Privacy Policy

Updated and Effective as of: June 2021

The Leede Research Privacy Policy

The Leede Research Group, Inc. (“Leede Research” or “we” or “us”), a leading market research company, is firmly committed to protecting your privacy. We routinely review our security features and privacy practices, and enhance them to better protect your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains in general terms how we collect, store, use, and disclose your Personal Information (as defined below) and certain other information that we receive from you.

You acknowledge your consent to this Privacy Policy if you:

Use any of the following websites: leede.com, leedewi.com (our “Websites”),
Become a member (a “Panel Member”) of any of the panels created, maintained, or operated by us, or
Participate in market research activities, including questionnaires, surveys, and online focus groups, offered, provided, hosted, or administered by us (collectively, “Research Activities”).

What is Personal Information?

Personal Information is any information that is identifiable with you. Personal Information may include, but is not limited to, your name, date of birth, gender, mailing address, phone number, email address, identification numbers and, in certain circumstances, your opinions and individual preferences. Personal Information, however, does not include your name, business title, business address, business telephone number, business fax, or business email in your capacity as an employee of an organization, or, depending upon the jurisdiction, publicly available information. However, if you participate in Research Activities in your capacity as an employee of an organization, your responses will not be identified to you without your consent.

How Do We Collect Your Personal Information?

We always will collect your Personal Information by fair and lawful means. For instance, we collect Personal Information from Panel Members when they register for a Panel, non-Panel Members when they participate in Research Activities (“Non-Panel Participants”), and other users of our Websites (“Site Users”) when they request information regarding our products and services. We also obtain e-mail addresses of prospective Panel Members and Non-Panel Participants from providers of address lists who have assured us that such lists are comprised of individuals who have consented to be listed. Further, we may receive your email address from a third party if you indicate to the third party that you would like to join one of our Panels. In such case, we will send you a link to our registration page so that you can join the applicable Panel.

How Do We Use Your Personal Information?

We may use your Personal Information (i) to contact you and communicate with you about your Panel membership and/or your participation in Research Activities, (ii) to conduct Research Activities with you and provide you with the results of such Research Activities, (iii) to validate answers you provide us in connection with your participation in Research Activities, (iv) to notify you about new features on our Websites, or other products or services that we think you may be interested in, (v) to administer and manage our incentives programs and fulfill your requests for incentives, (vi) to allow you to participate in sweepstakes and to notify you if you are a sweepstakes winner, (vii) to update our records of your information, (viii) to provide service and support to you, (ix) to verify the integrity of submitted information, and (x) as otherwise permitted by law or authorized by you.

We may maintain your Personal Information in order to satisfy your requests and/or our business requirements. For instance, we may retain the email address of persons who opted out, or requested to be removed from, one of our Panels in order to ensure that we conform to such wish.

We do not share your Personal Information with, or sell or rent your Personal Information to, third parties, except with your consent or as described in this Privacy Policy. We follow applicable laws and industry best practices with respect to the disclosure of Personal Information to third parties. We may disclose your Personal Information to third parties as follows:

In accordance with market research industry guidelines, we may provide your Personal Information to a third party, including the client who commissioned the Research Activity you participated in, so long as the third party is contractually bound to keep your Personal Information confidential and use it only for research or statistical purposes;
In connection with market research services, to our authorized and approved agents, contractors, or partners that facilitate such services, including, without limitation, incentive program and sweepstakes prize fulfillment, web hosting, list matching, quality control, and the like; provided, however, such parties may use your Personal Information only to provide services to The Leede Group and may not share your Personal Information with any other third parties;
In response to the request or requirement of any law enforcement agency or governmental authority, to such government agencies or instrumentalities;
Pursuant to required legal process, to the related compelling party;
When necessary or desirable to exercise or preserve our legal rights;
When we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to prevent physical harm or financial loss or in connection with suspected or actual illegal activity;
In connection with a change of ownership, such as a merger or an acquisition or a sale of any or all of our business assets; or
As otherwise authorized by you.

Our Websites may contain links to information on other websites. We do not have any control over these other websites, and therefore we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information that you provide while visiting those websites. Those websites are not governed by this Privacy Policy, and if you have questions about how another website uses your information, please consult that website’s privacy statement.

What Other Information Do We Collect and How Do We Use The Information?

If you elect to register for one of our Panels and/or participate in Research Activities, we also may collect certain demographic information about you, including, without limitation, your income level, interests, hobbies, and product/technology usage. We collect this information so that we can invite you to participate in Research Activities that correspond with your interests and/or background. We also use this information to ensure that our Panel Members and Non-Panel Participants meet the demographic requirements for each Research Activity.

We also may separately invite Panel Members and Non-Panel Participants to participate in a program where we will ask you to grant us permission to monitor certain aspects of your conduct, behavior, interactions, communications, and/or exchanges, both online and offline, as part of certain Research Activities. Any information, including Personal Information, that we collect or receive in connection with your participation in any such program will be handled in accordance with this Privacy Policy and the applicable terms and conditions provided to you in connection with your invitation to participate in such program.

Additionally, we may automatically collect a variety of machine readable information about you and/or use certain technologies when you participate in certain Research Activities, as discussed below.

Log Files. As is true of most websites, our servers collect certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes your Internet Protocol (IP) address, your browser type, your Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, your operating system, and date/time stamp. We use this information for administration of our Websites, gathering demographic information about our Panel Members and Non-Panel Participants, monitoring compliance with our terms of use, troubleshooting, and investigating security breaches. We do not link this automatically-collected data to your Personal Information.
Cookies. Like many companies, we use browser cookies on our Websites. Browser cookies are bits of text that are placed on your computer’s hard drive when you visit certain websites. We use browser cookies to tell us, for example, whether you’ve visited us before or if you’re a new visitor, and to help us identify features on our Websites in which you may have the greatest interest. Browser cookies may enhance your online experience by saving your preferences while you are visiting our Websites. We and our authorized and approved agents, contractors, and partners also may use session ID cookies to make it easier for you to navigate our Websites. The “help” or "preferences" portion of the toolbar on most browsers will instruct you how to stop accepting new cookies, how to be notified when you receive a new cookie, and how to disable existing cookies. Remember though, without cookies, you may not be able to take full advantage of all of the features on our Websites or participate in certain Research Activities. We also may use Flash cookies (also known as a Local Shared Objects) for a variety of research purposes, including, without limitation, to enhance your online experience, help maintain the integrity of our research data, store certain of your preferences, display content based upon what you view, personalize your visit, track your behavior and activities across multiple visits to our Websites, detect duplicate Panel Members, and combat fraudulent participation in Research Activities. Flash cookies are similar to browser cookies, except that they can store data more complex than simple text. Flash cookies, by themselves, cannot do anything to or with the data on your computer. In addition, Flash cookies cannot access or remember your email address or other Personal Information unless you provide the information on our Websites. If you want to delete Flash cookies, you will need to access your Flash Player settings management tool available on Adobe’s website at www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html.
Web Beacons. We as well as our clients and other third parties employ a software technology called web beacons (also known as Internet tags, pixel tags, and clear GIFs), which we use for market research purposes and to help us better manage content on our Websites by informing us what content is effective. Web beacons are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, and are used to track the online movements of Web users. In contrast to cookies, which are stored on a user’s computer hard drive, web beacons are embedded invisibly on Web pages and are about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Remember though, without web beacons, you may not be able to take full advantage of all of the features on our Websites or participate in certain Research Activities. In addition, web beacons do not access your Personal Information; however, we may tie the information gathered by web beacons to your Personal Information that we already collected or received from you.
Advertising Research Purposes. We also may use browser cookies, Flash cookies, and web beacons for advertising research purposes by monitoring the types of online advertisements that you see on the websites that you visit (whether such websites are owned or operated by us or by unrelated third parties), the number of times that you see those ads, and the addresses of the websites where you saw those ads. Specifically, this technology will identify tags contained in certain online advertisements relating to our clients and will update us when you are exposed to these advertisements so that we can seek your participation in relevant Research Activities. This will not affect the performance of your computer; rather it will simply provide you with additional opportunities to receive invitations to participate in Research Activities related to your interests. The information collected will not be used to advertise or market products or services to you and will not include any Personal Information; however, we may tie the information gathered by this technology to your Personal Information that we already collected or received from you. If at any point you decide that you no longer wish to be monitored for online advertisement exposure, please submit a request at cheryl@leede.com and you will receive instructions on how to do so.
Technology Used to Secure Images. We occasionally employ technology to provide security of images displayed during Research Activities. A script embedded in certain pages displaying images prevents you from using your computer’s clipboard when you are on that page. The script is used only for certain images that are presented while you participate in applicable Research Activities. Information you may have copied to your clipboard is not captured or read, but is overwritten with blank data to prevent the secure images from being copied to your clipboard. We recommend that you paste any information that you have copied to your clipboard before commencing a Research Activity.

The use of browser cookies, Flash cookies, or web beacons by third parties on our Websites is not covered by this Privacy Policy, as we do not have access or control over their use. We recommend that you carefully read the privacy policies of each website that you visit for information on their privacy, security, data collection, and distribution policies.

How Do You Access, Correct Or Update The Information You Provide Us?

We will store your Personal Information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes indicated in this Privacy Policy or as otherwise permitted or required by law. We will make available to you your Personal Information in our custody or control upon your written request, to the extent required and/or permitted by law. To request access to your Personal Information, please submit your request to us in writing at the applicable e-mail address or postal address shown below in the “How Do You Contact Us?” section of this Privacy Policy. We will attempt to fulfill your request within 30 days. However, we may not be able to provide you with access to all of your Personal Information if doing so would likely result in us revealing Personal Information about a third party or confidential commercial information, or if such Personal Information has been collected for the purposes of a legal investigation. If this is the case, we will advise you of the reason we are unable to accommodate your request.

For Panel Members, not only is it important that you be able to correct or update information you provide to us, it is important to us as well. The results from our public studies (which report aggregate, non-identifiable information) often get reported by the media. We encourage Panel Members to keep their account profiles up-to-date, which can be done on the applicable Panel Website or by contacting us at cheryl@leede.com, so that we continue to have accurate demographic information behind our results. For other Panel Members, Non-Panel Participants, and Site Users, you may correct or update any information that you have provided to us by contacting us at cheryl@leede.com.

What Is Our Opt-Out Policy?

For Panel Members, you may terminate your membership in a Panel by sending this request via email to cheryl@leede.com. If you opt-out of any of our Panels, we will retain your information in our “unsubscribe” database for that Panel to ensure that we do not send you emails in the future inviting you to participate in Research Activities involving that Panel.

For Non-Panel Participants and Site Users, if you would like to be removed from our contact list, please send us an email to cheryl@leede.com.

What Safeguards Have We Implemented To Help Ensure The Security Of Your Information?

We have security measures in place on our Websites that are designed to prevent the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information under our custody or control. We will not activate a prospective Panel Member’s account without confirmation. Once the registration process is completed, the prospective Panel Member will be sent an email that requests confirmation of registration. The account will not be activated until confirmation is received. Additionally, all Panel Members are required to use their passwords and usernames when registering, updating their contact information, or accessing “members only” sections of our Websites. If a Panel Member cannot remember his or her password, he or she can send a message to the Panel Website’s Help Desk to retrieve it. To protect the security of our Panel Members’ contact information, requests to retrieve passwords must include certain information to allow us to verify the Panel Member’s identity.

We maintain commercially reasonable technical, administrative, and physical safeguards to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorized alteration, disclosure, or destruction of Personal Information. Additionally, only those authorized employees, contractors, and agents who have a need to know Personal Information in connection with the performance of their services are allowed to access this information. In addition, these individuals and or entities are required to be bound by confidentiality obligations and may be subject to disciplinary actions, including termination and criminal prosecution, if they fail to meet their confidentiality obligations. In the unlikely event that we suffer a breach of our security systems and an individual or entity gains unauthorized access to any Personal Information stored on our servers, we will immediately investigate such security breach, and will provide prompt notice to any individual whose Personal Information was affected.

Your Personal Information may be collected, stored, processed, used, and transferred by The Leede Research Group, Inc. affiliated companies or non-affiliated service providers in one or more countries outside your originating country. By using our Websites, becoming a Panel Member, or participating in Research Activities, you freely and specifically consent to the transfer, storage, use, and disclosure of your Personal Information among our affiliated companies and non-affiliated service providers, wherever located. Our service providers are contractually bound to respect the confidentiality of your Personal Information.

While navigating our Websites you may be directed to content or functionality that is hosted by a third party supplier, not on The Leede Research Group, Inc. owned domain. When information is collected on behalf of us exclusively on one of our Websites, this Privacy Policy will be referenced on such Website and will govern how your information is used. For other websites, the website owner’s privacy policy will be referenced and will govern how your information is used. We recommend that you carefully read the privacy policies of each website that you visit for information on their privacy, security, data collection, and distribution policies.

How Do We Notify You of Changes To This Privacy Policy?

We reserve the right, in our discretion, to modify our privacy practices and update and make changes to this Privacy Policy at any time. As we modify our Websites to accommodate changes in our business model, developments in our industry, and take advantage of technological advances, the practices described in this Privacy Policy may change. For this reason, we encourage you to refer to this Privacy Policy on an ongoing basis. This Privacy Policy is current as of the “last revised” date which appears at the top of this page. We will treat your Personal Information in a manner consistent with the version of this Privacy Policy under which it was collected, unless we have your consent via email, telephone or other appropriate means to treat it differently. By using our Websites, continuing as a Panel Member, or participating in Research Activities following any Privacy Policy change, you freely and specifically give us your consent to collect, use, transfer, and disclose your Personal Information in the manner specified in such then-current Privacy Policy.

How Do You Contact Us?

If you are a Panel Member and have questions or comments about this Privacy Policy or, as mentioned earlier, wish to correct, update or delete any of your information, please contact us as follows:

The Leede Research Group, Inc.,
1332 S. 26th Street, Manitowoc, WI 54220

Telephone: (920) 683-5940

If you are a Non-Panel Participant or Site User and have questions or comments about this Privacy Policy or, as mentioned earlier, wish to correct, update or delete any of your information, please contact us at cheryl@leede.com.

We will endeavor to respond to all inquiries via email or regular mail within 30 days of receipt.