Privacy Notice

Forsta Inc. and its affiliates (“Forsta”, “us” or “we”) understand privacy is an important part of our commitment to you, our clients, other survey participants, and the general public. This privacy notice, (the “Notice”) describes our practices specific to the collection and use of your personally identifiable information (however named in your jurisdiction) (“PII”)  when you participate in research surveys owned and operated by Forsta, (collectively known as the “Sites”).

For information specific to the following jurisdictions please click the link below:

United Kingdom

Forsta has appointed a Privacy Officer who is responsible for monitoring and enforcing compliance with this Notice. Should you have any questions regarding this Notice, you can contact our Privacy Officer by email at privacy@forsta.com.

Data Collection & Use

Our surveys are focused on providing you with the opportunity to voice your opinions on a variety of topics and issues. Your opinion is important to us and is the primary focus of the data we collect. Your opinion will be used to offer you or others like you with better tailored products and services.

We will process your PII on the basis of your informed consent, which may be withdrawn as described herein.  

In order to facilitate your membership and ensure that we are including you in relevant studies, we must create a profile of you. To do this, we may collect PII from you such as your name, email address, gender, age, race, and other household information. On occasion, we may automatically add information from your survey responses to your profile. We may also request information about others residing in your household, however, this information will not be PII. All information is viewable by us, and may be shared with third parties only as outlined below.

When filling out surveys, we ask that you do not provide PII unless it is explicitly requested. For example, do not provide information about a health condition in a field that is requesting information about your favorite food.

Any time you participate as a respondent in one of our surveys, you can be assured that your individual responses will be kept confidential and will only be shared as outlined in this Notice. You are free to choose whether or not to participate in a survey, free to choose not to answer any specific questions and free to discontinue participation at any time.

Security of Data

The security of your PII is important to us. We follow generally recognized industry standards and all legally required measures to protect the PII submitted to us during transmission and once it is received. You may read about some of our technical and organizational measures to keep data safe here: Technical and Organisational Measures available at: https://legal.forsta.com/legal/forsta-technical-and-organizational-measures/.

Sharing of Information / Third Parties

We only provide PII to third parties when necessary to help analyze, organize, and manage the information received for our legitimate purposes. Our clients who purchase insight data from us receive aggregate, anonymized data and survey results that do not identify any individual respondents. From time to time however, we may share your PII with others including our clients and other third parties under the following circumstances:

• The third party provides a service to us, such as a hosting provider, and is contractually bound to protect the confidentiality of your PII and to respect the laws that apply to it;
• To administer points, sweepstakes/contests and other promotions that you have opted-in to;
• You have consented to participate directly in a study conducted by or on behalf of our client (and you were made aware of such arrangement);
• You post the information while participating in an open discussion forum; or
• When we believe it necessary to comply with the law, to protect the rights or safety of our website, other users, or third parties.

We will never use your PII for reasons that we have not disclosed to you, including selling it to marketers or advertisers for their own purposes.

We reserve the right to use and share all non-PII with others without limitation.

Communications from the Site

In order to participate in our surveys, you must opt-in to receive emails from us. The first email you receive from us will be sent to confirm your subscription and verify that the email address you have provided is valid. Subsequent emails will be sent to invite you to participate in surveys, to respond to your inquiries and support requests. 

Cookies and Related Technologies

When you visit the Site, participate in a survey, access the member portal, or interact with a survey invite email, we use certain technologies to retain your preferences and provide other Site functionality. These technologies include cookies, web beacons, and digital fingerprints. There is a separate opt-in for these technologies and more information will be provided with such opt-in request.

Opting-Out / Withdrawing Consent

At any time, you may choose to opt-out of a survey by clicking the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails, by using the Unsubscribe option in the Profile area of the member portal, or by contacting us directly via the contact information listed above. Please note that when you unsubscribe, we will not only cease sending you emails, we will also deactivate your membership. Any information you have submitted to us, including survey invites and PII will continue to be retained in accordance with our data retention practices outlined below. Any points you have accumulated and/or sweepstakes eligibility will be immediately forfeited and cannot be reclaimed even if you sign up again at a later date.

Opting-out of a survey does not unsubscribe you from other surveys you have chosen to join. If you have opted-in to participate in one of our other surveys and wish to be removed, you will need to unsubscribe using the respective link at the bottom of our emails or the specific Unsubscribe option in the Profile area of the member portal, or by contacting us directly via the contact information listed above.

Certain communications are transactional in nature and do not provide you the ability to opt-out.

Jurisdiction-specific information

United Kingdom

Your Rights

Under applicable data protection law you have the following rights:

• The right to be informed as to what we do with your information. This includes but is not limited to the right to know what information we gather, process and store, what we do with it, who we share it with and how long we keep it for
• If we are processing your data on the basis of your consent then you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Consent can be withdrawn by notifying us using the Privacy Officer contact details. The lawfulness of our historic processing based on your consent will not be retrospectively affected by your withdrawal of consent
• The right to access a copy of your information which we hold. This is called a ‘subject access request’
• The right to object to processing of your information. You can notify us of your objection to us processing your PII using the Privacy Officer contact details.
• The right to prevent us processing your information for direct marketing purposes. We will inform you and gain your informed consent (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing (i.e., withdrawing your consent) by contacting us using the Privacy Officer contact details or via the various Unsubscribe links in survey emails and in your member access portal.
• The right, in certain circumstances, to have your information rectified, blocked, erased, or destroyed if it is inaccurate.
• The right, in certain circumstances, to claim compensation for damages caused by us breaching data protection law.
• Enhanced rights to request that we erase, rectify, cease processing and/or delete your information; and
• In certain circumstances, the right to request the information we hold on you in a machine-readable format so that you can transfer it to other services. This right is called ‘data portability’.
• The right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority regarding Forsta’s data privacy practices. The operations of Forsta Worldwide Limited are Forsta’s main establishment in the UK for UK GDPR purposes. The British Data Protection Authority (the ICO) may be contacted to lodge a complaint. Visit https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/contact-us-public/ for contact details.

Forsta’s role

Forsta will act as a data controller in relation to the PII we collect via our surveys. Forsta AS is the specific data controller responsible for your PII unless otherwise stated in another more specific privacy notice. The operations of Forsta Worldwide Limited are Forsta’s main establishment in the UK for UK GDPR purposes and such entity is the UK representative for the Forsta group. Forsta Worlwide Limited’s privacy officer can be reached to exercise your rights at privacy@forsta.com. The registered office of Forsta Worldwide Ltd is Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London, SE1 0SU, UK.

Purposes of Processing

The purposes of the processing are either stated in the consent note we obtain from you prior to processing your PII, or alternatively:

• To fulfill your transaction request;
• To provide you with support;
• To verify your identity;
• To provide information on products, services, or callback requests;
• To send you specific marketing materials, where you have consented to such;
• and
• To invite you to complete web surveys.

Recipients of PII

The recipients of your personal data will be selected Forsta employees and third parties such as affiliates, hosting providers, web-based software tool providers, and contractors working for Forsta. All such recipients will always be under contract with Forsta ensuring data protection levels equivalent to those set forth in this privacy notice and required by applicable law. Further details may be provided upon request.

International Transfers

For purposes of complying with data privacy laws throughout the EEA, Switzerland, and the UK, where Forsta transfers PII to an entity which is outside of these areas and organized in a jurisdiction which has not received an ‘adequacy decision’ or similar from the relevant regulatory body, Forsta makes such transfers only if subject to an adequate transfer mechanism as described by the relevant data privacy law, e.g., standard data protection clauses(including EU, UK, and Swiss SCCs), model clauses, standard contractual clauses, etc.

Data Retention

We will retain your PII and survey responses for as long as it remains necessary or relevant for the purposes we have identified or as permitted/required by law. For example, we may need to retain the PII of an unsubscribed member for the purposes of maintaining the integrity of the study, or to honor that member’s opt-out preference (by retaining the email address). If you would like to explicitly request the removal of your PII, please contact us using the contact information listed above. Non-PII is not subject to any retention limitations and may be retained indefinitely.

Changes to This Notice

Forsta encourages you to periodically review this Policy to stay informed of how we manage your PII. If any changes are made to this Policy, Forsta will revise the "Last Updated" date that is indicated on the Policy.