Effective July 20th, 2018
YouGov is an ethical user of personal data. Without the trust of everyone who answers our questions, we could not produce the research that helps our clients make better decisions. The security of your personal data is important to us, too.
We’ve tried to make the privacy and cookies notice that follows as easy to read as possible. If anything in here is unclear, please contact us at dataprotection@yougov.com, and we’ll be happy to clear it up.
What this notice covers
As an organisation that relies on the use of personal data, YouGov is responsible for collecting and using your data in a responsible and safe way, and that starts with clearly telling you how we collect, use and protect your personal data. This privacy and cookies notice sets out:
- What kind of personal data we may collect from you;
- How and why we collect and use your personal data;
- Why we may share personal data within YouGov and with other organisations; and
- The rights and choices you have when it comes to your personal data.
YouGov is made up of a number of companies, each of which separately controls the data provided to it by our panellists and those who otherwise participate in surveys or browse our website (“user”). If you are a user or panellist who registered in the USA, YouGov America Inc (referred to as “we”, “us”, “our” or “YouGov”) is the controller of your personal data. This means we choose why and how that data is processed. We are based at 805 Veterans Blvd, Suite 202, Redwood City, California, 94063.
Personal data we collect
In this section we explain what personal data we may collect when you become a YouGov member, use our website and participate in surveys, as well as data that we may collect from other sources |
Data that we collect from you
When you interact with our website or take part in YouGov surveys, you provide us with the data that powers our business. While there are certain data that you must provide to use some of our services, such as account details when you join YouGov, you control how much data you share with us. Whether you only want to complete certain surveys, or all of them – it’s your choice.
We will only retain your personal data for as long as we need to in order to fulfil the uses we describe in this notice (or until you request account deletion by contacting us).
When you register with YouGov, we collect: |
- Contact details such as your name, email and postal address
- Demographic data, such as your age, gender, and general economic and household information
- Your account login details, which will be your email address and the password that you have chosen
- Referral partner IDs, if you arrived on our website by clicking a ‘Join YouGov’ advertisement online, or a link in an email from one of our recruitment partners (we only use this to track recruitment effectiveness and to pay our partners)
- Some specific data you have shared with Facebook, but only if you choose to register with YouGov using Facebook Connect and give Facebook permission to share this information with us during that process. (Each item is specified as part of that process.)
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When you answer questions in surveys, or on our website or mobile apps, we collect: |
- Your opinions on social and political issues, companies and brands
- Contact details such as your name, email and postal address
- Demographic data, such as your age, gender, and general economic and household information
- Information about your behaviours, for example what shops you like to shop in, what TV shows you have recently watched, or what kind of things you own
- Device and browser “metadata” (basically an audit trail of your device and browser use), including IP address, the make, model and operating system of the device you have used and browser type (this data is collected automatically when you answer questions in surveys or browse our website or mobile apps)
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If you have agreed to download tracking software (you will have been specifically invited to do this, it doesn’t happen automatically), we collect: |
- Your geolocation data, showing where you have been while carrying your mobile device
- Device and browser metadata
- Information about websites you have visited, which applications you have downloaded onto your computer and mobile devices, and how and when you use them (we never collect any information you enter into login and password fields when browsing the internet).
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If you have been invited to participate in online or in-person qualitative research, we collect: |
- Your opinions on the topics that the research is exploring
- We may also record these interviews with you, but in such cases you will be given full information about the research project and the opportunity not to participate
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When you browse our website or use our mobile apps, we collect: |
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When you contact us or interact with our website or social media pages, we collect: |
- Any personal data that you may you provide about yourself, including your name and contact details and the conversation history of our communications with you
- Any comments you make on our website or social media pages, and whether you have chosen to ‘follow’ any other YouGov member on our website
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Personal data collected from other sources
We may also use personal data you have shared with us to derive additional information from other sources:
- Public sources: for example, we may compare your postcode against public registers to determine that you live within a certain catchment area for a particular local authority or electoral constituency.
- Data matching partners: we may purchase data from companies which helps us to categorise our panellists’ data into groups or ‘segments’ based on a classification of consumers devised by the data matching partner. We add the segment information we purchase to the data we hold about you (click here for more information about how we share personal data with these companies to add these segments to our own data).
- Other companies that sell data: we may purchase data from companies that sell certain types of data that is valuable to us. In these cases, we will either match the data to our own ourselves, or will pass personal data to these companies to enable them to match it on our behalf, and pass it back to us.
You may still receive invitations to participate in our research activities if you have not joined YouGov. In these cases we will have received your email address either from a client, or we’ll have acquired it from an organisation that maintains databases of contact details so that companies like YouGov can contact you. We only send emails where we have representations from those providing the email addresses that the recipient (that’s you) has agreed to receive third-party (e.g. from YouGov) communications, and we will always tell you where we’ve got your details from and give you the option to opt-out of receiving further emails from us.
How and why we use your personal data, and who we share it with
In this section we explain how and why we use your personal data, the choices you have over how your data is used, and which other organisations we share it with |
Uses of personal data for basic market research
We use the data that you share with us, or that we receive from the other sources mentioned above, to give you the best experience possible, and to provide useful research for our clients. The uses we describe below form the basic agreement we have with our panellists.
We use personal data to… |
For example… |
Register, authenticate and administer your account |
If you register with the YouGov panel, we will use your email address and password to create your account and authenticate your identity each time you log on, and your account details to help us to answer your questions when you contact us |
Select and invite you to participate in YouGov’s research activities |
If a client wanted to know what people who live in a certain region and demographic think about soft drinks, we will use your postcode and other demographic data to determine whether you qualify for a particular project, and then use your name and email address to invite you to participate in a survey |
Credit you with the points and rewards that you earn from participating in research opportunities |
We will use your contact details to tell you if you have won a prize draw, and your bank account details to pay you if you convert your points into money |
Produce aggregated and anonymous research for our clients |
Once we’ve gathered your survey answers, we combine them with answers from other respondents and turn them into valuable insights for our clients, either in the form of statistical spreadsheets or aggregated reports. Some of your answers go directly into our major global brand tracking product (BrandIndex) and our segmentation and planning tool (Profiles). Our clients access these tools to create their own aggregated insights – they don’t see anything that identifies you |
Produce anonymised but non-aggregated respondent-level data for clients |
We may provide our clients with spreadsheets that contain each of your survey answers; these data sets are not aggregated but do not reveal your identity and recipients are contractually bound to not attempt to re-identify the individuals who provided the answers |
Create articles and other content for our website |
We use survey responses to write interesting articles that may be published on our website or included in news articles on third party websites |
Develop and improve our services |
We use your survey responses to improve our research tools and methods, which helps us ensure that we are giving you and our clients the best possible experience |
Respond to you when you exercise any of your rights relating to the data we hold about you (more information about the rights you have over your data is set out below) |
We will use your account information and internal identifiers to identify the data that is relevant to your request and respond to you |
Detect and prevent fraudulent activity |
We use your IP address to ensure your location matches the location of the panel that you joined, and we sometimes repeat questions during surveys to check for inattention or other indicators of poor quality responses |
In order to use your personal data in the ways described above, we may share it within YouGov, with trusted third parties who provide services to us, and on rare occasions with clients. Here is some more information about the types of organisation and what we may share with them:
YouGov Group companies |
YouGov is a global organisation. This means that some of the personal data that we collect may be transferred within the YouGov Group of companies, for example when a client wants to run a survey in multiple countries, or our global data teams analyse data from across our global panel. We also may transfer your information in connection with the sale of all or substantially all of the business or assets of some or all of the YouGov Group of companies. |
Our clients and other trusted research organizations |
Our business is built on providing clients with anonymised research insights.
We sometimes run surveys in conjunction with (or on behalf of) another trusted research organization. In a small number of cases, these trusted research organizations may have limited access to personally identifiable information for use in their internal analytics, modeling, and similar aggregate analyses, provided they agree contractually (i) to protect the privacy of personally identifiable information consistent with this privacy policy, and (ii) not to use or disclose personally identifiable information for any other purpose.
On occasion, our clients may ask to combine your survey responses with their own data to obtain even greater insights. Whether you share this data or not is completely up to you – if you do not want to provide the requested data it will have no impact on the points you can earn or your participation in future research opportunities. |
Our service providers |
We work with trusted service providers that carry out certain functions on our behalf so we can provide our services to you.
These organisations process data on our behalf. They only have access to the personal data that they absolutely need to provide the specific service to us, and in all cases we have contractual safeguards in place to ensure that they do not disclose or use it for any other purposes. In some cases, these organisations (for example our payment processors) may need to process your personal data for their own specific purposes, for example to ensure they are compliant with regulations or laws governing their own sectors.
Our service providers fall within the following categories (and process your data in the following location(s)):
- Processors of cash payments, gift cards and other incentives (European Economic Area (“EEA”), USA)
- Data collection technology providers (EEA, USA)
- Cloud data storage (EEA, USA)
- Data centre storage (EEA, USA)
- Communications platforms and technologies (EEA)
- Online advertising (EEA, USA)
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Our data matching partners |
Our data matching partners create and sell consumer classifications that help companies understand the demographics, lifestyles, preferences and behaviours of consumers. This information is valuable to our clients, and if requested we will add this data to the insights we provide to them.
To do this we share certain personal data, such as your name, email address and postcode, so that our partners can match it against their own data and tell us which of their segments you belong to. As with our other service providers, we only share the personal data that our data matching partners need to match our data to theirs, and we have contractual safeguards in place to ensure that they do not disclose or use the data for any other purposes. |
Other companies that sell data |
As described above, we may purchase data from companies that sell certain types of data that is valuable to us. In some cases we will pass personally identifiable information to these companies to enable them to match these data sets on our behalf, and pass that matched data back to us. |
Other organisations |
These circumstances are unusual, but we may share personal data with other organisations if:
- we have to share your information to comply with legal or regulatory requirements (or we reasonably believe that we need to disclose your information for such purposes);
- we need to share personal data in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights, including with our legal and other professional advisors;
- we restructure our business or if we buy or sell any business or assets we may share your data with the prospective buyer or seller;
- all or substantially all of our company assets are acquired by another party, your data will be one of the transferred assets
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If you don’t want us to make use of your personal data in any of the ways described above, sharing your data with YouGov and using our services is not for you – you should unsubscribe here, or contact us and ask us to do that for you. We need to use your data in these basic ways to be able to give your opinions meaning in the world, and to conduct the research that allows us to exist as a business.
Uses of personal data for advanced research and modelling
In addition to the uses we describe above, provided you choose to participate as a panellist in this way, we may also share your data with trusted partner organisations. Our partners use this data to create and improve their products and services, and to create audiences for advertisers to target with more relevant communications and propositions (although you will never be included in these audiences). Here is some more information about our partners and what we may share with them:
Our partners for audience modelling |
By matching personal details (for example your name, email address and postcode or a unique identifier) or online identifiers, our partners can use survey responses to
- Create and improve products and services, such as consumer segmentations, to help other organisations better understand the likely characteristics of consumers; and
- Create audiences for advertisers to target with more relevant communications and propositions (the advertising audiences are created by finding people in the population who have similar characteristics to you, via a process called lookalike modelling, so you will never be included in these audiences).
Provided you choose to participate in this way, we may share your personal details with the following partners for these purposes:
Again, provided you choose to participate in this way, we may share online identifiers with the following partners for these purposes:
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You have complete control over whether we use your data in this way (i.e. non-anonymously). You can choose not to participate in these uses by changing your permission setting. To change your setting, go to your Account page, "Permissions" section, scroll down to "Uses of your data" and select the "No" option.
How we store and protect your personal data
We know how important it is to protect your personal data while we have it. This section describes some of the measures we take to ensure that it is kept secure |
We do everything we can to protect your personal data from loss or misuse, and from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. This section describes some of the measures we take to ensure that your personal data is secure:
- We use data centers that have a high level of physical security measures to host and protect your data and our systems;
- We conduct independent penetration tests on an annual basis and are continuously scanning our systems and applications for vulnerabilities in our systems; if you ever think that you have found a security issue or vulnerability in one of our systems please let us know at security@yougov.com;
- We use encryption to secure your personal data whilst it is in transit using TLS and in storage using AES256 encryption;
- We allow access to attributable data (by which we mean data that directly identifies you) only to those YouGov employees who need it to carry out their job responsibilities, for example our support team to allow them to respond to you when you contact us;
- We make security the responsibility of all our employees and we train our staff to identify security risks and protect your data.
Our website may from time to time contain links to and from other websites. If you follow a link to any of those websites, please note that those websites ought to have their own privacy notices and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for those websites. Please check those privacy notices before you submit your information to those websites.
Emails and notifications
This section explains the choices you have when it comes to emails and notifications we may send to you |
If you register as a YouGov panellist, it is integral to your participation that we are able to send you emails and notifications inviting you to participate in research projects, which could be conducted online via survey, by downloading a mobile app, or in person. By its nature most of our research is time-sensitive, and without the ability to notify you that we would like your opinion you’ll be at a disadvantage to other panellists because you’ll miss out on opportunities to share your opinion and earn points.
If you would prefer not to receive these service messages, you will need to withdraw from the panel entirely.
Separately, we may want to send you emails and notifications when your opinions feature in the news, or to encourage you to refer your friends and family to join too. You can opt out of these communications at any time on your Account page on the website.
Cookies and similar technologies
We use “cookies” to improve your experience as you use our website and mobile apps. This section tells you about the cookies that we use, what they do and your choices when it comes to cookies |
Cookies are small data files that allow a website to collect and store a range of data on your desktop computer, laptop or mobile device. We use cookies and similar technologies, such as tags and pixels (“cookies”) to help us to provide features and functionality on our websites and mobile apps and generally improve the way they work. We use both cookies that YouGov sets (called ‘first party cookies’) and third party cookies (which are not set by YouGov, but by other websites with YouGov’s permission).
YouGov uses cookies, and may also use the services of third-party providers that deploy cookies and other tracking technologies in connection with their services, to enable you to navigate our website and to use its features, and to collect information about your choices and preferences, which allows us to customise the website, for example by remembering your preferred language.
Your choices when it comes to cookies
When you accessed this website you were presented with an alert that notified you of our use of cookies. If you continue to use the website you are agreeing to the use of the cookies described in this notice. However, you can use your browser settings to accept or reject new cookies and to delete existing cookies. The ‘Help’ function within your browser should tell you how, and you can find more about how you can delete and manage cookies at http://www.allaboutcookies.org/. If you are primarily concerned about third party advertising cookies, you should consult either the DAA's third party Cookie opt-out mechanism at http://www.aboutads.info/choices, or that of the NAI at http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices.
You should be aware that restricting the use of cookies may mean that you will not be able to take full advantage of all the features or services available on this website.
Email tracking
Some of the emails we send to you may contain a ‘web beacon pixel’ or tracked links which allows us to identify when you have opened the email and to verify which links contained in the email you have accessed. We use this information to determine which parts of our emails are of most interest to you.
You can delete the pixel by deleting the email. If you do not wish to download the pixel to your computer or other device you can unsubscribe from our mailing list at any time on your Account page on our website.
How to contact us
If you have questions about this notice, or about how we collect, store and use personal data, you can contact us at dataprotection@yougov.com.
If you have any questions, concerns or feedback of a more general nature, please contact us
Updates to this notice
This notice was last updated on the date that appears at the beginning of the notice.
We reserve the right to change this notice at any time, so please do regularly check back here for updates.
If you object to any future changes, you may close your account by going to your Account page and clicking ‘unsubscribe’.
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