Rights for Participants

If you’ve answered a survey, who is responsible for protecting that data? This article will explain all you need to know about your data rights as a survey participant.

As our Privacy Policy states, if you’ve submitted your personal data through a survey, the creator of that survey is responsible for this data. Sogolytics only processes this data on the survey creator’s behalf.
This means that if you want to exercise any of your GDPR rights, you should contact the person or organization by which they received the survey. If this isn’t possible, we will aim to ensure that participants receive the correct response from the survey originator if there is an issue contacting them.

Here’s the relevant clause from our Privacy policy:
Participant Information:
We receive Participant Information from both Customers and Survey Participants. You provide us with the email address, and sometimes the name, of each Participant. Before receiving such Information, we contractually require that you warranty that you have a pre-existing relationship with the Survey Participant and/or the Survey Participant’s permission to receive electronic messages. Survey Participants provide us with the Information requested by you, for example, their gender or zip code, as well as all answers to the survey questions. Customers are solely responsible for the content of the surveys and we do not control the theme or questions asked in any survey. In order to enhance survey response rates, we record: (I) if and when a Survey Participant has responded to a survey and (ii) if and when a Survey Participant has received a reminder. In addition, we receive any Information contained in any communications a Survey Participant makes directly with Sogolytics.

If you have sent personal information in a survey and want to exercise your data rights, we suggest you contact the person or organization that created the survey. If this is not possible or there is no response, please contact us and we will aim to resolve your issue right away. All you will need to share is the survey URL, so we can identify the survey and origination.

Disclaimer: Please be aware that this information is not to be construed as legal advice or representative of our interpretation of privacy laws, but instead is intended to help our customers understand our approach to GDPR in practical terms. If you are in doubt as to your legal obligations or require advice on any of the areas covered, we urge you to seek independent legal counsel.