FULL COLOUR RESEARCH PRIVACY POLICY
Your privacy is important to us and we take great care to protect the information you share while visiting our website. This policy outlines how we collect, use, disclose and protect your data. By using our website you agree to terms outlined in this policy.
WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT AND WHEN?
We collect:
- All information you choose to share with us.
- ‘Sensitive’ information on you. And by ‘sensitive’ we mean information such as your racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs or other beliefs of a similar nature and your physical or medical condition. We ask for this kind of detail in certain forms you may complete or via telephone questionnaires. You can choose whether or not you want to provide it.
- The time, date, location and topic of the market research you carry out.
- Information on what you view, click on and access through our websites. This information may also include where you came to our site from, and where you went when you left it. We also track how often you visit and use our websites. We do this via website cookies.
- Technical information about the devices you use to access our websites. We collect each device’s unique identifying codes (MAC address or IMEI number) device model, device name, operating system and version, web browser and version and geographic location.
- Messages you send direct to us via social media.
- Information collected independently by online advertising networks (Google for example) through which we place advertisements.
HOW DO WE COLLECT YOUR INFORMATION?
We collect information on you through:
- Paper forms you have completed.
- Our website www.fullcolourresearch.com including when you contact us or sign up for marketing communications from us.
- Emails and text messages you send to us, or that we send to you.
- Our conversations with you, whether in person or on the phone. We may record our telephone conversations with you.
- Your use of community forums in which we participate.
We also receive information on you from other organisations where you have given consent for those other organisations to share information they hold on you with us or with organisations like us, and where other organisations can lawfully share information on you with us, even without your consent.
HOW DO WE USE YOUR INFORMATION?
We use the information we collect on you for the following purposes:
- To send you links to invite you to carry out market research for third parties.
- To put you forward to participate in market research with third parties that you wish to take part in.
- To provide you with our website which requires a certain amount of technical information to work properly.
- To make sure you get the incentives you’re promised.
- To make a contract with you. But also to enforce a contract if you breach it.
- To help us run competitions and offers.
- To contact you from time to time regarding things you’ve told us you want to hear about; for example, new surveys, focus groups; special offers and competitions.
- To reply to and deal with any questions, suggestions, issues, complaints or disputes you or our clients have contacted us about. We may share your data, including our recorded telephone conversations, with our clients to respond to a dispute or complaint that you or they raise about how we carried out the market research on their behalf.
- To respond to any social media posts or other public comments you might make, whether they are directly to us or about us, websites, services or other activities.
- To advertise products or services to you for example on your favourite social media sites (e.g. Facebook and Twitter).
- To protect you and our business from any other potentially criminal behaviour, including fraud.
- To power our security measures and services so you can safely access our website. It also lets us do things such as recognise your username and password, as well as reset them if you happen to forget what they are.
- For internal monitoring and training purposes to check and improve the way we handle our telephone conversations with you.
- For recruitment purposes if you have applied for a position with us including to contact you to discuss a role with us and to assess your suitability.
- To tell you about any changes to our services and website. For example, if we change our terms and conditions or this privacy policy.
- To help us maintain administrative and statutory records about our business so we can better understand who we’ve recruited and pay our taxes.
By matching information that’s common to the various sources of information we have about you, we’re able to build a bigger, richer picture. So for example, you might register for one survey and provide your email address. You might then register for a focus group with us using the same email address. Simply linking those two pieces of information together tells us a lot which helps us to understand you better and tailor our services to you and our clients.
WHO DO WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION WITH?
We conduct market research on behalf of third party companies. We therefore can’t run our business or provide many of the services and incentives you receive from us without sharing your information with other people or involving other people and organisations from time to time.
When we share your information, we want you to know that we only do so in accordance with our legal data protection and privacy obligations.
Your information may be disclosed to:
- Third party companies who have commissioned market research that you take part in. We may share your name, contact details and your responses to the market research.
- Other people who help us provide our websites and related services to you. They include information technology experts who host or maintain our website.
- With social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter, to enable us to run targeted promotions for you on their platforms.
- Rewards companies which you have signed up to, in order for you to receive the incentives we may offer if you complete market research with us. (We may share your name and email address. They may keep this information).
- Any new business partners we may have over time, for example, in the event of a joint venture, reorganisation, business merger or sale that affects us.
- Our professional advisors including our lawyers and technology consultants when they need it to give us their professional advice.
- Emergency services or local authorities where there is reason to believe a safeguarding issue exists;
- The Police, local authorities, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the courts and any other government authority if they ask us to do so (but only if us doing so is lawful).
- Other people who make a ‘subject access request’, where we are allowed to do so by law. (See ‘Managing Your Information’ below for what we mean by a ‘subject access request’.)
We may also share the information we collect where we are legally obliged to do so, e.g. to comply with a court order.
SOCIAL MEDIA, BLOGS AND REVIEWS
Any social media posts or comments you send to us (on our Facebook page, for instance) will be shared under the terms of the relevant social media platform (e.g. Facebook or Twitter) on which they’re written and could be made public. Other people, not us, control these platforms. We’re not responsible for this kind of sharing. So before you make any such remarks or observations, you should review the terms and conditions and privacy policies of the social media platforms you use. That way, you’ll understand how they will use your information, what information relating to you they will place in the public domain, and how you can stop them from doing so if you’re unhappy about it.
It’s worth remembering too, that any blog, review or other posts or comments you make about us, our products and services on any of our blogs, reviews or user community services will be shared with all other members of that service and the public at large.
You should take extra care to ensure that any comments you make on these services, and on social media in general are fit to be read by the public, and are not offensive, insulting or defamatory. Ultimately, you are responsible for ensuring that any comments you make comply with any relevant policy on acceptable use of those services.
INTERNATIONAL TRANSFER OF YOUR INFORMATION
Although we’re based in the UK we recruit participants on behalf of clients around the world. If you take part in market research for one of those clients, the information we collect may be transferred to, stored and used by such clients at premises in other countries.
Naturally, we aim to ensure all our clients take information security as seriously as we do. Even so, information protection laws can vary from country to country.
For instance, the law of the country in which you are resident or domiciled may offer a higher standard of protection than the laws in the UK and/or the other countries where our clients are based. Any transfer of information we make to other countries could result in that information being available to their government and other authorities in those countries under their laws.
SECURITY OF YOUR INFORMATION
We take the security of your information very seriously. We comply with the Data Protection Act 1998 which requires us to have in place appropriate security measures at all times, including where we share your information with our suppliers and partners.
Please take care of your own information. For security tips and tricks when using the internet, WIFI and smartphones or tablets, please check out www.getsafeonline.org.
HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION?
We can only keep your information for as long as necessary for the purposes set out above. This restriction is set by the Data Protection Act 1998. The precise length of time we hold your information for varies depending on your individual circumstances.
MANAGING YOUR INFORMATION
To reduce the chances of an error or misunderstanding, we need to keep the information we gather about you accurate and up-to-date. But whilst we work very hard to make sure mistakes don’t happen, we need your help too.
The accuracy and integrity of our surveys and the data we collect is reliant on your honesty in relation to the information you provide in respect of your account and your responses to surveys.
So please ensure that the information you provide is correct. If you have reason to believe any of the information we collect on you may be inaccurate, please contact us (see below for how to do this).
YOUR RIGHTS
You are within your rights to ask us whether we hold information about you and if so, for us to give you certain details about that information and/or the information itself. This right is commonly known as a ‘subject access request’. Certain exemptions and conditions apply to this right, principally that it should be in writing and that you give us reasonable details about the information you want.
Depending on your country of residence or domicile, you may have additional or different rights to those set out above concerning the information we collect from you and your devices. We will, of course, honour all such legal rights if we are bound to do so.
We reserve the right to charge you a small administration fee to meet our costs in honouring your legal rights, where permitted by the relevant law.
We also reserve the right not to comply with any enquiries or requests we receive about the information we collect, where we may lawfully do so. For example, if we have reason to believe that a request is malicious, technically impossible, involves disproportionate effort or could be harmful to others.
If you have any worries or complaints about the way we use your information, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. We’ll do our very best to set your mind at rest or if anything is wrong to put things right. And if, for whatever reason, you feel we’re not meeting the exceptionally high standards we expect of ourselves, you’re within your rights to tell the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Please see the section ‘Where to go if you want more information about your privacy rights’ for further details.
WHERE TO GO IF YOU WANT MORE INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) regulates data protection and privacy matters in the UK. They make a lot of information accessible to consumers on their website and they ensure that the registered details of all data controllers such as ourselves are available publicly. You can access them here.
You can make a complaint to the ICO at any time about the way we use your information. However, we hope that you would consider raising any issue or complaint you have with us first. Your satisfaction is extremely important to us, and we will always do our very best to solve any problems you may have.
USE THIS SITE AT YOUR OWN RISK
Every user who visits this Site does so at their own risk. We offer no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of the information on this site and assume no responsibility for any errors or omissions in the contents of the site. Additionally we cannot be held responsible for the presence or absence of computer viruses or other bugs which third parties may embed in or attach to this Site without our knowledge or consent. No parties, including Full Colour Research, who are involved in the creation, production or delivery of this site, or whose materials or information appear in this site assumes or accepts any liability for any costs, losses, damages arising out of the user’s access to our site or with the unavailability or failure of performance of this site for any reason.
UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
We will need to update this policy from time to time as our business changes. Please look out for the flags on our websites and materials which indicate we have changed this policy. If you continue to provide us with information or use our services after we’ve changed our policy, we’ll take it that you accept the changes.
ABOUT US
Our full legal name is Full Colour Research Limited, Company number 10315272 and our address can be found in the ‘contact us’ section below. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK. Registration number ZA243864.
We are a member of the Association for Qualitative Research (AQR) (number 090352).
CONTACT US
If you want any further information about our approach to cookies and similar technologies, our website in general or have any other privacy questions relating to us, we’d be happy to help you. Please contact us via email on jon.byrne@acumenfieldwork.com or by post to:
Full Colour Research Limited
Bank House
147 Buxton Road
Stockport
SK2 6EQ
PRIVACY POLICY – REVISED FEBRUARY 2021