Overview.
In this policy we explain how we will treat the personal information you share with our company, Polysthetica Ltd. We manage and process personal data for the purposes of recruiting participants for research for our clients.
Once you sign up to receive emails about research opportunities your personal data will be used to determine which emails we send to you. We will send emails to you until you decide that you want to either unsubscribe from them, or close your account when we will delete your data. We may periodically ask if you want to continue us to continue to process your data.
We may also send you text messages with links to our website opportunities.
At any time you may object or ask us to restrict processing of your personal data. Simply email contact@polysthetica.com.
By using our website and agreeing to this policy, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy.
Our lawful grounds for processing personal data is performance of our contract with you once you have signed up. This is based on the fact that all of our data is freely given during the sign up process, in return for Polysthetica Ltd then sending relevant email opportunities to take part in paid research. At sign up, we clarify what the information you provide is going to be used for, how long it will be stored for and who we share it with. This information can also be found below.
Collecting personal information when taking part in research.
We may collect, store and use the following kinds of personal information:
- Information about your computer and use of our website, including your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views and website navigation paths. This is collected in Google Analytics and is anonymised. We use Google Analytics to see how many people visit and use our web site.
- Information that you provide to us when registering and completing your profile on our website. This information may include first name, surname, date of birth, email address, gender, relationship status, number of children, address, mobile number, nationality, ethnicity and employment details including salary band. If we are going to process details about your ethnicity, any disability and/or your sexual orientation we will ask for your explicit consent to do so in our questionnaires/surveys.
- Information that you share with us when using the services on our website. This includes all the personal information and or attributes you provide when applying to paid research opportunities on our website or via any emails you receive from us.
- When you complete any questionnaire or surveys and when we subsequently call you via telephone to confirm this information. This will vary and be specific to the paid research opportunity you apply to. If you apply to take part in research by completing our questionnaires or surveys you agree to be called by one of our colleagues and that you are not part of the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).
- Information that you provide to us for the purpose of subscribing to our email notifications and/or newsletters including your name and email address.
- Information that you provide to us when using the services on our website, or that is generated in the course of the use of those services.
- Information that you post to our website for publication on the internet (including your name and photos).
- Information contained in or relating to any communication that you send to us through an email or our website, including the metadata associated with the communication.
- Any other personal information that you choose to send to us through email or our website.
We may also collect, store and use information provided by you and belonging to a third party, including the first name, surname and email address of anyone you refer to us.
Before you disclose to us any personal details of another person, you must obtain that person’s consent to both the disclosure and the use of that personal information in accordance with this policy.
Using personal information for research.
Personal information submitted to us through our website will be used for the purposes specified in this policy or across the website in accordance with current Data Protection Legislation.
We may use your personal information to:
- manage our website and business
- update our website or personalise your online experience (including the emails you receive). We process your data manually to match our opportunities to those participants best suited in our opinion to the paid research projects with our clients. This will include searching and filtering your data on our database according to the personal data you have input onto your profile.
- enable your use of the services available on our website
- contact you via email, telephone, text message, social media to send you emails outlining relevant paid market research opportunities and/or our newsletters. If you apply and complete one of our questionnaires or surveys and we believe you fit the criteria specified by our clients we will need to call you on the telephone to confirm the information provided. If you apply to take part in research by completing our questionnaires you agree to be called by one of our project managers and that you are not part of the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).
- send you payments, incentives, vouchers or prizes. Payments may require us to collect your bank sort code and account numbers so that we can pay BACs payments directly into your bank. We will ask you for your bank details ONLY if you are confirmed to take part in research and we will never ask for bank details over the phone. Any bank details we do collect via email are deleted from our email system after payment and from our accounts system within 24 hours of payment. We record the date we delete your details on our project management system.
- send you non-marketing commercial communications or email notifications that you have specifically requested
- provide third-parties with statistical information about our users, but only if those third parties are not able to identify the individual users
- deal with enquiries and complaints made by or about you relating to our website and database. This will also include requests from you for us to stop processing any data we hold for you, or to send you a copy of your data in a secure digital format so that you may transfer it to a new IT environment of your choice. If you do require us to stop processing any of your personal data or if you require a secure copy of the data we hold for you please email contact@polysthetica.com, when we will action your request within 30 days.
- prevent fraud and keep our website and database secure;
- verify compliance with the terms and conditions that are published on and govern the use of our website.
If you submit personal information or images for publication on our website, we will publish and otherwise use that information in accordance with the licence you grant to us.
We will not supply your personal information to any third-party, other than to our clients and solely for the purpose of paid research you have applied for. We ask our clients to delete any personal information we send them about you within 7 days of the date of the research testing dates. This is also in our terms and conditions with our clients. Wherever possible we will anonymise any personal data we send to our clients, and only send them personal data if required to do so for the purposes of their research project and only if you have given us permission to do so during our screener phone call to you.
Disclosing personal information for research purposes.
We may disclose your personal information to any of our employees for the purposes set out in this policy.
We may disclose your personal information:
- to the extent that we are required to do so by law.
- in connection with any ongoing or prospective legal proceedings
- in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights and prevent fraud.
- to the purchaser (or prospective purchaser) of any business or asset that we are (or are contemplating) selling.
- to any person who we reasonably believe may apply to a court or other competent authority for disclosure of that personal information where, in our reasonable opinion, such court or authority would be reasonably likely to order disclosure of that personal information.
Unless one of the previous reasons applies, we will not provide your personal information to third parties.
International data transfers for research purposes.
Information that we collect may be transferred, processed and stored by clients whose headquarters are based in other countries. Some of these countries may not have data protection laws equivalent to those in force in the European Economic Area. In these cases, Polysthetica Ltd will set up a contract with these clients that safeguard any personal data, using standard data protection contract clauses. This contract will enable periodic audit of security measures put in place and documented as such in the contract.
Retaining personal data.
This section sets out our data retention policies and procedure, which are designed to help ensure that we comply with our legal obligations in relation to the retention and deletion of personal information.
Personal information that we process for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes. Specifically, any data regarding the number of applications you make and the number of times you take part in research is kept on our database for up to 2 years.
Any information we have collected on questionnaires, surveys or when we call you is kept for up to 2 years. We would only access this information if we feel we can get you involved in similar projects during that period. After 2 years, all of this information is deleted from our systems.
Your profile information is kept for as long as you want to be included on our database. You can unsubscribe from our emails by selecting the unsubscribe option in one of our emails. Data related to specific clients’ job opportunities will be deleted following completion of specific work according to specific client contracts, if we are provided with data from or on behalf of our clients (e.g. specific client lists). Data may be retained if we need to keep it for ongoing work, but no longer than 2 years.
We will retain information and documents (including electronic documents) containing personal data:
- to the extent that we are required to do so by law.
- if we believe that the documents may be relevant to any ongoing or prospective legal proceeding.
- in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk).
Security of personal information.
We will take reasonable technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or modification of your personal information.
We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure password-protected and encrypted system.
Amendments.
We may update this policy from time to time by publishing a new version on our website.
You should check this page occasionally to ensure you are happy with any changes to this policy.
We may notify you of changes to this policy by email.
Your rights.
You may instruct us to provide you with any personal information we hold about you; provision of such information will be subject to the supply of appropriate evidence of your identity. Please contact contact@polysthetica.com should you wish to do this.
We may withhold personal information that you request to the extent permitted by law.
You may instruct us at any time not to process your personal information for marketing purposes. Any data we have already processed will be kept for up to 2 years.
You can unsubscribe from our newsletters and emails. There will always be an unsubscribe link in our emails and newsletters.
Third-party websites.
Our website includes links to, and details of, third party websites.
We have no control over, and are not responsible for, the privacy policies and practices of third parties.
Updating information.
Please contact contact@polysthetica.com should you wish to do this.
Cookies.
Our website polysthetica.com uses cookies.
A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.
Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.
Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.
Cookies can be used by web servers to identity and track users as they navigate different pages on a website and identify users returning to a website.
Polysthetica Ltd use third-party cookies on our website to compile long-term records of the users’ browsing histories and provide a smooth online experience to our users.
Most browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome allow you to block or refuse to accept cookies. Check your browser settings if you wish to do so.
Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites.
If you block cookies, you will not be able to use all the features on our website.
You can also choose to delete cookies already stored on your computer. This option should be made available by your browser.
Deleting cookies will have a negative impact on the usability of many websites.
Please see our Cookies Policy for more details.