Privacy Policy

Connected Research and Consulting, LLC Privacy Notice

Last Updated: July 12th, 2023

At Connected Research and Consulting, we place utmost importance on maintaining a culture of privacy for all who join our panel or participate in our research studies, as well as our clients and research sponsors. We promise to respect and protect your information and welcome an open dialogue regarding any questions you may have. Please call our toll-free number at 844-401-4400 or email us at [email protected] if you have questions or concerns about anything in this Privacy Notice.

This Privacy Notice governs our collection, use, sharing, and storage of personal information of (1) our clients and research sponsors, and (2) our research study participants, including our panel members (collectively, “respondents”).

By using any of our websites or applications, purchasing services from us, or otherwise participating in one of our research studies, you consent to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Notice.

Your Privacy Choices

As used in this Privacy Notice, the term “personal information” means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular individual or household.

We will only process your personal information in compliance with applicable law.

Please note that some of the personal information we collect may constitute “sensitive personal information” under applicable law. We will never use your sensitive personal information except for research purposes or otherwise to verify your identity or prevent fraud. For more information on how to opt out of the processing of your sensitive personal information, please click here: Your Privacy Choices.

Depending on your location, you may have certain special rights under the law of your home jurisdiction with respect to your personal information.

To access, correct, or request deletion of your personal information, or to request a copy of your personal information or opt out of the processing of your personal information, please contact us as provided above. Depending on your location, you may also have the right to appeal any decision we make regarding your personal information.

If you are a California resident, please also see our Privacy Statement for California Residents, which supplements this Privacy Notice.

What information do we collect from you? 

If you join our panel and/or participate in research with us, we may directly ask respondents for information such as:

  • Full Name
  • Email Address
  • Phone Number(s)
  • Date of birth
  • Fax Number
  • Postal Address, including Zip code
  • Company Name
  • Work Address
  • Professional Licensure
  • Medical History, Diagnoses and Prescriptions
  • Insurance information
  • Demographic information (age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, parental status, marital status, education, and professional credentials)
  • US only: Social Security Numbers and Taxpayer Identification Numbers (for tax reporting purposes)
  • Driver’s License Number
  • Passport Number

In these instances, you know what information we collect because you provide it to us directly.

By accessing our website or utilizing ours or our clients’ survey platform(s), we and/or our clients may also passively collect information such as:

  • IP Address
  • Geolocation
  • Browser/Device Data
  • Google Analytics to analyze web traffic including frequency of website visits and duration of visits

Every project is different regarding the criteria and information we may require to be considered for participation. Respondents are taken through a screening process during each study, where specific questions will be asked. Respondents may opt out at any point during the screening process and request that any information collected up to that point be deleted.

Depending on the study requirements, we may also collect your voice and image as part of our or our clients’ audio/video recording. If this is required for participation, we will explain this to you in the specific study consent form — including who will have access to such information — and you will be asked to consent for your information to be collected and processed via these methods as part of the recruitment process for the study.

Uses and legal basis for processing your personal information

The data collected above is used for the following purposes:

  • to contact respondents for relevant market research studies.
  • to contact our clients and research sponsors regarding our services.
  • to pay respondents for their participation in market research studies, as applicable.
  • to ensure respondents meet study criteria set forth by the research sponsor.
  • to provide services to our clients and to develop new products and services.
  • to verify the identity of respondents and protect the accuracy and integrity of our data. We do our best to be sure that respondents are who they say they are and have the correct qualifications to participate in a study.
  • for other internal purposes, such as tracking your participation in our studies and scheduling our market research interviews, and to manage and maintain our panel community.
  • as otherwise necessary to comply with our legal obligations, including without limitation tax reporting purposes.

In some instances we may receive your personal information from third parties such as IMS, Lead411 and InfoUSA or via publicly available sources.  We use such information for the purposes of market research recruitment campaigns and activities.

In other instances we may receive your personal information directly from our clients and/or the research sponsors.  We only use such information for the purposes of recruitment for the applicable client/research sponsor’s study.

We process personal information on the following legal bases:

  • with your consent.
  • to comply with our legal requirements.
  • to further our legitimate business interests. Any such processing in this case is conducted subject to appropriate measures to protect your fundamental rights and freedoms related to your personal information, and in any event will be subject to the restrictions provided in this Privacy Notice.

Who do we share your information with?

Our study results are generally presented to clients and/or research sponsors in aggregate, deidentified form. Please note however that in some cases, where you have given your consent, we may share your personal information with clients or research sponsors, or you may otherwise have the chance to share your personal information directly with such clients or sponsors. In any event, we will never share your information for direct marketing or sales purposes.

In order to fulfill our business duties to our respondents, our clients, and research sponsors, outside contracted parties may receive information as necessary to perform the function for which they are contracted. These include, but are not limited to, third parties that:

  • Perform routine security and maintenance on our virtual environment and servers, as well as troubleshoot issues
  • Help manage and/or operate our online survey platform
  • Our banking institution(s) that handle financial transactions and our online checking company used to pay respondents for their participation
  • Our online CRM tools used to store our respondent panel
  • Our online scheduling platform
  • Our email service and hosting providers
  • Our accounting firm (for book keeping and tax reporting purposes)

Otherwise, we may disclose personal information in the following circumstances:

  • when we are required or permitted by law or court orders to disclose such personal information
  • where disclosure is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against someone who may be violating their agreement with us or may be causing injury to or interference with the rights or property of another
  • in the event of a sale, merger, liquidation, dissolution, financing, or reorganization

 

How do we secure your personal information?

Internally, your information is stored in a secure database. We keep this for the purpose of recording past participation and contacting you for future studies and deploy reasonable technical and procedural safeguards to protect the security and privacy of your information. Please bear in mind, however, that no transmission over the Internet is 100% secure, and we cannot warrant the security of any information you provide to us.

No personal information is shared with clients and/or research sponsors without a respondent’s informed consent. In the rare event a client or research sponsor requests additional personal information about a respondent, the respondent will be contacted for consent to disclose any such information. Respondents have the right to deny or revoke consent at any point. Other vendors (named above in section “Who might we share your information with?”) may receive limited data in order to perform their specific business functions and such information will be subject to their security practices.

How long do we retain personal information?

  • We securely store personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfill the purposes for which we collect the data.
  • You may request to have your information reviewed, edited, or removed from our database at any time.
  • Information related to your account profile and any research related and adverse reporting data collected from the studies you participate in via our organization may be held up to 10 years and/or per our clients’ guidelines.
  • For more information on our retention guidelines, you can contact us at [email protected].

Respondent Acknowledgements

By joining our panel and/or participating in a market research study (whichever comes first) you acknowledge and agree as follows:

  • You acknowledge and agree that all ideas and concepts discussed in any of our market research studies are considered Confidential Information. You agree that you shall not use, disclose, or reproduce the Confidential Information or discuss the Confidential Information with anyone. You further agree that you will not photograph, copy, or record any of the Confidential Information. Any ideas, discoveries or inventions for new products or packaging, or other information relating to the concepts discussed which you develop as a result of your participation in this research during or after the research are the property of the Sponsor.
  • You acknowledge and agree that upon completion of your participation in a market research study, you will be compensated by Connected Research and Consulting, LLC for the amount disclosed in your original study invitation. By accepting such compensation, along with the value associated with the sharing of your opinions, you acknowledge and agree that it represents fair consideration for your participation in a research study.

Cookies and Digital Fingerprinting

We use cookies and similar technologies to collect website usage data and to operate our services. Cookies are required for most parts of our services such as taking surveys or signing on as a panel member. We use both session cookies and persistent cookies to better understand how you interact with our services, to monitor aggregate usage patterns, and to personalize and otherwise operate our services such as by providing account security, preventing fraud, and remembering your website preferences.

We may use digital fingerprinting technologies to assign a unique identifier (your computer/server’s IP address) to your computer to identify and track the computer. We use the unique identifier to assist our clients in ensuring the integrity of survey results. We may link or associate your unique identifier to you and any of your personal information. Any unique identifier linked to your personal information will be protected in accordance with this notice. 

Third-party Websites and Services

Our services may contain other links to external websites or other third-party services. These are provided for your convenience only, and we do not have control over the content or privacy and security practices and policies of such third parties or third-party sites. Any personal information you provide in such areas, and on such linked pages, is provided directly to that third party and is subject to that third party’s privacy policy. Please learn about the privacy and security practices and policies of external websites and third parties before providing them with personal information.

Policy for Minors

We never knowingly invite respondents under the age of 18 to market research studies and do not knowingly allow respondents under the age of 18 to sign up for our panel. By submitting a form to join our panel, you certify that you are over the age of 18 years old. In the event a market research study may involve subjects under the age of 18, parental or guardian consent must be received before any contact with a subject under 18 is made.

Do Not Track

Some browsers have a “do not track” feature that lets you tell websites you do not want to have your online activities tracked. Because these features are not yet uniform, we do not presently respond to “do not track” signals.

Changes and updates to this Privacy Notice

As our organization may change from time to time, this Privacy Notice may change as well. We reserve the right to amend the Privacy Notice at any time, for any reason, without notice to you, other than the posting of the amended Privacy Notice at this website. Please check our site frequently to see the current Privacy Notice that is in effect and any changes that may have been made to it.

International Transfers

We are headquartered in the United States. If you are accessing our services from outside of the U.S., please be aware that information collected through our services, including personal information, may be transferred to, processed, stored, and used in the U.S. and other jurisdictions. Your use of the services or provision of any information therein constitutes your consent to the transfer to and from, processing, usage, sharing, and storage of your information in the U.S. and other jurisdictions as set forth in this Privacy Notice.

Additional Rights for EU Respondents:

  • Restriction of Processing - You may restrict processing of your personal information for certain reasons, such as, for example if you consider your personal information collected by us to be inaccurate or you have objected to the processing and the existence of legitimate grounds for processing is still under consideration.
  • Supervisory Authority – You also have the right to complain to a supervisory authority in your jurisdiction.
  • Additional rights – Under certain circumstances, you may have the following additional rights:
    • Right of data portability (if processing is based on consent and automated means)
    • Right to withdraw consent at any time (if processing is based on consent)
    • Right to object to processing (if processing is based on legitimate interests)

Changes to this Notice

We reserve the right to amend this notice at our discretion and at any time. When we make changes to this notice, we will notify you by email or through a notice on our website’s homepage.

Contact Information

If you have any questions or comments about this notice, the ways in which we collect and use your personal information, your choices, and rights regarding such use, or wish to exercise your rights, please do not hesitate to contact us at:

Phone: 844-401-4400

Email: [email protected]

 

 

FOR CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS

This PRIVACY STATEMENT FOR CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS supplements the information contained in the Privacy Notice of Connected Research and Consulting, LLC.  We adopt this statement to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) and other California privacy laws.  Any terms defined in the CCPA have the same meaning when used in this statement. To exercise your rights as a California resident please contact us as provided in the “Contact Information” section above or as otherwise provided below.

Information which we collect

You can review the types of personal information which we collect in our Privacy Notice which precedes this statement, as well as in the chart below.

 

Category Examples Collected
A. Identifiers. A real name, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, Internet Protocol address, email address, Social Security number, Taxpayer Identification Number, Passport, Driver’s license, Professional license, or other similar identifiers. YES
B. Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)). A name, signature, Social Security number, physical characteristics or description, address, telephone number, education, employment, employment history, medical information or health insurance information. Some personal information included in this category may overlap with other categories. YES
C. Protected classification characteristics under California or federal law. Age (40 years or older), race, color, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, religion or creed, marital status, medical condition, physical or mental disability, sex (including gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy or childbirth and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, veteran, or military status. YES
F. Internet or other similar network activity. IP address, Device type, Browser type YES
G. Geolocation data. Physical location YES
H. Sensory data. Audio, visual, or similar information. YES
I. Professional or employment-related information. Occupation, employer information, professional licensure. YES

 

Disclosure of Personal Information for a Business Purpose

We may disclose your personal information to a third party for a business purpose. When we disclose personal information for a business purpose, we enter into 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.

In the preceding twelve (12) months, we have disclosed the following categories of personal information to the following parties for a business purpose:

  • Category A: Identifiers.
    • Disclosed to: Research agency clients; Pharmaceutical, Medical Device and Life Sciences research sponsors; research survey and video/telephone conference platform providers; scheduling platform; incentive distribution partner; online CRM platform provider; IT consulting company; accounting firm
  • Category B: Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)).
    • Disclosed to: Research agency clients; Pharmaceutical, Medical Device and Life Sciences research sponsors; research survey and video/telephone conference platform providers; scheduling platform; incentive distribution partner; online CRM platform provider; IT consulting company; accounting firm
  • Category C: Protected classification characteristics under California or federal law.
    • Disclosed to: Research agency clients; Pharmaceutical, Medical Device and Life Sciences research sponsors; research survey platform providers; online CRM platform provider; IT consulting company
  • Category H: Sensory data.
    • Disclosed to: Research agency clients; Pharmaceutical, Medical Device and Life Sciences research sponsors; video/telephone conference platform providers
  • Category I: Professional or employment-related information.
    • Disclosed to: Research agency clients; Pharmaceutical, Medical Device and Life Sciences research sponsors; research survey platform providers; online CRM platform provider; IT consulting company

Your Rights and Choices

Pursuant to the CCPA and subject to certain exceptions and limitations, California residents may contact us to exercise their rights with respect to certain personal information that we hold about them.

To the extent these rights may apply to you, they are described below.

Right to Know About Personal Information Collected, Disclosed, Shared or Sold

You have the right to request that we provide you with details about the personal information we collect, use, disclose and sell.

In connection with a request to know, you are entitled to receive the following:

  • The categories of your personal information that we have collected
  • The categories of sources from which that personal information was collected
  • The business/commercial purpose for the collection or selling
  • The categories of third parties with whom we share personal information
  • The specific pieces of personal information we has collected about you (subject to some exceptions)

Because we have disclosed or sold (as those words are defined in the CCPA) personal information to third parties, you are also entitled to receive:

  • The categories of personal information that we have sold or disclosed for a business purpose, and the parties to whom that information was sold or disclosed.

Please note also that we will not “share” your personal information for purposes of cross-context behavioral advertising, as that term is defined under CCPA.

Right to Request Deletion of Personal Information

You have the right to request deletion of the personal information we have collected about you (subject to some exceptions).  You can submit your request as described above, and we reserve the right to conduct the verification described below.

We may deny your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service providers to:

  • Complete the transaction for which we collected the personal information, provide a service that you requested, or take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship 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 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.

Right to Correct

You also have the right to correct any inaccurate personal information that we maintain about you.

Right to Non-Discrimination for the Exercise of a Consumer’s Privacy Rights

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights.

Right to Opt-Out of Sale of Personal Information and Limit Processing of Sensitive Personal Information

The term “sell” is broadly defined under CCPA. Its meaning includes “…renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, [and] transferring… for monetary or other valuable consideration.” While we never sell or share your personal information with our clients or others, there may be some limited circumstances (for example, if you consent to audio/video recording as part of a study) where our sharing of information may be considered a “sale” under CCPA.

You have the right to opt out of this “sale” of your personal information, as defined in CCPA.

You also have the right to limit our processing of your sensitive personal information.

For more information on how to exercise these rights, please click here: Your Privacy Choices. Please be advised, however, that if you exercise this right it may affect our ability to provide you with our services or to allow your participation in the panel.

Response Timing and Format  

We endeavor to respond to a verifiable request within 45 days of its receipt.  If we require more time (up to 90 days), we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing.

We will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your option.

Please note that any requested disclosures may only apply to the 12-month period preceding the request, depending on how difficult it is for us to retrieve the necessary information, and you are entitled to request disclosure regarding your personal information twice in any 12-month period.

The response we provide will also explain the reasons we cannot comply with a verifiable request, if applicable.

We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable 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.

Verification Process

Only you or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you authorize to act on your behalf may make a verifiable request related to your personal information.

As part of this process, we may ask to verify your identity. Your 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 authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you.  Making a verifiable request does not require you to create an account with us.  We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable request to verify your identity or authority to make the request.