Privacy statement Bpact

Bpact and my
privacy

Bpact is a research platform based in Leuven. If you wish, you can become a member of our panel to answer questions for our clients or to participate in group discussions. Our clients include government authorities and policy makers, as well as companies and non-profit organisations.

In addition, you can also become a member of a panel in your village, town or city through Bpact Local to participate in research for and about the village, town or city where you have your main residence. You may also be able to register for other panels (e.g. if your province also has a panel with us). Registration is always voluntary and you can always unsubscribe or change your details on your profile page. You are only allowed to create one profile. People who register with several email addresses will be removed from the panel and lose their points.

It is easy to participate. We will send you a non-committal invitation by email. You are only allowed to participate once in every survey. Your participation will be removed from the results and no points will be awarded if you participate more than once.

We want you to trust us and answer our questions honestly. This is only possible if we guarantee your privacy. Therefore, we would like to briefly explain what we do and do not do.

  • We process your personal data only if you explicitly agree to it. You therefore know exactly what data you give us.
  • When you register, we ask you for your first name, email address, gender, date of birth, postcode, educational qualification and activity or occupation. We ask you additional questions regarding your profile during your membership, so that we can ask you more specific questions (e.g. about your sector in which you work or your family).
  • We do not give any personal data to our clients unless you choose to participate in a group discussion with one of them, for example. Then you personally also know that you are not anonymous. In all other cases, we only give anonymous data to our clients. Furthermore, we only disclose general user statistics, such as “52% of our users are men.”
  • Our market research is not a disguised form of marketing. We adhere to the code of conduct of the international association of market research agencies, Esomar.
  • We do not approach any children under the age of 16.
  • We like to reward you for participating. We have a points programme and reward scheme. We use external companies for this purpose. These are our processors. This means that they must keep your data strictly confidential and are not allowed to use it for their own purposes.
  • Did you take part in a survey and, at the end of that survey, give Bpact separate permission to become a panel member? Then we sometimes take certain answers (such as occupation, gender, age and education) over from Bpact. That way, we avoid having to ask the same questions every so often.

Of course, we would like to tell you exactly what we do with personal data.  You can find this out by way of the questions and answers below. These will also give you information about how we handle your privacy if you give us contact details as a business client.

Version: 19 January 2024

Who is Bpact?

Bpact BV is a Belgian Research Platform that has its registered office at Maria-Theresiastraat 123, 3000 Leuven. Bpact offers clients the opportunity to submit questions to a panel of citizens and consumers. For each assignment, we select panellists according to their profile and invite them to participate in research, questionnaires or participation projects that we carry  out for ourselves or as instructed by third parties. Such research and projects can be conducted on our own platforms or those of third parties.

Clients include government authorities and policy makers, as well as companies and non-profit organisations. Bpact adheres to the code of conduct of the international association of market research agencies Esomar,

Bpact is a data controller  as this is referred to in the General Data Protection Regulation with regard to the processing of personal data of its panellists. In addition, Bpact also processes the personal data of its (own business) clients (referred to hereafter as “Bpact clients”) and of its employees (including temporary workers and advisers).

What is personal data?

Personal data is any information  relating to someone directly or information that can be traced back to that person. Examples of personal data include names, dates of birth, addresses, telephone numbers, IP addresses and email addresses.

How does Bpact collect personal data about you as a panellist?

We collect the personal data that you give us yourself as a panellist when you log in and when you participate in surveys, polls or participation projects. In addition, we also automatically collect your IP address, data about your device and operating system, your most recently visited website and the date and time of your visit. This may also include special personal data if the client requests this. Under the GDPR, it is prohibited by law to process special personal data unless the organisation can invoke a specific exception. In many cases, this will be your “explicit” consent.

We also collect personal data via cookies (see the answer to the question on cookies below). We do not collect any data about you from third parties.

If you subscribe to our newsletter, we also collect the date and time of confirmation of your subscription. This allows us to prove that you have given your consent.

For what purposes does Bpact process your personal data as a panellist?

We use your personal data when processing your responses for statistical purposes. For example, to determine whether young people have different opinions from older people or to analyse whether there are differences between people living in the city and those living outside it. We do not collect more data than necessary for the purpose of the research.

Bpact does not approach young people under 16 to participate on the panel.

We never report about you as an individual with identifiable data unless you have given us explicit permission to do so, for example, by participating in a group discussion with a client or because you consent to the processing by us and by a client (see the answer about joint responsibility).

After having completed the research, we provide the anonymised raw data to our clients in addition to the aggregated research report. When anonymising the data, any data that could lead to direct or indirect identification of you as a person are removed. We also take into account the size of the group researched; we do not provide the raw data if the group is too small and such fact could lead to traceability.

When we select you to participate in a research, either on our own behalf or on behalf of a client, we will inform you of the aim of the research if this is not in conflict with the objective of the research. If possible, we will also inform you about the client of the survey. If the objective of the research is to measure name  awareness, this cannot be done without compromising the quality of the study.

Participation on our panel is completely voluntary. You decide whether you want to participate. The basis for processing your answers is your explicit consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time. We will then delete all your data.

For what purposes does Bpact process your data as a (business) client?

Are you a business client? Then we collect not only your name and e-mail address as a contact, but also the name, address and registration number of the organisation you work for, payment details and any correspondence. We process your data based on the need to enter into and execute the agreement.

We also process your personal data as a client on the basis of our legitimate interest for our own marketing purposes. Marketing activities that fall under this purpose include commercial and informative email messages such as newsletters, white papers, invitations to events we organise and information about products and services we provide and in which you may be interested.

We only collect data directly from you, and not from third parties. Your data will be kept and used for the above purposes until you indicate that we are no longer allowed to use your data for this purpose. To do so, you can use the unsubscribe option in the emails we send you.

What are cookies and how does Bpact use them?

A “cookie” is a small packet of information sent to your browser by a web server and then stored on the hard disk of your computer. Cookies can be used to identify users and thereby facilitate certain procedures. You can always refuse a cookie by adjusting your browser settings. Bpact uses functional and analytical cookies.

  • Functional cookies ensure that you have a good experience of a website or platform used as part of a research. For example, you are not asked to log in every time, you will find your search terms again and you will not visit our websites in a different language every time.
  • Analytical cookies help us construct our website so that you will like it. They tell us which pages you visit for how long, what you click and whether you use the latest internet browser to visit our website(s). We also use these cookies to prevent panellists from completing a survey more than once, and to ensure that you can pause a survey to continue filling it in at a later stage. We have concluded a processing agreement with Google for Analytics to minimise the impact on privacy.
  • Marketing cookies are used to collect data for advertising purposes, namely the anonymised measurement of advertising campaigns and anonymised data collection.

What do we do with your data if we are (jointly) responsible?

In exceptional cases, we are jointly responsible with other organisations for collecting answers to questions we put to the panel. We indicate this very clearly if that is the case. Then it is possible that we do share personal data with the other jointly responsible parties. But then you give us your explicit permission to do so.

In addition, Bpact also collaborates with the Leuven-based market research company of Indiville. You may be asked if you want to join our panel at the end of the Indiville surveys. If you agree, Bpact may take over some data about you from Indiville, such as your age, occupation, education and gender. That way, we will not need to ask you the same questions again.

Sharing your data with other parties

We call on external service providers, representatives or contractors to provide services on behalf of Bpact in the framework of your participation in research, surveys or participation projects that we conduct for ourselves or on behalf of third parties, including the provision of a website or platform. Such third parties may need to access or process your personal data when providing the services. But they may only do so as processors, i.e. under strict confidentiality, and only for the purposes we determine. We lay down these arrangements by means of a written processor agreement.

We may be required to provide certain personal data, for example in legal proceedings or to respond to a possible claim. In that case, we will first check most carefully whether we are really legally obliged to provide the data.

Processing your data in/outside the EU

If we have your personal data processed by (sub)processors, we opt, where possible, for services that keep the data within the EU. If we do use the services of a US company, for example, they must at least be active members of the Privacy Shield.

Security measures

We have taken extensive technical and organisational measures to prevent unauthorised use of personal data. Your answers and personal data are used solely for the purpose of research activities and, therefore, not to sell or send you anything.

Our employees, including temporary workers, and advisers sign a separate confidentiality agreement. We have a sound information security policy, and monitor compliance with it.

Unfortunately, no data transmission whatsoever through the internet can be considered as being guaranteed to be 100% secure. Therefore, although we always strive to protect your personal data, Bpact cannot guarantee the security of any data you transmit to us from our online products or services. You do so at your own risk. Once we have received your data, we make every effort to ensure that it is secured on our systems.

Storage periods

As the data controller of your answers as a panellist, we will keep your personal data for as long as you participate on our panel. We will immediately remove your data from our active systems if you cancel your panel membership. However, we will store your answers for up to six months after cancellation. This period of up to six months is necessary to verify reported research results, but the data will no longer be used for any other purpose during this period.

As the data controller of business customers’ contact details, we keep the data for two years after you have purchased a service from us. We will send you an annual reminder that you are in our customer database so that we can keep the contact data up to date.

We keep the contract for 5 years after the agreement has been terminated for matters related to any civil disputes. For tax reasons, we keep our payment records for 7 years after the last payment due has been made.

Your privacy rights

As a panellist, you can ask to exercise the privacy rights you have under the GDPR. You can easily withdraw your consent to membership   by way of a link at the bottom of every email you receive from us. We will process your other requests within 1 month, at the latest.

You have the following rights:

  • Right of inspection
  • Right of rectification
  • Right of deletion
  • Right of restriction
  • Right of data portability
  • Right of objection
  • Right to withdraw consen

You can send us a request to this effect at  privacy@bpact.be. There may be reasons why we cannot comply with your request. If that is the case, we will adequately explain this to you.

Filing a complaint with the Data Protection Authority

Not satisfied with the way we handle your privacy? If so, you can also file a complaint through the Data Protection Authority, who can be reached through:  https://www.dataprotectionauthority.be/citizen

Adjustments to our privacy statement

We may amend our privacy statement. We will announce such amendment on our website. If we want to substantially change the purposes of the processing, and the processing is based on your consent, we will first ask for your consent again for such new purposes. 

Identity and contact

If you have any questions about how we handle your personal data, please contact us at the following email address privacy@bpact.be. Our DPO (Data Protection Officer) will then contact you