the means you provide to us for these purposes.

We may use any of the categories of personal information we collect for quality assurance and research and development purposes, such as data security, improved website navigation and content display, fraud prevention, data analysis, audits, developing new products, producing predictive data models, improving our services, identifying usage trends, and determining the effectiveness of our communications.

We may de-identify personal information and use it or allow others to use it for historical, academic, or longitudinal research. We ensure in such cases that there is no reasonable possibility of re-identifying you from the data used.

  • Personal information we collect in connection with our research studies

In addition to the uses described above, when you voluntarily participate in one of our research studies, HarrisX will process your personal information and, where applicable, personal information about other members of your household. The express purpose of our surveys is to obtain information from and about you and, where applicable, other members of your household, to be used for the purposes described below.

We may use all of the types of personal information we collect from you to create a variety of market research insights for our clients in the form of statistical reports. By voluntarily participating in a HarrisX market research study, you are contributing your personal information to a pool of data from which broad participant statistics are derived. We provide reports on these statistics to help companies to better understand consumer behavior, which in turn helps them to make smart decisions about their products and services. For example, companies may use these our statistical reports to set pricing, advertising, merchandising, and other key business decisions.

We also create reports based upon modeled data. “Modeled data” are projections based on demographic and behavioral characteristics (like gender, age, and purchasing habits) that look at a sample group of people, and then predict what people with similar characteristics or preferences would want to buy. We use participants’ personal information for the purposes of analyzing a sample group.  For instance, this allows advertisers to identify the likely audience for a marketing campaign.

We use tools and methods to make sure that there is no reasonable possibility of identifying you from the statistical or modeled data reports that we create for our clients. For example, we combine the responses we collect from you with the responses of many others to produce aggregated reports from which you cannot be uniquely identified.

5.  COOKIES AND OTHER DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

Additionally, we may allow our panel providers and survey partners to use cookies and internet technologies in connection with our surveys. We do not control and have no access to these cookies and internet technologies. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by the HarrisX family of companies only and does not cover the use of cookies by any of our panel providers or partners.

You can adjust the settings in your computer’s browser to reject cookies, or delete individual or all cookies on your computer by following the browser help file directions. Adjusting your settings to reject cookies or deleting cookies, however, may interfere with your using some features of other websites and may impair your ability to participate in our surveys.

6.  WHEN WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

The categories of third parties we may share personal information with include:

  • Our service providers. Companies that provide website or application hosting, data analysis or processing, IT services, email, auditing services, data matching services; and recruitment, reward, incentive, sweepstakes, or market research product development services receive personal information as a necessary part of our business. These companies are contractually required to keep this information confidential and secure and are prohibited from using this data for any purpose other than carrying out the services that they are performing for us.  HarrisX performs security reviews before engaging service providers who may have access to individual-level data.
  • Other market research companies and our clients, in accordance with market research industry ethical guidelines. This may include audits by our clients or other third parties. Our clients receive data only in aggregate and de-identified form. We also limit how clients may use our data in order to prevent re-identification of aggregated data and to prevent data from being reused in a way that is inconsistent with this Policy.
  • A third party in the event of any reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer, or other disposition of all or any portion of our business, assets, or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceedings).
  • We may share your personal information with other HarrisX affiliates or subsidiaries for the purposes described in this Policy.

We also may share data as we believe to be necessary or appropriate: (a) under applicable law; (b) as required by law, including legal process from public and government authorities (including those outside your country of residence); (c) to enforce our terms and conditions; (d) to protect our operations or those of any of our affiliates; (e) to protect the rights, privacy, safety, or property of any person; or (f) to allow us to pursue available remedies or limit the damages that we may sustain.

We will not sell any of the personal information we collect from you while this Privacy Policy is in effect.

7.  YOUR CHOICES AND YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

If you reside in California, you may have legal rights with respect to your personal information, including those set forth under the CCPA. To make a request related to your personal information, click here request via privacy@harrisx.com.

Here are the types of requests you can make:

You may request access to the personal information that HarrisX has collected about you during the previous 12 months, for a copy of personal information in a portable format, that HarrisX delete personal information it has about you, and to opt out of the sale of personal information.

Before we disclose or delete personal information in response to any of these requests, we will need to verify your identity. Please provide your email address. Depending on the nature of your request, we may contact you for further information if appropriate to verify your identity.

Under certain circumstances, we will not be able to fulfill your request, such as if it prevents us from completing a transaction you initiated, interferes with our regulatory obligations, affects legal matters including a user’s rights to data contained in their account, we cannot verify your identity, or compliance with your request is not legally required and would involve disproportionate cost or effort. But in any event, we will respond to your request within a reasonable timeframe and provide you with an explanation.

HarrisX will not discriminate against anyone that makes a request to access, port, or delete your personal information, but in some cases you will not be able to participate in our market research studies if you choose not to provide or allow us to use that information.

You may also contact us via our webform, emailing privacy@harrisx.com or writing to Harris X, Attn: Privacy, 1808 I Street., N.W., Floor 5, Washington, D.C. 20006

  • More about the types of privacy rights requests you can make

Access: You can request more information about HarrisX’s processing of your personal information during the previous 12 months. Your request can include:

  • the categories and specific pieces of personal information we collected from you,
  • why we collected that information,
  • the categories of third parties from which we received personal information about you,
  • the categories of third parties with whom we shared that information, and/or
  • the categories of third parties to whom we may have sold that information during the previous 12 months.

Portability: You can request a copy of your personal information that we have collected about you in a machine-readable format. You can also request that we transmit the data to another entity where technically feasible.

Deletion: You can request that we erase some or all of your personal information from our systems.

Please be aware that your request to delete personal Information may not cover all of the personal Information in HarrisX’s possession. We will continue to retain personal information that we use to provide our Services to you, preserve the security and functionality of our Services, protect our legal rights, and internally for other legitimate business purposes that are consistent with the reason why you provided us with the personal information and reasonable expectations.

Opt-Out of “Sales”: You can ask us not to sell your personal information by clicking on the “Do Not ‘Sell’ My Personal Information” link above. You can also use an authorized agent to submit a request to opt out on your behalf if you provide the agent written permission to do so.  We may require the agent to submit proof that you have authorized them to submit an opt-out request.

If you opt out of the “sale” of information, we will alter or suspend our information sharing with businesses that offer services to HarrisX (like serving advertisements on our behalf across the Internet, serving personalized ads on our website, and providing analytics services) but that have not promised to use all personal information that we provide them solely in connection with HarrisX’s sites and services.

8.  ABOUT CHILDREN

We never knowingly collect data directly from minor children (under age 18) without first obtaining consent from a parent or guardian. If our research seeks to study children and we have obtained verifiable consent from a parent or guardian, minor children may participate in some survey opportunities. If a parent or guardian wishes to delete, correct, or otherwise exercise legal rights with respect to personal information that has been collected from their child, please contact us via our webform.

9.  DATA RETENTION

We will retain your data for as long as needed for the purposes described in this Policy and in accordance with applicable law. When you are no longer an active panelist, we will continue to use data about your demographic characteristics, as well as behavior and preference data for historical and statistical research, but we keep this data separate from data that could be used to identify you and strictly limit access to your identifying data, even within HarrisX. All data will be permanently de-identified when we no longer need the ability to identify you for disaster recovery, audit, legal, fraud prevention, or related purposes.

10.  UPDATES TO THIS POLICY

Changes in technology, market standards, or our products and services can require us to change this Policy. We will provide notice on our website and to panel participants when we have made material changes to our privacy policy.  Please also take a look at the “Effective Date” at the beginning of this Policy to see when this Policy was last revised.