Privacy Policy for MKOR’s Panel

How we use your information

MKOR Consulting SRL, commonly known as MKOR (“MKOR”, ”we” or “us”), is a company registered in the Romania under company number 38569292. This privacy policy explains how we use any personal information we collect about you (“Panellist”, ”you” or “your”), when you join our online panel (“Panel”), take part in surveys or receive messages from us.

1. What personal data does MKOR collect?

We collect information, when you voluntarily complete any of the surveys we invite you to participate in, or you provide feedback, comments or other information on our website, emails and Facebook page.

We may ask you to provide certain sensitive personal data, for example revealing your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership or data concerning health or sex life. You do not have to answer these questions and such questions will always include a “prefer not to answer” option. Responses to these questions will remain confidential unless you explicitly and freely consent to your responses to these questions, together with your personal information, being passed to research clients for further in-depth research analysis.

2. Why we collect data

The primary purpose is the conduct of market research. When you join our Panel, you enter into a contract with us, which is subject to this Privacy Policy as well as our Terms and Conditions.

In order to fulfil this contract by inviting you to surveys, we need to collect, process and profile information requested during the initial opt-in for our Panel or or that we collect in accordance with this Privacy Policy. This information will also be required to send you any rewards and to contact you concerning any surveys. This is also explained in more detail in our Terms and Conditions.

We then also collect information from you based upon your consent, in particular where you respond to any survey invitations we might be sending you or that you may otherwise voluntarily provide. Your responses to such surveys is at your choice. There might also be situations where we are seeking your further or even explicit consent where this might be appropriate or required.

3. How Will We Use the Information You Provide?

We will use the information you provide to:

  • Keep a record of all Panellists.
  • Send you invitations to participate in surveys that are relevant to you based on the information you provided in our surveys or as may be updated by you or us at a later stage;
  • Message your mobile phone number containing an invitation for one of our surveys;
  • Append existing personal information about you to your responses to any surveys you participate in, such as geographical location, ethnicity, occupation categories etc. for survey analysis of the responses and producing anonymous, statistical research results;
  • Enter you into any prize draws that you are eligible to take part in or, where invited to do so, have asked to be entered;
  • Only with your explicit consent, which might be sought in a specific survey and limited thereto, to pass your individual survey responses together with your personal information to the client who commissioned the survey. Where you have explicitly consented separately and prior to your information being provided to the client for this, the client may also use this information to contact you;
  • To create anonymous, statistical profiles of the Panel membership based on the information provided by Panellists;Send you by email newsletters, announcements and other communications as set out in the Terms and Conditions.
  • Where you agree to take part in a product test to arrange for such product to be sent to you.
  • Based on the information you provided, we might wish to invite other members of your household to participate in a survey. In case such household member is a child, please also see below at paragraph 4.

As part of our online advertising research and internet usage research studies, we may also:

  • Message or call your phone number to take part in surveys, focus groups and other kind of research. You can optout of this by sending an email to [email protected] with the title “Change panel preferences”

We may also send your information to our sub-contractors or affiliated companies who carry out some work on our behalf, control and responsibility, for data hosting or as described at paragraph 6. Some of these sub-contractors may be based outside the European Economic Area; however, they are required to abide by the same data privacy legal requirements and security arrangements as ourselves and will be subject to appropriate safeguards, a description of which can be obtained by contacting us as set out at paragraph 10.

We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that any personal data we process are accurate, adequate, relevant and not excessive, given the purpose for which they were obtained. We will not process personal data obtained for one purpose for any unconnected purpose unless you have consented to this.

We will NEVER use your information for any purpose other than research or as described in this policy. Other than in relation to this Panel (like participating in further surveys), we will not try to sell you anything.

We might use your personal information on other platforms (for example Facebook) in order to advertise our surveys and to create anonymous advertising profiles, trough custom audiences. Please note that this data is hashed and anonymized, as stated by Facebook. You can however opt out of Facebook ad tracking, see more info on this page.

For more information about our Panel, Panel membership or information related to your membership of our panels, please contact us by emailing [email protected].

4. Children

Based on the information you provided, we might wish to invite any children under 16 years of age you indicated are in your household to participate in a survey. In those cases, we will always require prior consent from either a parent or legal guardian, who are legally responsible for the child, before inviting such child to take part in the research.

5. Use of Cookies and similar code?

By joining our Panel and taking part in our online research, you agree to our use of cookies and similar technologies (“Cookies”) and the collection of information from your device you may use whilst taking part in our online research activities as outlined below.

Our Panel website and online surveys collect information using ‘cookies’ and functionally similar technologies. Cookies are small files stored on your computer. Specifically, in respect of cookies, further details of what cookies are can be found by visiting www.aboutcookies.org.

Essential Cookies

The essential cookies used in connection with this Panel are as follows:

 

Site/Domain/Host Cookie Name Purpose of cookie
mkor.ro studiu This is set to record the survey / surveys that you have accessed.
sursa Records how you’re reached the link for the survey.
subscriber_email This cookie records your encrypted email address for proper routing.
e_hash Used as a unique value for keeping the panelist ID.
referrer_email_hash Used to record who referred you for a certain survey.
Surveymonkey.com Own cookies Please see https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/legal/cookies/ for more info.

It is possible for you to delete ‘cookies’ or to prevent their use by adjusting the browser settings on your computer. However, if you do prevent our online surveys and Panellists’ website from using cookies, our surveys and Panellists’ website will not work properly and you will not be able to participate in this Panel.

Convenience Cookies

These cookies provide information regarding site usage and site preferences, providing you with a better user experience. You will be prompted to accept the usage of these cookies from your browser when entering the site. These cookies are not essential for survey participation.

Site/Domain/Host Cookie Name Purpose of cookie
Google.com _gid These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our registration page. The information is used to compile reports. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from, average time spent etc.
_ga
_gat
Consent These cookies are used to gather website statistics, and track conversion rates. They store the preferences and information of users each time they visit web pages containing a Google.com service
1P_JAR
NID This cookie is placed when the reCAPTCHA is verified. Also, this cookie contains a unique ID Google.com uses to remember your preferences and other information, such as your preferred language (e.g. English), how many search results you wish to have shown per page (e.g. 10 or 20), and whether or not you wish to have Google.com’s SafeSearch filter turned on.
Facebook.com fr Facebook.com tracks opted-out Facebook.com users with a cookie (fr) that is used for advertising purposes. Also it is used for tracking respondents activity. The respondent needs to provide their consent in order to place the cookie. This may require capturing information about your IP Address, operating system, screen display settings, and browser type. You can withdraw your consent to this at any time by deleting the specific cookies from this category (e.g. “fr” cookie) or to prevent their use by adjusting the browser settings on your computer.
c_user This cookie contains the user ID of the currently logged in user and allow us to control the “Follow us on Facebook.com” and “Like” buttons.
datr Allow us to control the “Follow us on Facebook.com” and “Like” buttons.
fbm_(digits) These cookies are set by Facebook.com for application integration and expires within one year. See here for more information on Facebook.com’s practices at https://www.Facebook.com.com/help/cookies/.
fbrs_(digits)
pl These cookies are set by Facebook.com. We use this service to show you have “liked” our website on the Facebook.com social network. Facebook.com can use this information to serve our ads on their platform. For more info on these cookies visit Facebook.com’s cookie policy statement at https://www.Facebook.com.com/policies/cookies/
sb
xs This cookie is used to maintain the session while logged in.
wd Keep track of the first and last Facebook.com page visited by the user and the inner dimensions of the browser window respectively
Twitter.com personalization_id Persistent cookie installed by Twitter.com.
guest_id Used if a visitor accesses the site when not logged into Twitter.com and a further cookie if accessed while logged on to Twitter.com. It allows us to track the sharing of the contents on Twitter.com.
external_referer It collects information about the pages viewed by the user in the session.
ct0 Allow us to control the “Follow us on Twitter.com” button.
_Twitter.com_sess Used by Twitter.com services, to monitor referral links and login status.
Other suppliers’ domain Suppliers own cookies These pixels are inserted on landing pages, usually to measure conversions.
Special Cookies

As part of the online advertising research and internet usage research studies we carry out, we may also read cookies placed when you visit other websites to see if you have visited the website of, or been exposed to certain online advertising placed on websites by of one of our clients, as detailed in the below table.

We also work with carefully selected research partners that involves placing cookies on your machine, as detailed in the below table, so that our partners can identify you as one of our Panellists whilst visiting websites to:

  • Presenting online advertising material to be tested in place of the online advertisement that would normally be presented to you.
  • Presenting you with a specific survey when you visit a website participating in the research program.
  • Collecting information about the websites you visit for our research and looking at what types of websites our Panellists visit compared to other internet users.

You can opt-out of any of the above research activities, which are detailed in the below table, by changing your “Privacy Settings” as detailed by Network Advertising.

In addition to our use of cookies, our online surveys automatically capture information about your IP Address, operating system, screen display settings, browser type, use of Flash and Java and to detect whether your computer has a webcam. We use this information to:

  • ensure that the survey is delivered in a form suited to the software your device is using.
  • assist in providing support to you, should you have difficulty accessing or completing a survey.
  • anonymised information is also used for research purposes, for example to determine the percentage of our Panellists in a specific country who use a certain type of browser.

With your prior agreement, we may also install advanced cookies or similar code that can identify tags attached to certain web-sites or on-line advertisements relating to our clients and/or their products. Alternatively, again with your prior agreement, we may scan for and read cookies or code installed by other websites that you may have visited. The information obtained in this way will be used to help us send you surveys that are relevant to you (for example, you may be asked your opinion on ads that you have actually seen), or for other research into internet usage.

6. Use of Digital Fingerprinting?

We also use digital fingerprint technology, also known as “Machine Identification”, to gather certain information about your computer, hardware and software, for example, your IP address, the display settings of your monitor, the type of browser used, the type of operating system, etc. The data collected in this process and the digital fingerprint created are not tied to any of your personal information, is stored on secured servers, and is only used for quality control and fraud prevention purposes and to help prevent Panellists from completing the same survey more than once, advertising or suppressing advertising targets for a certain survey and for no other purpose.

7. How Long Will We Keep the Information You Provide?

We will keep the profile information you provided for as long as you remain a Panellist. you can leave the Panel at any time you wish.

When you leave the Panel, or are removed, or the Panel is closed, we will delete your personal information within 31 days or as set out in this paragraph. If you won a prize from any of our contests, we will retain your information associated to the contest and prize fulfilment for a period of (3) three-years. If you were removed, we will retain only that information required to prevent you from re-joining. If you have requested not to be contacted, we will retain only the information required to honour your request.

Apart from your profile information, MKOR will also gather the answers you give in any survey. The answers provided by you will be pseudonymised by MKOR for security reasons and will only be shared with our clients in an anonymised form, unless you have given you explicit consent to you being identified. We will also remove the link between your profile information and the answers you provided within 12 months of the end of the research project, to ensure that these answers cannot be traced back to you.

8. How Can You Access Your Information and/or Correct It and/or Request Its Transfer and/or Erasure?

You have the right to request a copy of all the information we hold about you. You also have the right to request the correction of any personal data we hold about you. Furthermore, you have the right for all the information you have provided to us, to be transferred to another party. In various circumstances, you also have the right to request from us the deletion or erasure of the personal information we hold about you, subject to the limitation set out above under paragraph 7.

In all of these cases, please contact our Data Protection Department. They can be contacted by

  • Email sent to: [email protected] with “Panel MKOR” as subject line
  • Or by letter sent to MKOR at address str. Mărgelelor nr 2D, Bragadiru, Romania– attn: data protection officer.

Please state the email address used for MKOR Panel in your email or letter.

9. How Do We Ensure Your Personal Information Is Secure?

We take our responsibilities to keep your personal information secure very seriously. As such we take every reasonable precaution to ensure your information is protected from loss, theft or misuse. These precautions include appropriate physical security of our offices, controlled access to computer systems, and use of secure, encrypted internet connections when collecting personal information.

As part of our commitment to the security of your information, MKOR has regular internal audits of information security.

10. How to Contact Us and Complaints

For more information about our panel, or information related to your membership of our panel, please contact our Panel Support Team. They can be contacted by:

  • Email sent to: [email protected] with “MKOR Panel” as subject line
  • Or by letter sent to: MKOR at address str. Mărgelelor nr 2D, Bragadiru, Romania– attn: panel membership.

If you have any questions or require further information our privacy policy, our compliance with data protection laws or information we hold about you, please contact our Data Protection Department. They can be contacted:

  • Email sent to: [email protected] with “Panel MKOR” as subject line
  • Or by letter sent to MKOR at address str. Mărgelelor nr 2D, Bragadiru, Romania– attn: data protection officer.

Please mention your email address used for our panel in your email or letter.

If you have any complaints, we will appreciate if you give us an opportunity to resolve any issue first, by contacting us as set out above.

11. Changes to Our Privacy Policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review and we will place any updates on this webpage. We will also inform you of any changes via email. Our privacy policy was last updated on 25/10/2018.