Privacy Policy

Privacy Overview

Your privacy is important to us

Market and survey research serves an important function in helping to promote the flow of information in open societies. Through survey research, businesses, political organizations and governments learn from large representative samples of people. As a survey participant, your opinions help companies develop new products, make existing ones better, and improve customer service. Political organizations and governments also rely on survey research to advance laws and policies that the public wants or needs.

When you participate in research conducted by our firm, you can be assured that we will protect your privacy.

We have developed rigorous privacy standards that are set out in our Privacy Policy. In North America, TNS is a member of the Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO) and the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA), organizations that set industry standards to which member companies must adhere, and which also protect your privacy.

The Privacy Policy on this site applies to TNS Custom Research, Inc. and TNS Healthcare, Inc. The following North American units have separate privacy policies posted on their respective sites: NFO MySurvey.com, TNS jstreet, and TNS Canadian Facts. The privacy policy on this site also does not apply to TNS Gallup in Mexico.

If you have any privacy questions or concerns, please contact our North American Privacy Officer via e-mail at privacy-na@tns-global.com or by mail at 410 Horsham Road, Horsham, PA 19044.

Privacy policy

Your privacy is important to us and we shall take care to safeguard it. This privacy policy took effect July 11, 2003 and was last revised on March 10, 2006.

1. Definition of terms used in this privacy policy
"Interviewer" means an employee of TNS who contacts a member of the public for the purpose of conducting Survey Research.

"Panel" means a panel of U.S. households or individuals recruited by TNS whose members have agreed to participate in telephone, mail or Internet-baSurvey Research from time to time.

"Personal Information" means information that individually or in combination could identify a specific individual. Examples include first and last name, home postal address or personal email address .

"Respondent" means a member of the public who is contacted by TNS for the purpose of conducting Survey Research.

"Survey Research" means telephone surveys, mail surveys, Internet surveys, door to door surveys, ad hoc panels, continuous panels, mall intercepts, business-to-business surveys, focus groups, one-on-one executive interviews, media rating services, mystery shopping, employee surveys, and all other types of survey research.

“TNS Group” means companies whose ultimate parent is, or the majority of whose share capital is directly or indirectly owned or controlled by, Taylor Nelson Sofres plc. For the avoidance of doubt, all of the companies bound by this policy (as listed in the overview) are part of the TNS Group. The TNS Group is the second largest market information group in the world, with offices in over 70 countries.

2. The purpose of survey research
We conduct survey research for the benefit of our clients, who include for-profit companies, non-profit organizations and governmental institutions. Our clients use the survey results for a variety of purposes. For example, survey results are used to understand better customer awareness, use, and preferences for various products and services. Other clients use the survey results to measure social attitudes and public opinion on political and social issues.

3. The information we collect
When TNS interviewers contact respondents by telephone or in-person, they identify themselves and state the purpose(s) of their contact. When TNS sends written survey invitations and/or questionnaires to respondents by e-mail or postal mail, the invitation/questionnaire clearly identifies us as TNS and explains the purpose(s) of our contact.

When we contact you, we will generally do so for one of the following purposes:

Much more occasionally, we may contact you for one of these other purposes:

When you participate in our surveys, we may ask you for your personal opinions, as well as demographic information, such as your age and household composition. You may refuse to answer certain questions or discontinue participation in a study at any time. If you join one of our panels, you may rescind your membership by following the opt-out process for that particular panel.

4. Confidentiality of survey responses and contact information

We combine your survey responses in a given survey with the responses of all others who participate and report those combined responses to the client that commissioned the study. We will never intentionally report your individual survey responses, except as described below.

Your survey responses may be collected, stored or processed by our affiliated companies or non-affiliated service providers, both within and outside the United States. They are contractually bound to keep any information they collect and disclose to us or we collect and disclose to them confidential and must protect it with security standards and practices that are broadly equivalent to our own.

In addition to keeping your survey responses confidential, we will never sell, share, rent or otherwise intentionally transfer your name, address, telephone number or e-mail address to our clients, other market research companies (except for TNS Group companies), direct marketing companies or anyone else.

The only exceptions when we may disclose your personal information or survey responses to third parties who are not part of the TNS Group are as follows

a) You consent to sharing your identifying information and individual responses with the third parties for a specified purpose;

b) In accordance with the guidelines of the Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO), we provide your responses to a third party who is contractually bound to keep the information disclosed confidential and use it only for research or statistical purposes;

c) In the rare but possible circumstance that the information is subject to disclosure pursuant to judicial or other government subpoenas, warrants, orders or for similar legal or regulatory requirements.

5. Security of personal information
TNS safeguards personal information in its possession or control from loss or theft and from unauthorized access, disclosure, duplication, use or modification.

The safeguards we employ vary depending on the sensitivity, amount, distribution, format and storage of the personal information. Some information is stored electronically. Recent paper records containing individuals’ personal information are stored onsite at TNS offices. Older records containing individuals’ personal information may be stored at an offsite storage facility.

We inform our employees about our policies and procedures regarding confidentiality, security and privacy, and we emphasize the importance of complying with them. Our security procedures are consistent with generally accepted commercial standards used to protect personal information.

TNS may transfer personal information to affiliated companies or non-affiliated service providers for processing purposes, such as data processing, sweepstakes prize fulfillment, or for other incentive fulfillment. We require these companies to safeguard all personal information in a way that is consistent with TNS measures and/or as regulated by law.

6. Accuracy of personal information
TNS makes reasonable efforts to keep personal information in its possession or control, which is used on an ongoing basis, accurate, complete, current and relevant, based on the most recent information available to us.

We rely on respondents, such as panel members, to keep certain personal information relating to them accurate, complete and current.

7. Internet activities
We have adopted a high standard of privacy regarding electronic or Internet communication in the United States. In particular:

• We will never intentionally "spam" Internet users to seek their participation in surveys. Rather, we will send e-mail invitations only to people who we believe have "opted-in" - i.e., affirmatively agreed – to receive such invitations through prior, independent communications;
• We will give every person who receives an e-mail invitation the opportunity to "opt-out" of that invitation and all future e-mail solicitations;
• We maintain a high level of security to prevent outside parties from having access to information electronically transmitted to us by you;
• Although we use cookies (data sent to and stored on your computer) to facilitate the interactive survey process in certain online studies, the cookie gathers no data from you other than survey responses. It cannot read other data on your computer and it cannot detect your other Internet activities;
• We never knowingly invite children under the age of 13 to participate in research studies without taking measures to ensure appropriate parental consent.

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while we use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

8. Notification of material changes to this policy
If we make a material change to this policy or our privacy practices, we will post a prominent notice on this site for 30 calendar days prior to the implementation of the material change and describe how individuals may exercise any applicable choice. Following the implementation of the material change, we will record at the introduction of this policy when the policy was last revised.

9. Access to personal information
To request access to personal information that we hold about you, we require that you submit your request in writing at the e-mail address or postal address shown below (in How to reach us). You may be able to access your personal information and correct, amend or delete it where it is inaccurate, except as follows:

• The burden or expense of providing access would be disproportionate to the risks to your privacy in the case in question;
• Providing access to your personal information would be likely to reveal personal information about others;
• Disclosing the information would reveal the confidential commercial information of TNS or its clients.

We will endeavor to provide your requested personal information within 30 days of receiving your access request. If we cannot fulfill your request, we will provide you with a written explanation of why we had to deny your access request.

10. How to reach us
Questions regarding this policy or access requests should be directed to the TNS Privacy Officer for North America via e-mail at privacy-na@tns-global.com or by mail at 410 Horsham Road, Horsham, PA, 19044.

Email/Spam
TNS Global maintains a firm policy against Spam and is committed to sending email only to those who have requested to receive such email from our clients and/or TNS Global on behalf of our clients. If you receive an email from TNS Global and you do not wish to receive further email, you may do any one of the following to remove yourself from our list:

Reply to the message and enter "REMOVE" in the subject line;
Click the remove URL embedded in the email message;
Send a request to naithelpdesk@tns-global.com .
It is TNS Global's intention to allow easy opt-out from our mailings by providing several methods in which to do so.