Privacy Policy

Personal data remain confidential at all times

We treat your personal data and information as strictly confidential. Market research studies are always analyzed anonymously. When a client collects their market research data from our surveys, they only receive the consolidated results of a study and never your personal data.

Everything meets strict legal requirements

The data are collected, processed and used in line with the strict requirements of the GDPR and national data protection legislation in the countries where we operate. Norstatpanel only processes and uses the data collected as far as is necessary to carry out market research, legally admissible and specified by you. The data for the individual studies are analyzed in anonymized form. We would like to stress that your address data (which we require for winning notifications) is kept completely separate from your answers. Your consent is voluntary and may be withdrawn at any time. We also comply with the general data privacy provisions and legal guidelines of ESOMAR (European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research). If you would like more information, please do not hesitate to contact us by e-mail on [email protected] or via the contact form.

Market research is not marketing

The data collected by Norstat via Norstatpanel is used to map habits, attitudes and preferences for commercial and research-related purposes. You will never be asked to purchase products or services, nor will you receive third party advertisements. The personal information collected through Norstatpanel will not be disclosed to third parties unless you explicitly consent to this.

What types of personal data about you we collect, and why

Depending on what information you have given us, we store a number of personal data about you like name, age, gender, zip-code, your phone number and street address.

We use information about age, gender and zip-code, along with your answers to the profile questions, to decide what surveys to invite you to. Based on this information we determine whether or not you are in the target demographic of a survey, so we can reduce the risk of inviting you to a survey that you will not be able to complete. For statistical reasons we are assigning divers gender randomly to either female or male, when we are selecting national representative target groups.

We process your contact information to be able to invite you to surveys, and to give you incentives when you have completed surveys. We also store information about what surveys you have been invited to, and which ones you have completed, to be able to correctly assign incentives. We do however not store any information in your profile about your responses to survey questions.

All information we have stored about you is available under My Page in the panel pages.

Your membership and our use of your data

As a member of Norstatpanel, you grant Norstat the right to pass on data you have provided in your profile and data you provide in a survey to customers in a statistically processed form and in a form that is anonymized. Name, postal address, email address or other personal information that could identify individuals will not be passed on to our customers or others without prior explicit consent to this. As a member of Norstatpanel you answer the surveys you want when it suits you.

Information you provided in specific audience inquiry questions cannot be edited via your user account. However, you can view and delete this information at any time by signing in to your user account.

We reserve the right, without notice, to report members suspected of answering surveys with low quality, including when checking response time or response patterns. The member will also lose his accumulated Norstat Coins if it appears that the answers are of such poor quality that they cannot be used in our analysis work. It is not allowed to register more than one user account or email address in the panel per person. Duplicate accounts, with corresponding Norstat Coins, will be deleted without notice.

Data storage

Your profile is saved as long as you are a member of Norstatpanel. If you choose to opt out of the panel, we will delete all information about you. When processing anonymous data sets, our systems may require data files containing personal information, such as email that enables us to send you an invitation to participate in a survey. We will retain your survey data for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, when the purpose is fulfilled we will automatically delete data files containing information that can identify you.

Rewards

When you redeem your Norstat Coins you can buy products, digital coupons and make donations. If you choose to exchange Norstat Coins for digital coupons, we might transfer a system generated Redemption ID to our 3rd party system vendor. The vendor will keep a log with your Redemption ID, date and product. We only share information necessary to complete the transaction and never personal identifiable data.

When you redeem Norstat coins, Norstat will log the IP-address used, to minimize the risk of fraudulent redemptions.

Your consent to cookie tracking

As a modern market research portal Norstatpanel offers online studies that are carried out using the latest cookie technology. What happens is our clients search for target groups that, for example, use or have briefly used certain web offerings. Through the use of cookies we can be much more precise with regard to the target groups that we invite to participate in our online surveys for the studies concerned. In addition, when they consent to cookie tracking, participants can be considered for special long-term internet studies. The use of cookies simply serves to define target groups more precisely for our online surveys.

What are cookies?

Cookies are short pieces of informational text that are transferred to the hard drive or browser of a website's visitors in order to enable the use of additional functions or to track how a web portal is used. Norstatpanel can use cookies to measure the efficiency of its web presence by assessing repeated access to its website by certain visitors and by determining the information path used by visitors. We do not use cookies to collect personal data such as names or e-mail addresses.

How does cookie tracking work at Norstatpanel?

Norstatpanel only uses cookie tracking in connection with studies/surveys that it carries out in which your surfing behaviour plays an important role from a market-research point of view, for example, the recognition or viewing of advertising banners in websites visited.
As soon as you begin a survey by Norstatpanel, a cookie is stored in your internet browser which does not contain any personal information (e.g. device used, time of internet activity, browser version, region, etc.). The information saved by the cookies can then be used by Norstatpanel for new studies and to determine target groups, e.g. to invite you to participate in a survey that requires a target group to be questioned from a certain region and that has used a certain web offering within a certain time frame (e.g. online shop, news portal, etc.).

Norstatpanel would like to expressly point out that during cookie tracking no personal data or data is used that can directly identify a person. In addition, the gathering, processing and use of personal data in relation to the use of cookie tracking is carried out in accordance with the strict provisions of the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG). In accordance with Section 30a, Sub-section 2 of BDSG the data gathered by Norstatpanel is only processed and used insofar as this is necessary for the purposes of a market survey. The analysis of data for individual studies is carried out in an anonymous form. In this regard, we would like to point out that your personal data (e.g. name, address, e-mail addresses, etc.) is strictly separated from your response data in surveys as well as from gathered cookie data.

Third-party cookies

In some surveys third-party cookies are used whose information is linked to your response data after you have completed a survey and which, through this combination of data, deliver important knowledge for the study being carried out. We ensure that only response data from surveys will be applied for further use and not your personal data. Personal data and information in surveys are treated by us as strictly confidential and will not under any circumstances be passed on to third parties. Studies are always evaluated anonymously. With regard to interviews of our customers, these only collect general results for a research study and never your personal data.

Your right to withdrawal

Your consent is completely voluntary and can be withdrawn at any time. In cases of withdrawal of consent to cookie tracking, all cookie data that has been saved will be immediately deleted. Do you want to withdraw the consent you have already granted to cookie tracking? Or would you like to have special information about your saved data with Norstatpanel? You are welcome to e-mail us at any time at [email protected].

Web analysis by Matomo

Scope of the processing of personal data

On our website, we use the open source software tool Matomo (formerly PIWIK) to analyze the surfing behavior of our users. The software places a cookie on the user's computer (see above for cookies). If individual pages of our website are accessed, the following data is stored:

  • two bytes of the IP address of the user's accessing network
  • the called up web page
  • the website from which the user has accessed the accessed website (referrer)
  • the sub-pages accessed from the website accessed
  • the duration of stay on the website
  • the frequency with which the website is accessed
  • technical details of the browser such as version number or resolution

The software runs exclusively on the servers of our website. The personal data of users is only stored there. The data will not be passed on to third parties.

The software is set so that the IP addresses are not completely stored, but 2 bytes of the IP address are masked (e.g.: 192.168.xxx.xxx). In this way it is no longer possible to assign the shortened IP address to the calling computer.

Legal basis for the processing of personal data

The legal basis for processing users' personal data is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR.

Purpose of data processing

The processing of users' personal data enables us to analyse the surfing behaviour of our users. We are able to compile information about the use of the individual components of our website by evaluating the data obtained. This helps us to continuously improve our website and its user-friendliness. For these purposes, it is also in our legitimate interest to process the data in accordance with Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR. By anonymizing the IP address, users' interest in protecting their personal data is sufficiently taken into account.

Duration of storage

The data will be deleted as soon as they are no longer needed for our recording purposes. In our case, this is the case after 5 years, as we measure the long-term impact of optimizations of our offer.

Possibility of objection and elimination

Cookies are stored on the user's computer and transmitted to our site. Therefore, you as a user also have full control over the use of cookies. You can deactivate or restrict the transmission of cookies by changing the settings in your Internet browser. Cookies that have already been saved can be deleted at any time. This can also be done automatically. If cookies are deactivated for our website, it may no longer be possible to use all functions of the website in full.

We offer our users on our website the possibility of an opt-out from the analysis procedure. To do this, uncheck the Analysis category in our Cookie banner. In this way, another cookie is placed on your system, which signals to our system not to store the user's data. If the user deletes the corresponding cookie from his own system in the meantime, he must set the opt-out cookie again.

More information about the privacy settings of the Matomo software can be found under the following link: https://matomo.org/docs/privacy/.

User ID

An individual user ID is assigned to incoming members as soon as you enter your contact data and accept these general terms and conditions. Under this UserID, all registration entries and transactions are stored. By using and storing such a UserID, we are able to allocate registrations to our partners, campaigns and advertisements, and thus measure the long-term performance of the same, which helps us to continually improve our performance potential. You agree to the storage and use of the UserID.

Privacy Policy for the Norstatpanel App

The Norstatpanel app is available exclusively for Norstatpanel members, and the purpose of the Norstatpanel app is to offer an improved experience of responding to surveys, and to tailor the panelist experience by inviting the respondents to the surveys that are most relevant to them. The app processes the following types of personally identifiable information:

Location data

For panel members that have given their active, explicit consent only, the Norstatpanel app processes location and activity data. The purpose for collecting your location data is to be able to send you surveys and conduct anonymous analysis based on where you have been. Consenting to share location data is not a prerequisite for being a member of our panel. You are free to withdraw your consent and delete the collected location data at any point, directly from the app.

All location data we collect is anonymized, and data older than 60 days is automatically deleted. Location data is never used for marketing, and our clients receive exclusively anonymous data in statistical form.

Location data we collect is processed by a subcontractor, and the data is exchanged based on a random user ID. The subcontractor will store your user ID and location data for up to 60 days. We will never exchange information that identifies you as a person, or that connects your location data with other types of data, for instance your survey responses.

App Identifiers

For panel members that have given their active, explicit consent only, the Norstatpanel app uses the app identifier to identify individuals. The purpose of this processing is to measure exposure to internet campaigns.

When measuring the effect of ad campaigns on the internet, we use app identifiers to find out to whom the campaign in question has been shown. We create a report summarizing which segments of the population have seen the campaign, for instance based on gender, age or geographical belonging.

App identifiers will never be used for advertising purposes, and our clients only receive data in statistical form.

You are free to withdraw consent to the processing of app identifiers from your profile page at any time.

NORSTAT and GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation by which the European Commission intends to strengthen and unify data protection for individuals within the European Union (EU). It applies from 25 May 2018.

GDPR legislates a lot of common sense data security ideas, especially from the Privacy by Design school of thought:

\\ Minimize collection of personally identifiable information.
\\ Delete personally identifiable information that is no longer necessary
\\ Restrict access and secure data through its entire lifecycle

Norstat have been preparing systems and routines to implement the GDPR for a long time. Norstat systems and routines ensures data will be safe, both in terms of GDPR requirements and business protection.

Details regarding GDPR article 13 and 14

Your rights as a data subject

You have the right to view all personal data we have stored about you. Norstat will provide all the information necessary to ensure legal, fair and transparent processing of personal information. We will always inform you about the purpose of processing, what categories of data we are processing, with whom (if any) we have shared your information, information about the retention period for data and your rights as concerns the processing. However, your right to view data is limited when it comes to historical responses to single surveys. This is because the responses are stored in pseudomized form and not connected to your userID, and therefore to track down historical responses require a considerable about of manual processing. If it is still important to you to view such historical data, you will have to specify what data you are requiring insight in.

About us and this privacy policy

This privacy statement addresses how Norstat collects and processes data about you. If you have further questions about processing and processing your data, please contact us through our Data Protection Officer, Tone Belsvik.

[email protected]

Norstat Group AS, July 2022