BigPulse Privacy Statement



Last Updated June, 27th 2009

This privacy statement covers the website www.bigpulse.com. BigPulse is meticulous about all aspects of security and protection of private data.

Ownership
Personally Identifiable Information
Changing your Personally Identifiable Information
Emails
Secure Socket Layer Technology (SSL)
Vote Secrecy
Security
TRUSTe Privacy Program
Safe Harbor
Cookies
Customer Testimonials
Log Files
Sharing
Links
Tell-a-Friend
Unsubscribe
Notification of Changes
Contact Information


Ownership

The BigPulse technology is a web-based poll administration service accessed through the "My Poll Manager" link on the home page of this site. The polls are hosted on the BigPulse servers. Our clients ("Clients") use the BigPulse technology to create and manage their polls or invite BigPulse to use the technology to manager their polls ("Client Polls"). The data harvested by a Client Poll is owned by the Client, the organization promoting the poll and this client has access to the data except in the case of anonymous polls BigPulse will not disclose information about the voting record of individual voters. Sometimes BigPulse promotes its own polls ("BigPulse Polls") and in this case BigPulse is the sole owner of the information harvested by the poll. In both cases, Client Polls and BigPulse, BigPulse will not sell, share, or rent this information to others in ways different from what is disclosed in this privacy statement.

Personally Identifiable Information

In some polls you are required to enter some personally identifiable information before you can participate in the poll. Typical personally identifiable information includes your name and email address and perhaps some demographics but some Client polls may request other personally identifiable information too and this is entirely under the control of our Clients. You may also be required to create a sign-in name and password. BigPulse uses this information to assist in the administration of the poll or voting service only. Typically our Clients collect PII for the same reason but you should check our client's privacy statement to be sure. Client emails may be used to send technology upgrade alerts and related BigPulse news but these are not sent to our Clients' voters. Often Clients upload their member voter lists to the BigPulse servers and these lists may contain personally identifiable information and this avoids the need to request the same information at the poll and also assists in the management of restricted access polls.

If you wish to request information, try a test vote, or request partner information we will ask for your name and email address. We use this information to contact you about the services in which you have expressed interest.

If you wish to subscribe to our Poll Manager service we request certain personally identifiable information from you on the registration form. During registration you are required to give contact information (such as name and email address). We use this information to contact you about the services on our site in which you have expressed interest or purchased access to. We may also collect credit card information from you when you subscribe to BigPulse Poll manager. This information may include your name, email address, home address and payment information (such as credit card number). However BigPulse does not store any credit card information as all credit card details are immediately passed to the payment gateway processing facility of IP Solutions International which shares the card details only with the banks in order to process the card. The IP Solutions International ecommerce platform processes all transactions via a secure session and has been independently verified as being Level 1 Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) secure.

Clents can add users to their support team by entering the users email address and name. Support team members receive the same email alerts as Clients and have the same subscribe option.

No personally identifiable information is shared with third parties, except that Client credit card payments are processed with payment processing facility.

We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our Web site.

Changing Personally Identifiable Information

You can correct, update, amend or delete your personally identifiable information my clicking the "My Details" link in any poll.

Emails

We will send you strictly service-related announcements on rare occasions when it is necessary to do so. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance, we might send Clients an email. After you vote you might receive a vote receipt by email. Generally, you may not opt-out of these communications, which are not promotional in nature. We send service related emails such as technology upgrades to Clients and people in our Clients' support team. If you or any member of your support team do not wish to receive these emails you can use the unsubscribe link in the email. The BigPulse technology includes a bulk email service and our Clients may use this service, or request BigPulse to send emails to their members. Typically these emails relate to vote invitations in Client Polls however our Clients may use or request that BigPulse user this email service for other purposes governed by their own privacy statements. BigPulse does not use Clients member information for any other purpose other than to send the emails on behalf of Clients.

Secure Socket Layer Technology (SSL)

The security of your personal information is important to us. Secure socket layer technology (SSL) encryption is used throughout the BigPulse website wherever sensitive information is transferred. This includes the poll administration web pages, when you vote, when you enter sensitive information at a poll, when we or a Client upload your personal information to our servers and when a credit card number is entered.

Vote Secrecy

In the lower panel of all BigPulse polls you will see one of the following messages displayed:
  • Voting is anonymous A0
  • Voting is anonymous A1
  • Voting is not anonymous A2
  • Voting is transparent A3

    • Voting is anonymous A0
    This means your vote is anonymous. In A0 polls there is no link in the database, either direct or indirect, between your voting account and your votes. We call this absolute anonymous vote storage because no one, not even our engineers, can determine how you voted by viewing the database records. Time and IP address of your last vote are recorded in your voting account file, but NOT associated with your votes. Vote suppression is not possible with A0 polls unless you disclose your vote receipt number to the poll administrators. However you do need to keep your vote receipt a secret to protect anonymity – see note 1. Poll administrators may be able to view either the vote counts or who voted before the poll closes, but not both – see note 2. At times vote filtering can compromise anonymity protection – see note 3.

    Voting is anonymous A1
    This means there is a link in the database between your voting account and your votes. A common reason for choosing A1, rather than A0 (which does not record any links between voting account and votes), is to allow people to change their votes. A1 polls also enable unauthorized or unintended votes in the poll to be suppressed. However poll administrators must ask BigPulse to suppress votes and BigPulse may accept this request if its designated account managers are satisfied, at their own discretion, that the request is genuine. However you do need to keep your vote receipt a secret to protect anonymity – see note 1. Poll administrators may be able to view either the vote counts or who voted before the poll closes, but not both – see note 2. At times vote filtering can compromise anonymity protection – see note 3.

    Voting is not anonymous A2
    This means the poll administrators can see how you vote.

    Voting is transparent A3
    This means that anyone with access to the poll on the web can see how you vote, like a show of hands.

    Note 1.
    To protect the anonymity of your anonymous votes it is important not to disclose your vote receipt because sometimes vote receipts and votes are published as part of the vote verification process.

    Note 2.
    For anonymous polls, prior to vote close and before the data is released for viewing the poll administrator may be able to view the vote counts or who has voted but not both together – depending on how the poll was configured before poll open time. Polls can also be configured to never show who voted. Before the poll has closed the poll administrator can ask BigPulse if someone has voted. However this information is provided sparingly and only if BigPulse believes the reason for the request is genuine and not an attempt to defeat anonymous voting. The time of your vote is suppressed from view at all times in anonymous polls, except in the case where the vote records do not contain a vote time stamp.

    Note 3.
    If you vote in a poll that places people into known groupings or categories (a "Voter Category Poll") then the poll administrators can use filtering to view the vote counts from a selected category in all the linked poll. Normally this filtering does not compromise anonymity. However in the case that everyone in your category votes the same way, or it's known that you are the only person who selected the category, then your voting record in other polls, questions or ballots linked to the Voter Category Poll can be determined by the poll administrators. Also the vote counts can be filtered using the categories in any popdown selectors seen in your "My Details" page. However, in this case the filtered vote counts are suppressed from view if a category has only one voter in it or all voters in the category vote the same way – except this protection by suppression is overridden if you see A0f or A1f in the lower panel in the poll.

    Security

    BigPulse is meticulous about all aspects of security and protection of privacy information. When subscribers and users submit sensitive information via the website it is protected securely both online and off-line.

    All subscriber and user information is stored in highly security environments. Only authorize employees who need the information to perform a specific task are granted access to personally identifiable information. Furthermore, all BigPulse employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Any time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance of subscriber privacy. The servers used to store personally identifiable information are kept in highly secure restricted access specialized server facilities.

    The security of your information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as credit card number or email address) on our registration or order forms, we encrypt that information in the transfer process using secure socket layer technology (SSL).

    If you have any questions about the security at our website, please contact BigPulse and request a copy of our security document.

    TRUSTe Privacy Program

    BigPulse is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program. TRUSTe is an independent, organization whose mission is to build user’s trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. This privacy statement covers the Web site www.bigpulse.com. Because BigPulse wants to demonstrate its commitment to your privacy, we have agreed to disclose our information practices and have our privacy practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe. If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact the privacy officer at contact. If you do not receive acknowledgement of your inquiry or your inquiry has not been satisfactorily addressed, you should contact TRUSTe at http://www.truste.org/consumers/watchdog_complaint.php TRUSTe will then serve as a liaison with us to resolve your concerns.

    Safe Harbor

    When we collect personal information from you on our website, we follow the privacy principles of and comply with the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use and re­tention of personal data from the European Union. BigPulse’s Safe Harbor certification can be found at http://web.ita.doc.gov/safeharbor/shlist.nsf/webPages/safe+harbor+list. For more information about the Safe Harbor Principles, please visit the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Website.

    Cookies

    Our site uses cookies to keep track of secure session after you have logged in. These session ID cookies enable BigPulse to provide a more user-friendly website. A cookie is a bit of data that is sent to your web browser from a Web server, in this case the BigPulse web server. This data is never "executed" as code, so is not considered to be a virus risk.

    Standard browsers check cookies for length, expiration date and the domain which it came from. We never distribute, sell, or share your cookie or account information with other parties. Your cookie contains no personally identifiable information diectly. However BigPulse uses the cookie to identify your personal voting account as part of the normal session management process. Your voting account includes the personally identifiable information entered by you, or by our Client, or by BigPulse under instruction from our Client. This personally identifiable information can be seen in your My Details page attached to the poll. However, BigPulse has no access to or control over cookies created by our Clients or advertises or other third parties which may be linked to from BigPulse. The use of cookies by any third party website is not covered by our privacy statement. We do not have access or control over these cookies. The only information we track for anonymous sessions is external referer, refered-to page and browser language choice.

    Customer Testimonials

    We post customer testimonials on our web site which may contain a link to the customers website. We do obtain the customer's consent via email prior to posting the testimonial. The only personally identifiable information included in the testimonials is the customer's name and organization and country or region.

    Log Files

    BigPulse may use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer the site and gather broad demographic information. IP addresses may be used to help track down people violating or suspected of violating, the Terms and Conditions of this website.

    Sharing

    BigPulse may share statistical demographic information with partners and advertisers. Statistical information does not identify visitors or subscribers. BigPulse does not share, rent, or trade personally indentifable information with third parties for their promotional purposes.

    Links

    This website contains links to other sites. Please be aware that BigPulse is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Website.

    Tell-a-Friend

    Some polls display a "Tell-a-Friend" link. It invites visitors to enter their email address and the email addresses and names of a few friends. It then sends the friends a one-time email inviting them to visit the site. BigPulse uses this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email and does not store any of this information.

    Send additional test vote invitations If you choose to use the send additional test vote invitations feature, we will ask for your friend’s name, and email address. We use this information to send your friend an email inviting him or her to do a test vote. These emails may also be used to send occassional followup test vote invitations or information relevant to the BigPulse service. These emails include an unsubscribe link.

    Unsubscribe

    You can unsubscribe as a BigPulse member using the "Unsubscribe" link located in the lower menu of any page. "Unsubscribe" removes you from all lists and erases your email address from the system.

    Notification of Changes

    We suggest you check this page from time to time and note any changes. If at any time BigPulse would like to use personally identifiable information in a manner materially different from that stated at in the Privacy Statement users will be notified by way of email and asked to consent to the change by way of return email. If consent is not given or the email is ignored the manner in which that member's details are used will not be changed.

    Contact Information

    You may correct or delete your Personal Information from My Details which is accessed from any by clicking the My Details link. If you need any help with this respect you may contact the Privacy Officer. If necessary, the Privacy Officer will contact another employee to assist in completing your requested task.

    If you have any questions or complaints, please contact the Privacy Officer.