Third Party Panel Privacy Notice

LAST UPDATED: October 31, 2024

SurveyMonkey uses third party trusted partners (“Panel Providers”) to source individuals who are willing to complete surveys (“Panelists”) so that we can then deliver surveys from SurveyMonkey Customers (“SurveyMonkey Customers” or “Customers”) to those Panelists.

This Third Party Privacy Notice (“Notice”) applies to you as a Panelist if you complete a survey through one of our Panel Providers for a SurveyMonkey Customer.

If you complete a survey from a SurveyMonkey Customer and provide personal data, that Customer is the controller/business responsible for collecting and processing your personal data in compliance with data protection law, and SurveyMonkey acts as the processor/service provider. We also refer to SurveyMonkey Customers as the survey “Creator” in this Notice.

The most likely scenario is that you have signed up to take surveys through a third party Panel Provider in return for some type of incentive. We partner with Panel Providers who source Panelists like you to take surveys for our Creators. We do not get your personal contact information or your name from our Panel Providers. They facilitate us (or the Creator) forwarding surveys to you to take.

The Panel Provider who forwards you to a survey to complete will also be responsible for protecting your personal data and will likely have its own privacy notice which you should consult.

We provide our Panel Provider with a profile of the type of Panelist our Customers wish to use for a particular survey. This may include requirements such as (on a non-exhaustive basis) Panelists of a particular gender, age or age range, income bracket or location. If you respond to a particular survey, we will know that you have (or that it is likely you have) the characteristics or match the details listed in the Panelist profile. We do not actively seek to re-identify you through use of this demographic data and so our intent is that this does not constitute personal data.

We collect your survey response data which may directly identify you (if you share personal data in your answers) or which, when used with other information which we hold about you, may make it possible to identify you. For more details of how we treat survey responses generally, see our main Privacy Notice. We do not actively seek to identify you through your responses or use your responses in conjunction with demographic data.

We receive data from the device you use to access surveys, such as your operating system version, device manufacturer and model, carrier (i.e., mobile provider), system locale. We may also store any information collected by the core SDK, like device name (can be personalized by device owner) and user agent string.

We also collect data through the use of cookies. Please see our cookies notice for more information

We may use personal data or other non-identifying information to:

We also may use techniques like machine learning on your survey responses for improving and enhancing our services, determining their quality and compliance with the relevant terms of service between SurveyMonkey and Panel Providers so that SurveyMonkey can maintain consistent and reliable Panelists.

Your survey responses will be shared with the Creator of the survey that requested the survey. While in limited cases the Creators may be able to identify you based on your responses and your IP address, generally we prohibit these parties from: (i) asking survey questions which elicit responses with your name, email address and contact information; (ii) contacting you for marketing or any other purpose (unless you have voluntarily agreed to this); or (iii) from disclosing your identity to other third parties. In limited circumstances, we permit the Creator to ask you for additional information (name, email address and contact information) which you may give voluntarily, to allow you to further participate in research with that Creator outside our platform. If the Creator asks you for information other than name, email or contact information please contact us, as we do not permit the collection of additional data.

The information which we collect about you will be shared with other companies in the SurveyMonkey group from time to time.

We may publish our analysis of survey responses and the results of our research. Such publications will not contain your personal data.

We will process your personal data in order to fulfill our contracts with Creators and Panel Providers.

We will process your personal data to provide you with surveys which it appears you are interested in receiving based on your previous survey-taking activities and the profile we have developed for you as a result of this usage history.

We also have a legitimate commercial interest to use your personal data in order to administer the survey and to improve both the content and frequency of future surveys and how these surveys are presented to you.

In the event of a corporate transaction involving the SurveyMonkey group (or any part of the SurveyMonkey group) such as a merger or sale of assets, we may share your personal data with a prospective purchaser.

We may disclose your personal data to comply with laws applicable to us or to respond to legal process or lawful requests, including from law enforcement and government agencies.

In rare events, we may disclose your personal data where we believe in good faith that access or disclosure is necessary to protect the personal safety or vital interests of SurveyMonkey employees, customers or the public.

To the extent we independently keep any data about you which we collected from you as a respondent to surveys sent from our service, we will retain that data to continue to provide our services to you. To the extent that your survey responses are stored in one of our Customer accounts, that data is retained for as long as our Customer’s account remains active or until our Customer has deleted those survey responses. Where an account is inactive for 3 or more years we take steps to close those accounts and delete any data contained in them.

Your personal data may be stored and processed in the United States, Australia or any other country where the SurveyMonkey group or its service providers maintain facilities. We enter into standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission with our international group companies to ensure the safe transfer of your personal data to include the US. For more information, please see our EU Data Transfer and Subprocessor Statement.

If SurveyMonkey is your controller and collects personal data that we can use to uniquely identify you, you have certain data subject rights as discussed below. For rights and choices specific to US consumers, please refer to our Region Specific Privacy Notice. Please note we will take reasonable steps to verify your identity and the authenticity of your request as described in that Notice.

If a SurveyMonkey Customer is your controller, please reach out to them directly. If you are having difficulties finding this Creator or if you have any other questions after reading this Privacy Notice, you can contact us through our support team and we will try our best to help you. 

If you have not provided any personal data, please reach out to the third party Panel Provider with questions about your Data Subject rights.

You can find out what kind of personal data we hold about you and what we do with that information. You can also get a copy of this information.

You can have us update or correct any inaccurate personal data which we hold about you.

Receive a copy of the information which you have provided to us in a form which makes it easy for you to give this information to a different organization.

You have a right to stop us from using your personal data in certain cases, including if you believe that the personal data we hold about you is incorrect or our use of your information is unlawful. If you exercise this right, we will store your personal data and will not carry out any active processing unless your issue is resolved.

Where we rely on our legitimate business interests to use your personal data, you have a right to object to this use and to have your personal data deleted. We may disagree with any objection you raise but we will stop processing your personal data until we sort out the issue with you.

In certain circumstances, you may also have your personal data deleted, for example if you exercise your right to object (see above) and we do not have any overriding reason to process your personal data or if we no longer require your personal information for the purposes set out in this notice.

For Panelists in Europe, if you are not satisfied with any response you receive from us or have an issue with the way we handle your personal data, you can make a complaint to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland. You can contact this office by emailing info@dataprotection.ie.

For Panelists in the US or elsewhere please contact our support team here.

We may occasionally update this Notice to reflect Customer feedback and changes in its business or to comply with applicable law and regulations. When we make such an update, we will revise the “last updated” date at the top of this privacy notice. If there are material changes to this Notice concerning how we will handle your personal data, we will notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes before they take effect or by directly sending you a notification.

For general SurveyMonkey privacy issues, or to submit feedback or ask us questions about our privacy practices and this Notice, please contact our Data Protection Officer here or by mail at Attn: Data Protection Officer, Ella House, Suite 40.4, 40 Merrion Square East, Dublin 2, D02 NP96, Ireland.