PRIVACY POLICY
RD Surveys Website Privacy Policy
Research Defender, Inc. (“RD,” “us”, “we”, or “our”), headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States of America. As a participant of our surveys, or as a member of our panel, RD values the privacy of our users and members. By accessing or using the websites or participating in our surveys you are agreeing to the practices set within this Privacy Policy.
Information Collected
Information Provided By You:
You may provide “personally identifiable” information (as well as Non-PII) to RD when you register, such as your name and email address. You may also provide specific demographic information about yourself as well. For information you provide to RD when you register or update your account, RD is the controller and responsible for your data.
To become a member of our panel you are required to provide information through the registration process. RD will ask for identity and contact data during this process. Additional profile and communication data, such as your telephone number, IP address, and general demographic information may be asked. You may be asked to provide confirmation that you have obtained consent on behalf of a family member, live-in member and spouse regarding their PII.
Information We Collect:
When you visit our site or are recruited via email, we automatically collect and store information about your computer or device, which we referred to as Metadata. This information will be transferred and stored in accordance with the provisions contained in this Privacy Policy. Metadata may be shared with survey generators and researchers along with clients and app developers. It may also be provided to unaffiliated third parties for their own internal purposes, such as and not limited to marketing purposes. If you wish to opt-out of having your information shared with these Third Parties, please contact compliance@researchdefender.com.
Cookie Information:
When you pass through our website, one or more cookies may be sent to your computer. These cookies allow us to track analytics and track usage. RD uses both session cookies and persistent cookies. A persistent cookie remains after you close your browser and may be used by your browser on subsequent visits to the RD. These persistent types of cookies can be removed. If you elect to disable or reject cookies, Services may not function properly.
Survey Information
When hosting surveys for our survey partners, RD may capture information sent through third party vendors. RD does not own any of this data and any information provided to RD in this instance is used in accordance with the partner’s own Privacy Policy.
How We Use Your Information
RD uses the information collected to improve the respondent’s experience in our environment. This includes matching you with the relevant survey opportunities, which improves the respondent experience. This also includes processing payments when you’re eligible for a payout, verifying your identity and/or standing with third party providers, and notify you of any changes to our policies that may require your consent.
When required by law, may we require your prior opt-in consent at the time of collection for the processing of PII for marketing, as well as PII required by law in certain situations. You may withdraw your consent at any point by contacting RD Compliance at compliance@researchdefender.com.
Third Parties
RD may connect you with third parties via their surveys. If you subscribe to or opt-in to a third party survey, RD may provide your information to the third party in order to transfer the relationship between both parties. PII may be requested by third parties in certain cases when you attempt or complete a Survey. RD is not responsible for any information which you provide to Third Parties and recommends reading all relevant Privacy Policies as necessary.
RD does not share its users PII with third parties unless doing so is necessary to facilitate the transaction or request.
Data Protection Rights
Users may have rights under data protection laws in relation to PII. Additionally, users have the right to update, correct, or delete member information and email preferences at any time. Users may also object to the processing of your information, request transfer of your personal information or withdraw your consent to processing. To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at compliance@researchdefender.com. Users are responsible for maintaining their account privacy, including account password protection.
Data Protection
RD takes significant measures to protect your PII from breaches, false disclosure, modification, or destruction. By definition, any information via transmission over the internet is subject to unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and exposed to inherent risks associated with Internet usage. As such, we cannot fully guarantee the secure state of your information.
Data Retention
Your personal information will be retained indefinitely while your membership is active and our lawful basis for processing your data is still intact. Your personal data will be suspended if there is no activity for six months, we cannot reach you via email, or if your account is flagged as suspicious or fraudulent.
Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal data are available in our data privacy policy which is available upon request.
Child Protection
RD does not knowingly collect or solicit Response Data nor personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of sixteen (16). Anyone who provides their personal information to RD represents that they are 16 years of age or older. Any parent or legal guardian that discovers that your child has provided us with any of the foregoing, you may contact RD Compliance compliance@researchdefender.com to delete their information.
Opt Out
RD provides you with the opportunity to affirmatively opt-out of receiving communications from us and our partners at the point where we request information about you. RD gives you the option to end our use of your information, and to cease receiving or otherwise having access to future communications or services.
To opt out of “selling” or “sharing” of your personal information, please submit the form below. If you have any questions or prefer to make your request over email, please contact us at incident@researchdefender.com
Data Security
Any information transmitted to RD is done so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make reasonable efforts to ensure security and data integrity on our platform. This includes, but is not limited to, the use of SSL and Firewalls, in order to protect your information from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction.
RD will electronically alert users in the event of a security breach. By providing personal information to us, you agree that we can communicate with you electronically regarding security, privacy, and administrative issues relating to your use of RD.
California Users (CCPA)
Information Collected:
Through your participation in our surveys, we collect information that identifies, describes, references, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or device (“personal information”). In particular, we have collected the following categories of personal information from our members within the last twelve (12) months:
| Category | Data Types | Collected |
| Identifiers | Name, surname, email address, IP address, personal identifier, and other identifiers. | Yes |
| Personal information in CA Sec. 1798.80 | Education, employment, financial information, health insurance information. | Yes |
| Protected classifications | Color, race, gender, citizenship, religion or creed, marital status, medical conditions, gender identification, pregnancy or childbirth, medical conditions, sexual orientation. | Yes |
| Commercial information | Purchasing information related to a product or service, purchasing decisions related to targeted products, consumption histories. | Yes |
| Biometric information | None collected | No |
| Electronic network activity information | Search history, user agents, plug ins, cookies, resolution | Yes |
| Geolocation data | IP address, digital fingerprint, Geo IP Location | Yes |
| Audio or Video data | None collected | No |
| Professional or employment-related information: | Industry, professional history, company size, purchasing decisions related to role | Yes |
| Education information | Educational history, last completed level of education | Yes |
| Inferences | None collected | No |
Other uncategorized data includes:
- Publicly available information from government records
- Deidentified aggregate data
- Information excluded from CCPA scope, for example:
- Health or medical information covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) and the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (“CMIA”) or clinical trial data
- Personal information covered by certain sector-specific privacy laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FRCA”), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (“GLBA”) or California Financial Information Privacy Act (“FIPA”), and the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994.
RD obtains the categories of personal information listed above from the following categories of sources:
- Provided by respondents at the time of panel registration.
- Surveys completed through RD
- Data collected from respondents indirectly, like IP Address and User Agents
Use of Personal Information:
We may use, or disclose the personal information we collect for one or more of the following business purposes:
- To fulfill or meet the reason you provided the personal information. For example, if you provide us with PII regarding a question on your account, we will use that information to service your needs. If you provide your personal information to us to match you with a relevant survey, we will use that information to give you a positive survey taking experience.
RD will not collect additional categories of personal information or use the personal information we collect for materially different, unrelated, or incompatible purposes without providing you notice.
Sharing of Personal Information:
RD may disclose your personal information to third parties for a business purpose. When we disclose personal information for a business purpose, we enter a contract that describes the purpose and requires the recipient to both keep that personal information confidential and not use it for any purpose except performing the contract.
Disclosure of Personal Information for Business Purpose:
In the preceding twelve (12) months, RD has disclosed the following categories of personal information for a business purpose:
- Account management
- Fraud prevention, digital fingerprinting, survey attempts
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
The following notice applies to residents of California and Virginia.
California and Virginia based respondents and residents may request that we not disclose their personal information to other parties. The California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”) and Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (“VCDPA”) allow our users to opt out of personal information “sharing” – specifically (1) Usage of information based on your cookie, IP and other personal information; and (2) the “selling” of such information.
In this context, “selling” means disclosing details of your personal information in exchange for money or any other form of value.
To opt out of “selling” or “sharing” of your personal information, please submit the form below. If you have any questions or prefer to make your request over email, please contact us at support@researchdefender.com
Your Rights and Choices:
The CCPA provides consumers (California residents) with specific rights regarding their personal information. This section describes your CCPA rights and explains how to exercise those rights.
Access to Specific Information and Data Portability Rights:
You have the right to request that we disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of your personal information over the past 12 months. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request, we will disclose to you:
- The categories of personal information we collected about you.
- The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you.
- Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that personal information.
- The categories of third parties with whom we share that personal information.
- The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you (also called a data portability request).
- If we sold your personal information for a business purpose
Deletion Request Rights:
You have the right to request the deletion of any of your personal information that has been collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions listed below. Once we receive your request via email, and can confirm your verifiable consumer request, we will delete (and direct our service providers to delete) your personal information from our records, unless an exception applies.
We may deny your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service provider(s) to:
- Complete the transaction for which we collected the personal information, provide a good or service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, or otherwise perform our contract with you.
- Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities.
- Debug products to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality.
- Exercise free speech, ensure the right of another consumer to exercise their free speech rights, or exercise another right provided for by law.
- Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 1546 et. seq.).
- Engage in public or peer-reviewed scientific, historical, or statistical research in the public interest that adheres to all other applicable ethics and privacy laws, when the information’s deletion may likely render impossible or seriously impair the research’s achievement, if you previously provided informed consent.
- Enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on your relationship with us.
- Comply with a legal obligation.
- Make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.
Exercising Access, Data Portability, and Deletion Rights
To exercise your access, data portability, and deletion rights as listed, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by sending us a message via e-mail. Only you, or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you authorize to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal information. You may only make a verifiable consumer request for access or data portability twice within a 12-month period. The verifiable consumer request must:
- Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected personal information or an authorized representative.
- Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.
We cannot respond to your request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or confirm the credentials of the authority making the request. We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable consumer request for the purpose of verification.
Response Timing and Format
We agree to confirm receipt of your request within fourteen (14) business days. We will work to respond to all verifiable consumer requests within forty-five (45) days of its receipt. If we require more time, as many as 45 more days, we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing. We will deliver our written response via email. Any disclosures we provide will only cover the 12-month period preceding the verifiable consumer request’s receipt. The response we provide will also explain the reasons we cannot comply with a request, if applicable. For data portability requests, we will select a format to provide your personal information that is readily usable and should allow you to transmit the information from one entity to another entity without hindrance, specifically by electronic mail communication.
We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable consumer request unless it is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request.
Personal Information Sales Opt-Out and Opt-In Rights
All respondents have the right to withdraw their consent to process their personal information and direct us to not sell your PII. All members must provide consent to partake in our surveys, but may withdraw that consent at any time. Consent must be withdrawn by the individual or an authorized representative, and data collected to verify such authorization will only be used for that purpose. If you wish to opt-out of Personal Information Sales, please contact compliance@researchdefender.com.
Non-Discrimination
We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights. This includes:
- Denial of survey opportunities
- Payment of unequal incentives
- Provide you with a low level of support
The above requires consent to our updated Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions
International Users
RD operates in the United States of America. Users outside of the US that submit their data to us through use of our website or products will agree to transferring their personal data outside of their country of residence.
Changes to This Privacy Policy
RD reserves the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time for any reason. RD will maintain a “last updated” date to note the version and time of last update. RD will require users to accept/opt into Privacy Policy updates.
Contacting Research Defender
Email: compliance@researchdefender.com
Address: Research Defender, Inc.
400 Poydras Ave, Ste 900
New Orleans, LA 70130