Privacy
OpinionBar is an initiative from the online research agency MetrixLab. MetrixLab (OpinionBar) collects information for the sole purpose of market research. Market research is the gathering and interpreting of details from consumers, companies, and society, used by the decision-making bodies to make better and more efficient decisions with regard to marketing, product development, and society. Your participation in the OpinionBar surveys helps companies to develop and improve websites, products, and services, whilst keeping your anonymity intact. We aim to offer our participants privacy and security at the highest level, above the legal standards. Below, you can read what information we gather and what it is used for.
We perform our research with the greatest respect for your privacy. Under no circumstance will MetrixLab give, sell, rent out, or trade recognizable information about our members to a third party or share this information with a third party.
- How does OpinionBar treat my data?
- To whom does this privacy statement apply?
- What type of information do we collect from participants?
- How will we use this information?
- What type of security do we use to protect the information?
- How can you access your personal details?
- How can you terminate your participation?
- How do we inform you about changes in the privacy policy?
- Organizations and regulations we conform to.
1 How does OpinionBar treat my data?
The answers you give in our surveys, researches, and on our website will be treated as anonymous, unless, and only unless, you have given your specific consent to the contrary. In the relatively few instances where we ask you for permission to pass data on in a form, which allows you to be personally identified, we will ensure that the information will be used only for the purposes stated. We will not send you unsolicited commercial mail, nor pass on your email addresses to others for this purpose. However, virtually all surveys are done anonymously: your name, address, and email details are never passed onto other companies or persons. This applies to all participants in our surveys and researches and is also a legal requirement for each survey.
2 To whom does this privacy statement apply?
This privacy policy applies to all persons who participate or have participated in researches by OpinionBar/MetrixLab: 1. Participants who have registered through the OpinionBar.com sign-up form. 2. Participants who are recruited by an invitation on third-party websites. 3. Participants who are invited through a CRM database delivered by the client. 4. Participants who have been recruited through people’s choice awards organized by OpinionBar. 5. Participants who have participated in surveys in any other form than listed above.
3 What type of information do we collect from participants?
Information such as your name, address, ip-address, email address, payment information, telephone number, and date of birth is classified as "recognizable personal information" because this information can be used to indirectly or directly identify you. This information is protected by virtue of our privacy policy. We will never give, sell, rent out, or trade recognizable personal information to a third party or share this information with a third party.
Questions and assignments
Internet users can volunteer to participate in surveys that are set up by OpinionBar/MetrixLab. During these surveys, the participants will be asked to participate in online assignments and/or to answer a number of questions. The answers and outcomes of these surveys and researches will be used solely for research purposes and are shared with our client, our internal research group, and our partners and are always published as a group and never as an individual response to a question. Individual results are never shared, traded, lent, or sold to third parties (e.g. “Men prefer product A” instead of “User X prefers product A”).
Other information we may ask our users to provide
We can ask users to provide personal information at any time. For example, this may occur when you take part in a prize draw, competition or promotional activity sponsored by the MetrixLab research agency and/or when you report a problem with one of our services. Any information gathered at such occasions will be in accordance with our policy, unless it is explicitly stated otherwise when the information is gathered. Many of these prize draws, competitions or promotional activities are subject to certain conditions of the service agreements and these agreements can be different from the conditions of this policy. It is therefore important that you read and understand these agreements, since the nature of these offers may require different privacy conditions, which may overrule this Privacy Policy.
External links
Our surveys often contain links to other sites. OpinionBar is not responsible for the protection of privacy in the practice or contents of such websites. However, we do require of each affiliated company that they read our privacy declaration and that they properly look after the interests of our members. If we receive any complaints from members against our websites/clients about unlawful, or alleged unlawful use of cookies, or about other activities in practice, we will take these into serious consideration.
Tags
OpinionBar/MetrixLab will, from time to time, use tags on websites to enable branding research on behalf of our clients. This tag will drop a cookie, which enables us to measure the effect of advertising campaigns and the difference between groups that have been exposed to the ad and groups that have not been exposed to the ad.
3.1 Information collected from OpinionBar Subscribers
Recognizable personal information
We collect your personal information to register you as a member of the OpinionBar panel. Each new panel member fills in a registration form, which requests recognizable personal information (such as your name and postal code) to enable us to make payments. In addition, it asks for unique identification details (such as your email address and password) to identify members for the OpinionBar panel.
Profile Information
In addition to the recognizable personal information, each panel member needs to answer a number of questions about his or her profile. Profile information consists of demographic and social-economical information (married or not, employee or self-employed, level of education, gender, age, computer use, or type of Internet connection and details about any interests). Profile information is used to assign each panel member to a target group (e.g. home owners) and to also allow us to determine in advance which types of surveys it is best to send you.
Information about the use of a surveyed website
In case of website surveys, it often occurs that the OpinionBar panel member is assigned a task to carry out whilst surveying a website. Whilst the panel member is carrying out the task, the OpinionBar software automatically registers the panel member's behaviour on the surveyed web site. We DO NOT collect information about your internet use, stored cookies, bookmarks, chat logs, download history, or any other personal information on your computer. Together with the other research results, the anonymous user information is used solely for research purposes and is shared with our customers, our internal research group, and our partners. This information consists of: Your IP address, which browser you are using, the speed of your connection, and the URL of the surveyed web page you are visiting.
Information about the configuration of your computer
Whilst you are using the OpinionBar software, we automatically register information about your computer. This anonymous user information is used solely for research purposes and is shared with our clients, our internal research group, and our partners. This information consists of: Which operating system you are using, the speed of your processor, the amount of memory in your computer, and the resolution of the monitor you are using for OpinionBar.
We sometimes monitor details about connections, for example, your browser type, the size of your screen, and whether you use cookies. We use this information to analyse how different configurations respond to different products and services. You can close the OpinionBar program at any time and thus stop OpinionBar's gathering of information.
Newsletter
OpinionBar sends out a newsletter with important information regarding participation with OpinionBar to all members. The newsletter is low volume (bi-monthly) and covers information about payments, participation in surveys, site updates, and other OpinionBar related information. It is not possible to unsubscribe from the newsletter because it contains vital information for participation with OpinionBar.
4. How will we use this information?
Surveys are always anonymous: your name, address, and email details are never passed on to other companies or persons. This applies to the participants in our researches and surveys and is legally required for each survey.
Information that can be traced back to a particular person will never be used for non-research purposes such as direct marketing, setting up address lists, credit rating, the collection of money, or other marketing activities related to those individual respondents.
We perform our research with the greatest respect for your privacy. Under no circumstance will MetrixLab give, sell, rent out, or trade recognizable personal information about our members to a third party or share this information with a third party.
5. What type of security do we use to protect the information?
The OpinionBar website is protected against loss, misuse, and editing of the information we manage. This includes measures such as firewalls, data scrambling, SSL encryption (RC4 128 Bits), application proxies, monitoring technology, and adaptive analysis of network traffic to trace any abuse of our network and its data contents. The OpinionBar website and software communicate with our database using the SSL-protocol, thus ensuring third parties are not able to read or edit any data.
6. How can you access your personal details?
You can always visit our website and change your own profile. Please Note: You will be asked to give your email address and password if you wish to view, change, or replace your profile.
7. How can you terminate your participation?
You can terminate your membership via the Unsubscribe page (www.opinionbar.com/unsubscribe.aspx). You will be sent an email to confirm the cancellation of your account for security purposes.
8. How do we inform you about changes in the privacy policy?
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will publish these changes on our Homepage or send our users an email with the changes to ensure our users are always aware of which information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we may publish this information.
9. Organizations and regulations we conform to.
ESOMAR
All research performed on the Internet is subject to the rules and initiatives of the leading ICC/ESOMAR International Code of Marketing and Social Research Practice (plus the European Guideline for Data Protection and any other relevant national or international legislation).
Market research must always respect the rights of the respondents and other Internet users. It must be executed in a way that is acceptable to all those involved and to the general public and it must comply with national and international self regulation. Researchers must avoid taking actions that may damage the reputation of or affect the trust people have in Internet research.
Visit www.esomar.org for more information on ESOMAR and the ICC/ESOMAR International Code of Marketing and Social Research Practice.
European Guideline for Data Protection
The Guideline of the European Parliament and the EU Council with regard to the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and the free circulation thereof.
Contact us
Please contact us when you have questions about our privacy statment. You can write us at the address below, or send us a message through our help desk
MetrixLab
Wilhelminakade 312
3072 AR Rotterdam
The Netherlands
