We at MetrixLab B.V. (“MetrixLab”, “we”, “us” or “our”) respect your privacy and recognise the importance of providing a secure environment for your Personal Data (that means any information that can be linked or attributed to you). Therefore, we are committed to being transparent about how we collect and process your personal data.
The purpose of this Participant Privacy Notice (“Privacy Notice”) is to inform you, as a participant in our studies, about why and how we process your Personal Data. This Privacy Notice also includes information regarding with whom we share your Personal Data, how long we retain it, and which rights you have in relation to your Personal Data.
Please consult our General Privacy Notice for more information about the Personal Data we collect via our website www.metrixlab.com, other contact channels and social media pages, and online public sources. This Privacy Notice does not apply to the processing of such Personal Data.
If you are a resident of California (U.S.), see our additional disclosures here.
MetrixLab B.V., based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, is the so-called “data controller” and is responsible for the protection and the processing of your Personal Data.
We are a company that offers consumer insights to our clients to help them understand how consumers or decision-makers within businesses perceive for example a certain brand, product, or services. We do this by conducting research where we ask the participants of our studies (you, for example) how they think and feel about a certain brand, product, or service. We analyze this information and report these results to our clients.
We have different ways of conducting research to obtain consumer insights. For example, we may conduct quantitative research where we send a survey which consumers can complete online, or we may conduct qualitative research where we set up an interview with the participants. The different studies that we conduct (we call them “Solutions”) can be generally categorized into three main categories:
Category 1: Online surveys
We obtain consumer insights by conducting an online survey which is sent to the participants via a link and leads participants to our online survey environment where they answer various questions. You will only receive an email asking you to participate in our online survey if you have signed up for this. You may have signed up via one of our Partners, e.g. our panelist vendors or our clients (also see the section “Our Partners”).
Category 2: Live interviews and product testing surveys
We also obtain consumer insights by selecting participants for a follow-up study such as live interviews and/or product testing. This may happen after you have participated in one of our online surveys and have indicated that you are willing to participate in such a follow-up study, or if you have informed one of our clients that you are willing to participate. We select participants based on the answers provided in the online survey. When you participate in a follow-up study, we may ask you to share a video or photo of you using the product. We may also ask you whether you agree that we record the interview. We may share these videos or photos with our clients.
Category 3: Targeted online surveys
Some of our studies focus on individuals who have encountered certain online ad campaigns. For example, when visiting your favorite website (which has run a certain ad), you may get a pop-up including a link to a survey and asking you to participate in that survey. Alternatively, if you have enabled and accepted cookies and you participate in one of our online surveys (as per Category 1), we verify whether a certain cookie (relating to an ad run by one of our clients) has been placed on your device so that we can see whether you have encountered one of our clients’ ads and analyze the effect.
When you participate in one of our studies, we may collect, use, store, transfer and further process your Personal Data. In general, we only process information obtained directly from you when you participate in a survey or interview. The exception to this is when one of our clients provides us with your contact details in order for us to invite you to a particular study. While the precise information that we may collect depends on the type of study you participate in, we may process the categories of your Personal Data set out below.
The majority of the data we process is data that is provided by you, such as the answers you provided during a survey or interview, or data that we have been able to generate when you take part in a survey or interview, such as information about how long it took you to complete the survey. We process the following categories of such Personal Data:
Survey data: We process Survey data. This includes all the answers you provide to the questions included in the survey.
Survey data can be any information you provide to the questions included in the survey, either in an open field, or by selecting an answer. Survey data contains information on how you think and feel about a brand, product, or certain service. Depending on the specific questions we ask and the information you enter in the open fields, survey data may also include personal details such as your name, email address, or personal background and interests. The specific questions we ask you are dependent on the study we carry out and will vary per research project.
Technical data: When you participate in one of our surveys, we collect information about your device, device settings, and information on your behavior while completing the survey e.g., how long it takes you to answer certain questions and finishing the survey.
We use cookies and similar technologies to obtain technical information from your device. This information includes the type of device (mobile, tablet, computer), device IDs, geolocation data (based on your IP address), browser settings, and other data generated through applications and browsers. It furthermore includes information about how you navigate through the survey. This may include data on how long it takes you to complete each question as well as the entire survey. In some instances, we will also process information relating to your activity during a survey e.g., your mouse activity).
Specific personal identifiers: In all our studies we process your IP address and allocate a unique user ID to your survey input. Depending on the study, we may also process your email or home address (only if you provide this to us).
Depending on the specific study you participate in, we may also process personal data such as your email address or your home address in order to send you information about a product, send a product directly to your home address, and/or conduct an interview with you. We store this information in a database which is separate from the survey data and the technical data (mentioned above) and we will only use this information for the purpose of communicating with you or sending you the product. We will only ask this information if you have actively indicated that you are willing to participate in such a study (live interview of product testing survey). We give all our study participants a unique user ID. This used to inform our Partners whether or not you have correctly completed the survey. Your user ID is used for tracking user survey progress (e.g. if you stop halfway through a study and want to continue later) and anti-fraud measures.
Sensitive data: In some of our studies we may also process sensitive data.
Our studies may include questions related to e.g., your health, sexual preference, or family status. We may also ask questions about your financial status, certain personal preferences, or other information which may be considered sensitive. In such an event, you are always notified about this beforehand and we will always ask you for your explicit consent to process such data.
Personal data we receive from our Partners
Contact information: we may receive your email address or home address if you have signed up with one of our Partners and have agreed that your contact details are shared with us for the purposes of enrolling you in one of our surveys.
For certain research projects, we work together with our Partners to identify possible participants that we can invite for our study. We only receive information about you in case you signed up to participating in studies via one of those Partners. In that case, we may receive your contact information so we can invite you to participate in a survey, send you a sample product, or invite you for an interview (also see the section “Our Partners”). Alternatively, our Partner may send you an email inviting you to participate in our survey. We do not receive any other information from our partners other than your contact information.
Depending on the specific study you participate in, we process your Personal Data for different purposes, such as conducting a survey and providing your insights to our clients. Below we have explained these different purposes.
Analyzing answers to provide insights to our clients: If you have decided to take part in one of our surveys or interviews and provided answers, we store and analyze these answers to gain consumer insights for our clients.
Selecting participants for our follow-up studies: We may process your data to analyze the answers you provided to a survey to assess whether you are fitted to participate in one of our follow-up studies, such as live interviews and/or product testing.
Prevention of fraudulent behaviour: We process your data to prevent fraudulent activity of participants, such as duplication meaning that users take the same survey multiple times.
Analyzing answers to provide accurate insights: We analyse your data to ensure that the survey data are useful for and contribute to the research project involved. For instance, we analyse Technical data, such as completion time of the survey, to check if panellists have taken sufficient time to fill our surveys thoroughly. We also analyse survey data, such as answers to open ended questions, to remove incomplete or incomprehensible answers. By carrying out these checks, we ensure that we provide valid and accurate insight to our clients.
Generating reports for our clients: We process the answers you provided through a survey or interview so we can inform our clients about the outcome of a study and the consumers insights we have found based thereon. As a general rule, we do not share your Personal Data with any of our clients so your Personal Data will not be included in the report that is generated for a client. The only exception to this is if in the context of a specific study, we have informed you about this, and you have given your consent to do so.
Informing partners about panellists' participation: We process your data to determine if you have correctly completed a survey, so that we can inform our partners about this so that they can reward you for your participation.
Compliance with legal and regulatory obligations: We also process your data to comply with our requests you may submit related to your data subject rights, such as the right to access or the right to rectification or to comply with other legal regulatory obligations.
Improving survey experience: We process technical data such as your device settings to improve the survey experience, e.g. so that the lay-out of the survey can be adapted to the device so it is correctly shown.
Inviting participants for our study: If you have signed up for this via one of our clients, we use your email address to invite you to take part in one of our studies. This email includes the link to one of our surveys, which you can click on if you decide to participate.
We process your Personal Data for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, based on the following legal grounds:
Your consent: We process your Personal Data in the context of conducting our studies if you have provided your consent for such processing. If you are below the age of sixteen, your parent or guardian needs to provide us such consent.
Compliance with legal obligations to which we are subject: We process your Personal Data to comply with legal obligations, for example, in order to verify your age and, depending on the circumstances, subsequently obtaining parental consent. If you are below the age of sixteen, your parent or guardian needs to provide us such consent.
Legitimate interests: We may also process your Personal Data to the extent that the processing is necessary for our legitimate interests or those of third parties while applying appropriate safeguards that protect your privacy. For example, we have a legitimate interest to inform our Partners when you have correctly completed a survey so that they can reward you for your participation. In such case, we will only use your unique ID in our communication with our Partners. In addition, we have a legitimate interest to verify whether individuals are only taking a survey once with the same IP address.
With whom do we share your Personal Data?
Internally
We may share your Personal Data with our internal partners. For certain research projects, we are supported by other MetrixLab entities (internal partners) that are controlled by MetrixLab B.V. (The Netherlands) and which, based on our intra group agreements, ensure a data protection level equivalent to ours.
Click here for the list of MetrixLab entities.
Externally
We may also share your Personal Data externally with our external partners. We only share limited Personal Data and only when this is necessary to fulfil the purposes mentioned above and with a proper legal basis. In doing so, we may disclose your Personal Data to the following categories of recipients or allow the following categories of third parties to obtain your Personal Data:
Partners
Our clients: As a general rule, we do not share your Personal Data with any of our clients. The only exception to this is if, in the context of a specific study we have informed you about this and you have given your consent to do so.
IT partners: We may share your Personal Data with external service providers who perform services on our behalf, such as hosting and content delivery, data management, user notification and marketing, security (e.g. incident alerting and reporting and DDOS protection), IT consultancy, data visualization, virtual reality, forecasting, forum hosting and other IT services. Where we share your Personal Data with external service providers, we have appropriate agreements in place to ensure that your Personal Data is processed in compliance with applicable data protection laws.
Delivery couriers: For certain studies we ask you to test a product. In that case, we share your Personal Data (such as name and address) with one of our delivery partners, so that they are able to deliver the product to your preferred location, such as your home. Where we share your Personal Data with external delivery couriers, we have appropriate agreements in place to ensure that your Personal Data is processed in compliance with applicable data protection laws.
Panelist vendors: We exchange limited information with our panelist vendors. Our panelist vendor partners are parties that identify and invite possible participants for us. Generally we only share information with them on whether you have participated and correctly completed a study. If we encounter irregularities this may require that we share additional information, e.g. in case a question is not completed. Once you have participated in a study, we inform our vendor partners of this so they can reward you.
Other third parties
We may also share your Personal Data in certain cases when this is necessary for example a in response to lawful requests to public authorities, including law enforcement, government authorities, or courts, or in the event of any contemplated or actual reorganization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other disposition of all or any portion of our business or assets (including in any insolvency or similar proceedings).
We may use your data to create profiles based on which we can generate results for our clients. Generally, our studies are based on a target audience that is selected by our clients. For example, our client may be interested to learn what women aged 30-35 with short hair think about a certain shampoo. This profiling does not impact whether you can participate in any other future studies and is only done in order for us to provide (aggregated) information to our clients. It may however impact whether you can participate in a follow-up study. Based on the answers you provided and the profile we created you may or may not found to be eligible to participate in such a follow-up study.
Your data is not subject to any automated decision making (as defined in the GDPR).
In general, your Personal Data is stored on servers within the European Union (EU) / the European Economic Area (EEA). However, your Personal Data may also be stored and shared outside the EU/EEA. In that case, we make sure appropriate safeguards are in place to protect your Personal Data such as an adequacy decision confirming that the third country ensures an adequate level of protection, or the conclusion of the EU standard contractual clauses.
We have implemented appropriate technical and organizational security measures designed to protect your Personal Data against accidental, unlawful, or unauthorized destruction, loss, alteration, access, disclosure, or use. We update and test our security standards on an ongoing basis. In addition, we take reasonable steps to assure that third parties to whom we transfer your Personal Data provide sufficient protection of Personal Data.
We will retain your Personal Data for a specific period that is required to fulfil the purposes for which the Personal Data was collected or to fulfil our legal obligations. Afterwards, we will delete or anonymize your Personal Data.
The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) grants individuals certain rights. Whether you have a particular right depends on the circumstances of each case. Your rights may include the following:
Right to information about the processing of your Personal Data,
Right to rectify your Personal Data,
Right to erasure of your Personal Data,
Right to restrict the processing of your Personal Data,
Right to data portability,
Right to withdraw your consent, and the
Right to object to the processing of your Personal Data.
You can exercise these rights by sending a request to the contact details set out below, providing your name, your email address as well as a description of your request.
If you believe we have not complied with our obligations under applicable data protection laws and regulations, you can lodge a complaint with a competent data protection authority. Please find a list with all data protection authorities and their respective contact details, including the Dutch Data Protection Authority (the “Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens”), here.
If you have any queries about this Privacy Notice or how we use your Personal Data, please contact our Data Protection Officer via e-mail to privacy@metrixlab.com.
Our address is:
MetrixLab B.V.
Wilhelminakade 312
3072 AR Rotterdam, the Netherlands
We regularly review this Privacy Notice. When there is an important change that will have a relevant impact on the processing of your Personal Data, we will inform you by email if we have your email address. This Privacy Notice was last updated on:
| Version: | Last updated: |
|---|---|
| Version 1 | May 2022 |
Pursuant to the California Privacy Act (“CCPA”), MetrixLab provides these additional disclosures to the Privacy Notice to participants in our studies who are California residents (“consumers” or “you”).
Under the CCPA, “Personal Information” is information that identifies, relates to, or could reasonably be linked with a particular consumer or household. “Personal Information” does not include publicly available information from government records, deidentified or aggregated information, or information covered by certain sector-specific privacy laws.
In the chart below, we identify (1) the categories of Personal Information (as listed in the CCPA) that we plan to collect and use, and have collected and used within the preceding 12 months; and (2) the categories of third parties to which we have disclosed each category of Personal Information for our operational business purposes within the preceding 12 months.
| Category of Personal Information Collected | Disclosed to Which Categories of Third Parties for Operational Business Purposes |
|---|---|
| Identifiers, such as name, postal address, email address, online identifiers, or other similar identifiers. |
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| Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)), such as name, email address, and phone number. |
|
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Characteristics of protected classifications under California or federal law, such as gender, sexual orientation, and health-related
information. (See “Sensitive data” in our Privacy Notice above, for more detail) |
|
| Commercial information, such as history of products or services purchased, obtained or considered, or other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies. |
|
| Internet or other similar network activity, such as information on a consumer’s interaction with our online surveys. |
|
| Geolocation data, such as approximate geographical location derived from your IP address. |
|
| Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar information, such as when we may ask you to provide a video or photo of you using the product or when we record a live interview with you, with your permission. |
|
| Professional or employment-related information, such as data relating to professional and employment history, qualifications, or union membership. |
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| Education information, such as information about your educational attainments (this category is defined to exclude any publicly available personally identifiable information as defined in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (20 U.S.C. Section 1232g, 34 C.F.R. Part 99)) |
|
| Inferences drawn from other Personal Information to create a consumer’s profile reflecting personal characteristics and preferences, demographics, interests, behavioral patterns, psychological trends, predispositions, or behavior. |
|
We obtain these types of Personal Information from you, such as when you take part in a survey or interview. We also may receive Personal
Information from our internal partners, external partners that help identify possible participants that we can invite for our study, and our
clients.
We use the Personal Information for the purposes, and disclose it for our operational business purposes, as detailed in our Privacy
Notice above.
Under the CCPA, a business that “sells” Personal Information must allow California residents to opt out of such sales.
However, we do not sell and have not sold Personal Information in the last 12 months, as “sale” is defined in the CCPA. For example, and
without limiting the foregoing, we do not sell the Personal Information of minors under 16 years of age.
California residents may make the following types of requests under the CCPA:
You may request that we disclose the following information to you about our collection and use of your Personal Information over the past twelve (12) months: (1) the categories of Personal Information we collected about you; (2) the categories of sources from which we collected this Personal Information; (3) the categories of Personal Information that we have disclosed to third parties, (4) the categories of recipients to whom this information was disclosed; (5) the business or commercial purpose for disclosing Personal Information; and (6) the specific pieces of information we collected about you.
You may request that we delete Personal Information that we have collected about you. We may limit or deny your deletion request in certain cases, in accordance with exceptions specified in the CCPA.
To exercise your rights to know or delete as described above, please submit a request by either calling us toll free at 1-866-I-OPT-OUT (1-866-467-8688) and enter Service Code 1661# or by sending us an email at ml_privacy@metrixlab.com.
We will verify and respond to your request consistent with applicable law, taking into account the type and sensitivity of the Personal Information subject to the request. We may need to request additional Personal Information from you, such as email address, state of residency, or mailing address, in order to verify your identity and protect against fraudulent requests. If you make a Request to Delete, we may ask you to confirm your request before we delete your Personal Information.
To make a request as an authorized agent on behalf of a California resident, you may use the submission methods noted above. As part of our verification process, we may request that you provide, as applicable, proof concerning your status as an authorized agent, which also may include proof of your registration with the California Secretary of State to conduct business in California; and/or a power of attorney from the California resident pursuant to Probate Code sections 4121-4130.
If you are making a Request to Know or a Request to Delete on behalf of a California resident and have not provided us with a power of attorney from the resident pursuant to Probate Code sections 4121-4130, we may also require the resident to verify their own identity directly with us; or directly confirm with us that they provided you permission to submit the Request to Know or Request to Delete.
You have the right to be free from unlawful discriminatory treatment for exercising any of your CCPA rights.