Privacy Notice for Bovitz, Inc.

Forthright Consumer Research and Engagement

("Forthright Privacy Notice")

Thank you for your interest in Bovitz, Inc.'s Forthright ("Forthright") website and consumer research and engagement services (collectively, the "Services"). Forthright values and is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Notice provides information about how we collect, use, and share ("collectively, "process") your personal data and about your privacy rights when you use the Services. Personal data means any information that can identify or be linked to you. It does not include data where identifying information has been removed, such as data that is aggregated, anonymized or de-identified. This Privacy Notice is part of and incorporated into our Terms of Service. [insert link to Terms of Service].

You can quickly read about specific topics in this Privacy Notice by clicking on the links under the "Table of Contents" that follow the "Summary of Key Points" immediately below. Please note that the Key Points touch on only some aspects of our processing activities. We strongly encourage you to review the entire Privacy Notice, so you have a full understanding of what is happening with your personal data. If you do not agree with our practices, please do not use our website or join our panel.

If you do not understand something or have questions, please contact us at [email protected].

Summary of Key Points

What personal data do we process?

We process your personal data when you use our website to learn about consumer research and engagement projects ("Projects") or if you contact us. We process personal data you give us, as well as personal data collected through cookies and web requests and from third-party public sources.

If you join our Forthright panel, we will also process your personal data in connection with maintaining the panel to support the Projects. We typically act as a processor for our clients who engage us to process your personal data on their behalf for their Projects ("Client Projects") that you have agreed to participate in through your panel membership, but sometimes we also process your personal data for our own Projects ("Forthright Projects"). If you participate in a Forthright Project, we may provide you with an additional privacy notice that describes different or additional ways that we process your personal data for that Forthright Project.

As a panel member, you also may have opportunities to participate in independent Projects that are sponsored by third parties who are not our clients (Third-party Projects"). This Privacy Notice does not apply to the privacy policies and practices of our clients with respect to their Client Projects or to the privacy policies and practices of sponsors of Third-party Projects. They have independent obligations regarding your personal data and are responsible for their own policies and practices and for providing their own privacy notices in connection with their Projects.

The Services are not intended for use by anyone who is under 16 years old and therefore anyone who is under 16 may not use our Services or provide us with personal data.

Do we process any sensitive personal data?

Yes. We process sensitive personal data you provide us either as part of your panel membership account or when you respond to questions for a Project.

Do we receive any personal data from third parties?

Yes. We process personal data from publicly available sources as part of our security and fraud prevention measures.

Why do we process your personal data?

We process your personal data to improve your experience on our website, to communicate with you, to manage your panel membership and your rewards and to facilitate your participation in Projects and sweepstakes, if applicable. We also process your personal data for security and fraud prevention, for business operations and business transactions, and to comply with law. We may also process your personal data for other purposes with your consent.

Do we share personal data?

Yes. We may share personal data in certain situations and with third parties for the purposes outlined in this Privacy Notice.

How do we protect your personal data?

We have reasonable and appropriate organizational and technical policies and procedures in place to protect your personal data. However, no information technology or electronic transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. This means that we cannot promise or guarantee protection from cybercriminals or other unauthorized third parties who may be able to improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your personal data.

How long do we keep your personal data?

We will keep your personal data only as directed by the client for Client Projects, or for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, contractual, compliance or reporting requirements of our own or of the client in connection with a Client Project.

What are your rights?

Depending on where you reside, the application of the law to the processing of your personal data, and the privacy rights requirements of applicable privacy law, you may have certain rights regarding your personal data. These rights may include, for example, the right to access, correct or delete personal data.

How do you exercise your rights?

The easiest way to exercise your rights is by contacting us at [email protected]. We will review and act upon your request in accordance with applicable law, or we may refer you to the relevant client responsible for responding to your request.

Table of Contents

1. What This Privacy Notice Covers

Forthright has different roles when it comes to processing your personal data. Sometimes it acts as a data controller and other times it acts as a data processor. This Privacy Notice applies when Forthright acts as a data controller of your personal data. When we are the data controller, we are responsible for deciding how your personal data may be processed. We are the controller when we collect personal data through our first-party website cookies or when you contact us and provide us with personal data; when we process your personal data to set up and manage your panel membership; when we give you opportunities to participate in Projects; when we manage rewards/sweepstakes offers; and when we process your personal data for Forthright Projects. If you participate in a Forthright Project, we may provide you with an additional privacy notice that describes different or additional ways that we process your personal data for that Forthright Project.

We also act as a processor for our clients, meaning that we process personal data on their behalf for Client Projects. Clients are data controllers of their Client Projects.

As a panel member, you also may have opportunities to participate in independent Third-party Projects sponsored by third parties where we do not act either as a controller or as a processor. The sponsors are data controllers of their Third-party Projects. This Privacy Notice does not apply to the privacy policies and practices of our clients or sponsors of Third-party Projects. They have independent obligations as the controller of your personal data and are responsible for their own policies and practices and for providing their own privacy notices in connection with their Projects.

2. No Processing of Personal Data of Children Under 16 Years Old

Forthright permits only individuals who are 16 and older to maintain an account and be a member of our panel. We accordingly do not allow processing of, nor intend to process, personal data of individuals who are under 16. If you are under 16, you may not use this website, become a member of Forthright or provide us with any personal data. If you are aware of any person under 16 who has provided us with personal data, please contact us immediately at [email protected].

3. What Happens If You Don't Provide Personal Data

If you want to set up an account and become a member of our panel you will need to share personal data necessary to set up and manage your account and membership. If you do create an account, you have the right to refuse to participate in any Project and to refuse to answer any questions in a Project, without needing to provide a reason. Your participation is completely voluntary. However, if you don't want to provide personal data that is necessary for the Project, you won't be able to participate. Additionally, if any rewards or giveaways are associated with the Project, and you do not complete the Project or answer all the questions, you may not be eligible for the rewards or giveaways.

4. What Personal Data We Process

We process personal data that you provide to us when you communicate with us or sign up for an account. We also process personal data collected in connection with a Project you choose to participate in or personal data that we receive about you from other sources, as described in this Privacy Notice.

The types of personal data that we collect for Projects cover a broad range of topics and will vary according to the reasons for the specific Project.

We process the following types of personal data:

When you use our website or communicate with us--

Any personal data you voluntarily share in your communications with us and technical data collected through cookies and web requests such as browser type and IP address. See our Cookie Policy for more information.

When you sign up for a Forthright membership account--

  • Name, home address, and contact details such as telephone number and email address, and contact preferences;
  • Demographic data such as gender, biological sex, age (or age range), employment status, country and region/state of residence, and professional details such as job, areas of expertise, and professional experience;
  • Personal and household information on patterns, habits, and interests;
  • Technical data collected through cookies and web requests, such as browser type, device attributes and IP address. See our Cookie Policy for more information;
  • A Forthright internal panel identification number created, and assigned to you, by Forthright ("Panelist ID");
  • Payment and related details for processing rewards and giveaways, if applicable;
  • Fraud profile data linked to IP addresses and email addresses associated with member accounts.

When you participate in a Project--

  • Demographic data such as gender, biological sex, age (or age range), employment status, country and region/state of residence, and (for certain groups of respondents) professional details such as job title, areas of expertise, and professional experience;
  • If relevant to the objective of the Project, "special category" (or "sensitive") data such as ethnicity, race, sexual orientation/sex life, political views and affiliations, health data, union membership religious or philosophical beliefs;
  • Personal views and opinions on products, markets, brands and other commercial matters, and on public policy and socio-economic issues, as well as personal and household information on patterns, habits, and interests;
  • Technical data collected through cookies and web requests, such as browser type, device attributes and IP address, and survey start and stop times, if surveys are completed electronically. See our Cookie Policy for more information;
  • A unique identification number created, and assigned to you, by Forthright when you access a Project invitation that we have made available to you ("Respondent ID");
  • Fraud profile data linked to IP addresses and email addresses associated with member accounts.

5. Special Category (Or Sensitive) Personal Data

In some cases, as noted above, we will process "special category" or "sensitive" personal data, such as ethnicity, health information, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation, for a specific Project consistent with this Privacy Notice. This personal data may be collected to analyze Project responses in connection with these special categories, but only where the analysis is relevant to the objectives of the study.

We do not sell sensitive personal data to third parties but do receive payment from (i) clients for our services that involve the processing of personal data (including sensitive personal data) for Client Projects and (ii) third parties in connection with Third-party Projects you access and complete. While we do not dictate the content of Client Projects or Third-party Projects, these Projects could potentially involve questions that concern sensitive personal data.

6. How We Collect Your Personal Data

We collect your personal data from the following sources:

  • You
  • Your devices using cookies and technical information received in web requests. See our Cookie Policy for more information.
  • Service providers who may review publicly available information about you for fraud and compliance checks to help preserve the integrity of our services and panel.

For some Projects, we may engage a delivery partner ("Delivery Partner") who may act as our service provider by handling Project participant identification and recruitment, collection and analysis of responses, and dissemination of rewards and giveaways (if applicable). In these cases, the Delivery Partner may contact you to invite you to participate in the Project and provide you with information regarding the Project.

Some Projects are a collaboration between us and our Delivery Partners. Where we conduct the Project in collaboration with a Delivery Partner (whether on behalf of a client or on our own behalf for our own Projects), either we or the Delivery Partner may conduct the identification, recruitment, data collection, data analysis, and respondent reimbursement or dissemination of rewards and giveaways (if applicable). Both we and the Delivery Partner will maintain the personal data pertinent to our respective responsibilities in the Project.

Your personal data may be collected in various formats, including online surveys, apps or other digital tools, email surveys, paper-based surveys, recorded telephone interviews, recorded (video or audio) face-to-face interviews, and other formats. The collection could take place online, at your place of work or home, in our offices or in a neutral facility.

7. Why We Process Your Personal Data

We process your personal data to facilitate your use of our website and to set up and manage your Forthright member account.

We also process your personal data for specific Projects, as described further below.

  • We (or our service providers or Delivery Partners) maintain your personal data to request your participation in a Project; to communicate with you about the Project; and to process rewards and giveways, if applicable.
  • We use your demographic information to ensure you meet the market research enrollment criteria or to determine if there are differences in responses from different types of respondents.
  • We analyze and evaluate your responses to Project questions to fulfill Project purposes, such as to understand needs, preferences, opinions or experience regarding a product, service, public policy or socio-economic issue, or to better understand trends, public policy and socio-economic issues, future opportunities in a market, or to monitor market performance.

Additionally, we process your personal data for the following purposes:

  • as required by law including, but not limited to, complying with a subpoena or other legal process, regulatory requirement, judicial proceeding, or court order served on us, or to comply with government reporting obligations; and
  • asserting legal claims and defenses in legal disputes and to address contractual obligations;
  • when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to detect, prevent, or respond to fraud or violations of law; for corporate audits; to investigate or respond to a complaint or security threat; and connection with other bonafide business administrative, IT, logistical, and compliance activities; and
  • in connection with the negotiation or completion of a merger, acquisition, partnership, business reorganization, debt financing, insolvency, bankruptcy, receivership, sale of all or a portion of our assets, or other similar business transaction;
  • to create de-identified, anonymized or aggregate data. This type of data is not considered personal data and may be used and shared for various purposes in our discretion, in accordance with applicable law.

8. How We Share Your Personal Data

We permit only personnel who need to process personal data based on their role in the Project to access it, including our information technology and other support personnel. We will share personal data with service providers and other authorized third parties as minimally and reasonably necessary in connection with their legitimate roles for the purposes described in this Privacy Notice, including with sponsors of Third-party Projects that you choose to access. We may also share your personal data with a successor entity upon a merger, consolidation or other corporate reorganization or with the purchaser of all or a portion of our assets, or pursuant to a financing arrangement.

We may use third-party service providers to support Projects and our business operations, such as hosting online surveys; providing audio, video or other technical support, or data analysis services; providing IT hosting and services support; sending SMS/text, email and other communications on our behalf; and for fraud prevention. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and permit them to process your personal data only for specified purposes in accordance with our instructions. We take appropriate steps to ensure that our service providers respect the security of your personal data and treat it in accordance with the law.

For Client Projects, we generally consolidate your Project responses with those of other participants and report the results to our clients in summary form. In some cases, however, we may report individual participant level responses, including demographic data associated with you, but we provide only a Respondent and/or Panelist ID to the client instead of your name. We will provide your name or other direct identifiers (such as email address) to the client only if you have given your specific consent in advance. With your specific consent, we may also share certain potentially identifiable formats (such as video or audio recordings) with the sponsoring client.

9. How We Protect Your Personal Data

We have reasonable and appropriate organizational and technical policies and procedures in place to protect your personal data. However, no information technology or electronic transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. This means that we cannot promise or guarantee protection from cybercriminals or other unauthorized third parties who may be able to improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your personal data.

10. How Long We Keep Your Personal Data

We will keep your personal data only as directed by the client when we process your personal data for Client Projects and otherwise for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, contractual, compliance or reporting requirements of our own or of the client who sponsored the Client Project.

11. Your Rights Concerning Your Personal Data

Under certain circumstances, depending on where you reside, the application of the law to the processing of your personal data, and the privacy rights requirements of applicable privacy law, you may have certain rights regarding your personal data. You may have the right to:

  • Request access to your personal data. This enables you to receive information about or a copy of the personal data that is being processed.
  • Request correction of your personal data. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data corrected.
  • Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask to delete or remove personal data where there is not a lawful reason for continuing to process it.
  • Request data portability (transfer) of your personal data to another party.
  • Request that we do not sell personal data we have collected or will collect about you in the future.
  • Request that we limit the use or disclosure of your sensitive personal data.
  • Withdraw consent where we are relying on consent to lawfully process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent.

Under the California Shine the Light Act, if you reside in California, you also have the right in some cases to receive the categories of personal data disclosed to third parties for their direct marketing purposes and the identity of those third parties; however, we do not provide your personal data to third parties for their direct marketing purposes.

Note that these rights may not apply in all cases and could be subject to limitations. Where our client has the legal obligation to address these rights, we may need to direct you to the client to facilitate your request or we may assist the client in addressing your request. If you wish to exercise your rights, please contact us in writing using the contact details provided at the end of this Privacy Notice.

12. Notice of Fees and Processing for Rewards and Giveaways (Financial Incentives)

We do not sell personal data to third parties, but do receive payment from (i) clients for our services that involve the processing of personal data for Client Projects and (ii) third parties in connection with Third-party Projects that you access and complete.

We do not maintain a price or service differential in connection with your participation in our panel or Projects, but do offer rewards and giveaway incentives.

Panel members receive certain rewards and are automatically entered into giveaways for completing certain actions, such as completing surveys and other engagement activities in connection with a Project, as described in the Forthright Terms of Service [insert link]. If you withdraw your consent to process your personal data where consent is required to process your personal data, or request deletion of your personal data, you may forfeit any unused rewards and giveaway opportunities. You also will not receive any future rewards and giveaways because we need to be able to process your personal data to give you the rewards and giveaways.

The categories of personal data processed in connection with rewards and giveaways are:

  • Name, home address, and contact details such as telephone number and email address;
  • Technical data collected through cookies and web requests [insert link to cookies policy], such as browser type and IP address;
  • Your Panelist ID;
  • Your Respondent ID(s);
  • Projects completed;
  • Fraud profile data linked to IP addresses and email address.

13. Notice Regarding De-Identified Information

If we receive de-identified information from a third party that is derived from personal data about an individual, we take reasonable steps to ensure that the information cannot be associated with the individual or that individual's household.

We commit to maintain and use the information in de-identified form and not attempt to re-identify the information, consistent with our contractual and legal obligations.

15. Do Not Track

Do Not Track ("DNT") is a privacy preference that you can set in your web browser. When you turn on DNT, the browser sends a message to websites requesting that they do not track you. We do not currently respond to these signals.

16. Changes to This Privacy Notice

We may revise this Privacy Notice from time to time. If we decide to change this Privacy Notice, we will post the revised Privacy Notice on our website. If changes materially affect your rights under this Privacy Notice, we may send the updated Privacy Notice to you and either seek your consent or give you the right to opt out of our use of your personal data in accordance with the revised Privacy Notice and applicable law, if required. Our privacy practices will be based on the Privacy Notice in effect at the time the personal data is processed.

17. Contact Details

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice or how we handle your personal data, including any requests to exercise your other rights, please contact us using the information below.

Email address: [email protected]

Postal address:
3110 Pennsylvania Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Telephone number: 818.806.0800

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