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Did you know?

63% of people consider a company's privacy and security history before using their products or services.

SurveyMonkey Contribute Privacy Notice

Last Updated: December 5, 2024

Versions:

This privacy notice describes privacy practices which are specific to https://contribute.surveymonkey.com ("SMC") and should be read in conjunction with our main Privacy Notice and Region Specific Privacy Notice (for US residents). Where there is a conflict, this privacy notice takes precedence. SurveyMonkey Contribute is used by people who are interested in taking surveys on SMC ("Panelists") and people who conduct the surveys taken by Panelists ("Panel Buyers"). This privacy notice describes how SurveyMonkey collects, uses, shares and secures the personal information you provide. It also describes your choices regarding use, access and correction of your personal information. We refer to surveys conducted through SMC as "Contribute surveys," and these are treated differently to surveys conducted through our main website. SMC is a service provided by SurveyMonkey Inc. and its affiliates.

This page is split into two sections: one for Panelists, and one for Panel Buyers.

PRIVACY FOR PANELISTS

What information does SurveyMonkey collect from Panelists?

Below is a list of information that we collect from you and about you when you use SMC. Information regarding the categories of information we may collect about you or your use of SMC can be found in our main Privacy Notice and Region Specific Privacy Notice (for US residents). The sections afterward describe what we do with this information.

Information we receive directly from you

Registration information: You are required to have a SurveyMonkey account to use SMC as a Panelist. To register for a SurveyMonkey account, we need to collect account information from you (your username, password, and email address).
Profile data: To allow Panel Buyers to target Panelists with specific characteristics when conducting Contribute surveys, we build profiles of Panelists. We build up your profile by asking you to answer questions about yourself, and from your responses to Contribute surveys that Panel Buyers conduct. We refer to all of this information as "profile data." When compiling profile data, we may collect your demographic information (e.g. year of birth, gender, employment status, the industry in which you work, ethnicity, religion, income level, education level, country of residence, zip code, political views, home ownership status, marital status, number of children, etc.), interests (e.g. what activities you participate in and how often you participate), preferences (e.g. what sort of food or drinks you like) and opinions.
Contribute survey responses: We receive your survey responses that you submit to Panel Buyers.

Provision of information is voluntary: You can always choose not to provide any personal information that we ask you for. However, your ability to use SMC may be limited if you do not give information that we require to provide you with our services. For example, if you do not provide profile data, you may be unable to participate in surveys or your chances of being chosen for a survey may be reduced.

You may be asked to provide sensitive information as part of your profile data. When providing answers to sensitive questions (e.g. personal information specifying medical or health conditions, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions or affiliations, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership or information related to one’s sexual preferences), you explicitly consent to the collection of that data. You can opt-out at any time by not answering the question, or choosing “prefer not to say”, which will erase any previous answer to that question. We will treat sensitive information (e.g. personal information specifying medical or health conditions, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions or affiliations, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership or information related to one’s sexual preferences) with particular care. If we intend to disclose such information to a third party or use it for a purpose other than as described in this Contribute Privacy Notice, we will obtain your specific permission to do so prior to any such use or disclosure.

Information we receive about you from other sources

Usage data: We receive usage data about you whenever you interact with SMC. This may include which webpages you visit, what you click on, and which Contribute surveys you complete. Additionally, like most websites today, our web servers keep log files that record data each time a device accesses those servers. The log files may include Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data to analyze trends in the aggregate and administer the site.
Device data: We receive data from the device you use to access SMC, such as your IP address and your browser type. We may also infer your geographic location based on your IP address.

How does SurveyMonkey use your information?

Generally, we use your information in connection with providing SMC services to you and to Panel Buyers. More specifically, we use it:

To provide you with relevant surveys: We use your profile data to target Contribute surveys to you and send you emails inviting you to take those surveys. For example, if the profile data you provide shows you are a 30 year old female living in New York, we may send you a survey where a Panel Buyer is interested in the opinions of any person living in New York aged between 25-35 years.
To improve SMC: We internally use the data we receive to improve the quality of our service. For example, we use and analyze usage data (such as page view data and response rates) to make the surveys we send more relevant to you, to improve the SMC user interface and to maintain a consistent and reliable user experience. We use profile data to help us to improve the quality of our panel.
To provide Panel Buyers with more targeting criteria: We may use the responses you give to Contribute surveys to provide other Panel Buyers with more ways to reach the target demographic they want. However, we do not give your actual survey responses to Panel Buyers other than the buyer actually conducting the survey. For example, if you disclose in a Contribute survey that your stock portfolio has 21 stocks, we might allow Panel Buyers to target Panelists based on their stock portfolio size. If a Panel Buyer wanted to target people with stock portfolios with more than 10 stocks and you responded to the survey, the Panel Buyer would know that you have more than 10 stocks in your portfolio. But, we would not share with them the more specific information that you have 21 stocks.
To verify compliance: We may inspect and use techniques like machine learning on your Contribute survey responses to ensure your compliance with the SMC Terms of Use and determine quality responses so we have a consistent and reliable panel.

Who we disclose your information to and what information we share

We recognize that because you give us and allow us to use your profile data and other personal information, we are entrusted with safeguarding the privacy of that information. Your continuing trust is very important to us, so the only time we will disclose or share that information with a third party is where we have:

(a) given you notice (e.g. in this privacy notice);
(b) obtained your consent (e.g. based on your account's opt-in/opt-out settings); or
(c) anonymized the information, so that you cannot reasonably be identified by it.

Our main Privacy Notice and Region Specific Privacy Notice describe the categories of personal information we may disclose for business purposes or as required by applicable law. In particular, we disclose your:

Survey responses to Panel Buyers: We host Contribute surveys for Panel Buyers, but they are really the primary curator of survey data. Anything you expressly disclose in your Contribute surveys will, naturally, be provided to them. Panel Buyers may have their own privacy notices which apply to surveys that they create using our services. These policies detail how Panel Buyers handle your information and if one is provided, we encourage you to read it.
Basic demographics to Panel Buyers: When you respond to a survey, we automatically provide the Panel Buyer with a specific set of information about you that we compile from your profile data for the Panel Buyer. We refer to this set of information as "basic demographics". It includes your:
- Region (as produced using zip code)
- Device
- Income

The sharing of your basic demographics happens behind the scenes and is not visible in the survey questions themselves. We do not include your name or contact details as part of the basic demographics.

Other demographics to Panel Buyers (indirectly): Although we do not disclose more than basic demographics to Panel Buyers, because they target their Contribute surveys to specific demographics, they will be able to infer that you belong to this demographic simply because they will only receive responses from that demographic. When selecting the characteristics of desired survey respondents, a Panel Buyer may also receive an indication of how many Panelists match the Panel Buyer's particular demographic requirements for a given survey.
Anonymized Panelist statistics for informational purposes: We may disclose aggregated, or otherwise anonymized, statistics about our Panelists. For example, we may post on our blog or include in our marketing emails interesting statistics like what the average response rate for Contribute surveys is, or what percentage of Panelists are male. Where data has been de-identified, we commit to preventing future re-identification.
Your information to Service providers. We may provide your personal information to companies that provide services to help us with our business activities such as offering customer service. These companies are authorized to use your personal information only as necessary to provide these services to us.
Your information if there’s a change in business ownership or structure. We may transfer your information, including all profile data, account details, other personal information, and responses to surveys, to a successor entity upon a merger, consolidation or other corporate reorganization in which SurveyMonkey participates or to a purchaser of all or substantially all of SurveyMonkey's assets related to SMC. In this event, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our website, of any change in ownership, uses of your personal information, and choices you may have regarding your personal information. We may also disclose your personal information to any other third party with your prior consent.
Disclosures required by law: We may disclose your information as required or permitted by law, including for purposes of national security and law enforcement, or when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, subpoena, or other legal process served on us.

Are your Contribute survey responses anonymous?

To Panel Buyers, the answer is maybe. Of course, if you disclose your name in a Contribute survey, you won't be anonymous. But even if you don't, the information you do provide may be identifying, such as when combined with other information. Remember that Panel Buyers are also supplied with your basic demographics. To help preserve your privacy, we require a Panel Buyer's targeting criteria to match a certain minimum number of Panelists before we allow the Contribute survey to be conducted. Please report it to us if you receive a survey that asks you for your email or personal information as we prohibit our Panel Buyers from collecting this information.
To SurveyMonkey, the answer is no. We link your responses back to your username but never fear, we do not abuse or exploit this. We do this to provide Panel Buyers with additional targeting criteria (see "How does SurveyMonkey use your information?" above). We do not disclose this link to the Panel Buyer.

Your choices and controls

You can always refuse to answer a survey: Your participation in any Contribute survey is entirely voluntary and you may opt out of responding at any time.
You can update your information: If you want to change your profile data, contact our support team and we will be happy to help. As a Panelist, you may access and correct certain personal information that SurveyMonkey holds about you by visiting your My Account page from the SMC website.
Some panelists and other individuals (including those whose information we receive under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, the UK Extension, and the Swiss-U.S. DPF Principles) have certain legal rights to obtain information of whether we hold personal information about them, to access personal information we hold about them, and to obtain its correction, update, amendment or deletion in appropriate circumstances. For some information, these rights may be exercised through the My Account page mentioned above, and in all cases, requests to exercise these rights may be directed to our customer support team. These rights are subject to some exceptions, such as where giving you access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of other individuals. We will respond to your request to exercise these rights within a reasonable time and, where required by law or where we deem it otherwise appropriate and practicable to do so, we will honor your request.
Information related to data collected by Panel Buyers: If you are a Panelist that has chosen to provide your contact information to one of our Panel Buyers and would no longer like to be contacted by one of our Panel Buyers that use our service or who seeks access, or who seeks to correct, amend, or delete inaccurate information, please contact the Panel Buyer (the data controller) that you interact with directly. Transfers to subsequent third parties are covered by the service agreements with our Panel Buyers.
You can leave SMC and have your SMC information deleted: If you no longer wish to use SMC, you can request to leave by contacting our support team. We will respond to your request within a reasonable timeframe by removing SMC from your SurveyMonkey account and permanently deleting your profile data. You will stop receiving invitations to take Contribute surveys. Any personal information submitted in the past to Contribute surveys will not be deleted - you will need to contact the Panel Buyers who created those surveys to access that data. Note that leaving SMC will not delete your main SurveyMonkey account.
Data retention: We may retain your information (including the information we process on behalf of our Panel Buyers) for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements.
Rights and choices under local laws: Your local laws may extend additional rights and choices to you. Please review the “Your rights” section of our main Privacy Notice for further details.

Security

The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once it is received. If you have any questions about the security of your personal information, you can contact our support team.

Notice of Financial Incentives

SurveyMonkey provides certain rewards or incentives for Panelists to provide responses to surveys. You can opt into the rewards or incentives by registering for a SurveyMonkey account and answering Contribute surveys using your account credentials. Your participation is completely voluntary, and you have a right to withdraw from Contribute at any time. If you decide you don’t want to participate, you can refrain from submitting responses to Contribute surveys, or you can close your SurveyMonkey account.

The specific reward or incentive offered, if any, is made available to you when you provide responses to available Contribute surveys - including completing your profile survey - and may vary based on the length of the Contribute survey and other factors identified below. The monetary value of the reward or incentive is a reasonable approximation of the monetary value of your survey responses to us. We have arrived at this estimate based on consideration of multiple factors, including the following: (1) revenue generated by SurveyMonkey in providing aggregated and/or anonymized responses and insights to customers; (2) expenses incurred by SurveyMonkey in operating Contribute; and (3) our reasonable assessment of revenue we may generate as a result of SurveyMonkey providing aggregated and/or anonymized responses and insights to customers.

PRIVACY FOR PANEL BUYERS

What information does SurveyMonkey collect from Panel Buyers?

Below is a list of information that we collect from you and about you when you create and conduct a Contribute survey. Information regarding the categories of information we may collect about you or your use of SMC can be found in our main Privacy Notice. The sections afterward describe what we do with this information.

Information we collect directly from you
- Registration information: You are required to have a SurveyMonkey account to use SMC as a Panel Buyer. To register for a SurveyMonkey account, we need to collect account information from you (your username, password, and email address).
Information we receive about you from other sources
- Device data: We receive data from the device you use to access the website, such as your IP address and your browser type. We may also infer your geographic location based on your IP address.
Contribute surveys
- Survey data: We store your Contribute survey data (questions and responses) on your behalf.

How does SurveyMonkey use your information?

Generally, we use your information in connection with providing SMC services to you and to Panelists. More specifically, we use it:

To improve SMC: We internally use the data we receive to improve the quality of our service. For example, we use and analyze usage data (such as page view data and response rates) to make the surveys we send more relevant to Panelists, to improve the SMC user interface and to maintain a consistent and reliable user experience. We also may use techniques like machine learning on your survey responses for ensuring your compliance with the SMC Terms of Use and detecting their quality to maintain reliable Panelists.

To provide Panel Buyers with more targeting criteria: We may use your Contribute survey data to give you and other Panel Buyers more ways to reach the target demographic you want in your future Contribute surveys. For example, if you ask "How high can you jump?" we may give other Panel Buyers the ability to target Panelists who can jump more than, say, 2 feet high (based on the responses your survey respondents gave). Other Panel Buyers have no access to your survey data - they will not be able to determine that the question originated from your Contribute survey. We don't use your survey responses for any other purpose.

Who we disclose your information to and what information we share

While you allow us to use your survey data and other information in accordance with this privacy notice, you always own all of your survey data and we regard it as information which is confidential to you. Your continuing trust is very important to us, so the only time we will disclose or share that information to a third party is where we have:

(a) given you notice (e.g. in this privacy notice);
(b) obtained your consent (e.g. based on your account's opt-in/opt-out settings);
(c) anonymized the information, so that you cannot reasonably be identified by it; or
(d) fulfilled a Panelist’s data access request to include providing their responses to them.

Our main Privacy Notice describes the categories of personal information we may disclose for business purposes or as required by applicable law. In particular, we disclose your:

Survey questions to other Panel Buyers: To provide Panel Buyers with additional targeting criteria. While Panel Buyers may be able to see your individual questions, they will not be able to determine that they originated from your Contribute survey.
Survey responses to no one: Except for a narrow set of reasons set out in the main SurveyMonkey Privacy Notice (e.g. if we are compelled by law).
Anonymized Contribute survey information for informational purposes: We may disclose aggregated, or otherwise anonymized, information about Contribute surveys. For example, we may post on our blog or otherwise include in our marketing emails interesting statistics like how many surveys were completed in a month, or what the average length of a Contribute survey was. Where data has been de-identified, we commit to preventing future re-identification.
Disclosures due to change in business ownership or structure: We may transfer your information, including all profile data, account details, other personal information, and responses to surveys, to a successor entity upon a merger, consolidation or other corporate reorganization in which SurveyMonkey participates or to a purchaser of all or substantially all of SurveyMonkey's assets related to SMC. In this event, you will be notified via email and/or a prominent notice on our website, of any change in ownership, uses of your personal information, and choices you may have regarding your personal information. We may also disclose your personal information to any other third party with your prior consent.
Disclosures required by law: We may disclose your information as required or permitted by law, including for purposes of national security and law enforcement, or when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, subpoena, or other legal process served on us.

Your choices and controls

You can delete your survey data: Just like any regular SurveyMonkey survey, you have control over your Contribute surveys and can delete them at any time through our website.
EU Users: Other individuals (including Panelists and those whose information we receive under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, the UK Extension, and the Swiss-U.S. DPF Principles) have certain legal rights to obtain information of whether we hold personal information about them, to access personal information we hold about them, and to obtain its correction, update, amendment or deletion in appropriate circumstances. For some information, these rights may be exercised through your account management page, and in all cases, requests to exercise these rights may be directed to our customer support team. These rights are subject to some exceptions, such as where giving you access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of other individuals. We will respond to your request to exercise these rights within a reasonable time and, where required by law or where we deem it otherwise appropriate and practicable to do so, we will honor your request.
Rights and choices under local laws: Your local laws may extend additional rights and choices to you. Please review the “Your rights” section of our main Privacy Notice for further details.

Your opt-out preferences

When you register for an account, we will use your name and email address to send periodic emails to you of both promotional and transactional in nature. Out of respect for your privacy, you may choose to stop receiving promotional emails by following the unsubscribe instructions included in these emails or you can contact our support team.
We will also send you service related email announcements on rare occasions when it is necessary to do so. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance, we might send you an email. You do not have an option to opt out of these emails, which are not promotional in nature.

Cookies / Tracking Technologies

SurveyMonkey and its partners use cookies or similar technologies to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movements around the website, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. You can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level, but if you choose to disable cookies, it may limit your use of certain features or functions on our website or service.
Behavioral Targeting. We may ask advertising networks and exchanges to display ads promoting our services on other websites. We may ask them to deliver those ads based on the presence of a cookie, but in doing so will not share any other personal information with the advertiser. Our advertising network partners may use cookies and page tags or web beacons to collect certain information about your activities on this and other websites to provide you with targeted advertising based upon your interests. If you do not wish to have this information used for the purpose of serving you such targeted ads, you may opt-out at http://preferences-mgr.truste.com/. If you opt out, please be advised that you may continue to receive generic ads.

OTHER THINGS TO NOTE

Where your information is processed and stored: Your personal information may be stored and processed in the United States, Australia or any other country where SurveyMonkey or its service providers maintain facilities. You can view a list of these locations in our EU Data Transfer Statement. We enter into standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission with our international group companies to ensure the transfer of your personal information to the US complies with data protection legislation (you can contact us for further information). Our parent company, SurveyMonkey Inc. has self-certified its compliance under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, the UK Extension and the Swiss-U.S. DPF Principles. To learn more about the Data Privacy Framework Program, and to view our certification, please visit https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov/.
Changes to this privacy notice: We may modify this privacy notice at any time, but if we do so, we will notify you by publishing the changes on this website. If we determine the changes are material, we will provide you with additional, prominent notice as is appropriate under the circumstance, such as via email.
Children under 18: SMC is not intended for, and may not be used by children under the age of 18. Children under 18 are not permitted to register with SurveyMonkey or to be a Panelist.
Online tracking: We currently do not process or comply with any web browser's "do not track" signal or other similar mechanism that indicates a request to disable online tracking of individual users who visit the SurveyMonkey Contribute website or use SurveyMonkey Contribute.

For questions regarding our privacy notice or practices, contact SurveyMonkey electronically at privacy@surveymonkey.com. You may also contact us by mail at 910 Park Pl, Suite 300, San Mateo, CA 94403, USA if you are located in the United States, or at Ella House, Suite 40.4, 40 Merrion Square East, Dublin 2, D02 NP96, Ireland if you are located elsewhere.