Privacy & Security

ClearlyRated, LLC Comprehensive Privacy Policy

Effective Date:  October 1st, 2023

ClearlyRated, LLC (“ClearlyRated”) is a survey based research and technology company.  This privacy policy covers all ClearlyRated owned web sites (the “Sites”) and all services available through the Sites.  If you have questions or concerns regarding this policy, you should contact us at [email protected] or 522 SW 5th Ave Ste 600 Portland, OR 97204.


Data Privacy Framework

ClearlyRated complies with the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework Principles, UK Extension to the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, and the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Principles ("Data Privacy Framework") as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal information transferred from the European Union, United Kingdom, and Switzerland to the United States.  ClearlyRated has certified to the Department of Commerce that it adheres to the Data Privacy Framework Principles with respect to such information. If there is any conflict between the terms in this privacy policy and the Data Privacy Framework Principles, the Data Privacy Framework Principles  shall govern. To learn more about the Data Privacy Framework program, and to view our certification, please visit https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov/.

When ClearlyRated receives personal information under the Data Privacy Framework and then transfers it to a third-party service provider acting as an agent on ClearlyRated's behalf, ClearlyRated has certain liability under the Data Privacy Framework if both (i) the agent processes the information in a manner inconsistent with the Data Privacy Framework and (ii) ClearlyRated is responsible for the event giving rise to the damage.

In compliance with the Data Privacy Framework Principles, ClearlyRated commits to resolve complaints about our collection or use of your personal information.  European Union, United Kingdom, and Swiss individuals with inquiries or complaints regarding our Data Privacy Framework policy should first contact ClearlyRated at:

[email protected]
522 SW 5th Ave Ste 600
Portland, OR 97204

ClearlyRated commits to cooperate with the panel established by the EU data protection authorities (DPAs), UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), and the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, as applicable and comply with the advice given by the panel and Commissioner with regard to data transferred from the EU, UK, and Switzerland.

The Federal Trade Commission has jurisdiction over ClearlyRated’s compliance with the Data Privacy Framework.  In certain situations, we may be required to disclose personal data in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.

Under certain conditions, more fully described on the Data Privacy Framework website https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov/, you may invoke binding arbitration when other dispute resolution procedures have been exhausted.


Surveying Company and Survey Respondent

ClearlyRated is used by surveying companies (individual companies that use ClearlyRated to conduct online surveys on their behalf) and survey respondents (people who answer those surveys).  The data received and processed from a surveying company and a survey respondent is different and therefore the remainder of this privacy policy is divided by those two different roles.  Please review the appropriate section based on your contact with ClearlyRated.


Surveying Company

Information Collected

When you use ClearlyRated, we collect information relating to you and your use of our services from a variety of sources.

Account information. When you register for an ClearlyRated account, we collect your personal contact information (name, company, phone number, title, email, and a password).

Billing information. If you make a payment to ClearlyRated, we require you to provide your billing details, such as a name, address, email address and financial information corresponding to your selected method of payment.

Device data. We collect data from the device and application you use to access our services, such as your IP address, operating system version, device type, system and performance information, and browser type. We may also infer your geographic location based on your IP address.

Information from page tags. We use third party tracking services that employ cookies and page tags (also known as web beacons) to collect aggregated and anonymized data about visitors to our websites. This data includes usage and user statistics. Emails sent by ClearlyRated or by users through our services may include page tags that allow the sender to collect information about who opened those emails and clicked on links within them. We do this to allow the email sender to measure the performance of their email messaging and to learn how to improve email deliverability and open rates.

Referral data. If you arrive at an ClearlyRated website from an external source (such as a link on another website or in an email), we record information about the source that referred you to us.

Survey Respondent information. In order for us to send email survey invitations to potential survey respondents we must collect from you basic contact information, including email address, for all of the individuals you would like to send a survey to.  You have the option to provide additional custom data for each individual, along with segmentation information. We don’t use any of this information for our own purposes or email them except at your direction.

Survey data. We store your survey data (questions and responses) for you.

Usage data. We collect usage data about you whenever you interact with our services. This may include which webpages you visit, what you click on, when you performed those actions, and so on. Additionally, like most websites today, our web servers keep log files that record data each time a device accesses those servers. The log files contain data about the nature of each access, including originating IP addresses, internet service providers, the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system versions, and timestamps.

Information Use

Generally, we use the information we collect from you in connection with providing our services to you and, on your behalf, to your survey respondents.

Provide our services. This includes providing you with customer support, which requires us to access your information to assist you.

Manage our services. We internally use your information, including certain survey data, for the following limited purposes:

  • To monitor, maintain, and improve our services and features. We internally perform statistical and other analysis on information we collect (including usage data, device data, referral data, question and response data and information from page tags) to analyze and measure user behavior and trends, to understand how people use our services, and to monitor, troubleshoot and improve our services, including to help us evaluate or devise new features. We may use your information for internal purposes designed to keep our services secure and operational, such as for troubleshooting and testing purposes, and for service improvement, marketing, research and development purposes.
  • To prevent potentially illegal activities.
  • To screen for and prevent undesirable or abusive activity.

Contact you about your service or account. We occasionally send you communications of a transactional nature (e.g. service-related announcements, billing-related matters, changes to our services or policies, a welcome email when you first register). You can’t opt out of these communications since they are required to provide our services to you.

Contact you for marketing purposes. We will only do this if you have consented to ClearlyRated contacting you for this purpose.  You may opt out of these communications at any time by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link in them.

Respond to legal requests and prevent harm. If we receive a subpoena or other legal request, we may need to inspect the data we hold to determine how to respond.

Information Sharing

The only times we will disclose or share your personal information or survey data with a third party is under one of the circumstances identified below,  we have obtained your express consent, or aggregated the information so that individuals or other entities cannot reasonably be identified by it. Where required by law, we will obtain your express consent prior to disclosing or sharing any personal information.

We may disclose:

Your information to our service providers. We use service providers who help us to provide you with our services. We give relevant persons working for some of these providers access to your information, but only to the extent necessary for them to perform their services for us. We also implement reasonable contractual and technical protections to ensure the confidentiality of your personal information and data is maintained, used only for the provision of their services to us, and handled in accordance with this privacy policy.

Your email address to your organization. If the email address under which you’ve registered your account belongs to or is controlled by an organization, we may disclose that email address to that organization in order to help it understand who associated with that organization uses ClearlyRated.

Aggregated or de-identified information to third parties to improve or promote our services. No individuals can reasonably be identified or linked to any part of the information we share with third parties to improve or promote our services.

The presence of a cookie to advertise our services. We may ask advertising networks and exchanges to display ads promoting our services on other websites. We may ask them to deliver those ads based on the presence of a cookie, but in doing so will not share any other personal information with the advertiser. Our advertising network partners may use cookies and page tags or web beacons to collect certain non-personal information about your activities on this and other websites to provide you with targeted advertising based upon your interests. If you do not wish to have this information used for the purpose of serving you such targeted ads, you may opt-out at http://preferences-mgr.truste.com/ or, if you’re located in the European Union, at http://www.youronlinechoices.eu. You will continue to receive generic ads.

Your information if required or permitted by law. We may disclose your information as required or permitted by law, or when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, and/or to comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, subpoena, or other legal process served on us.

Your information if there’s a change in business ownership or structure. If ownership of all or substantially all of our business changes, or we undertake a corporate reorganization (including a merger or consolidation) or any other action or transfer between ClearlyRated entities, you expressly consent to ClearlyRated transferring your information to the new owner or successor entity so that we can continue providing our services. If required, ClearlyRated will notify the applicable data protection agency in each jurisdiction of such a transfer in accordance with the notification procedures under applicable data protection laws.

Limiting Use and Disclosure of Information

You have the right to request that we not use or disclose any of your information as described in the Information Use and Information Sharing sections above. However, if the use or disclosure of your information is necessary for us to provide services to you the only way we can limit use and disclosure of that information is to discontinue providing services to you. You can make that request via the contact information provided in this privacy policy.

Rights to Collected Information

Update your account details. You can update your account information on your My Account page. Information is updated immediately.

Access and correct your personal information. As an account holder, you may access and correct certain personal information that ClearlyRated holds about you by visiting your My Account page.  Some account holders and other individuals (including those whose information we receive under the Data Privacy Framework) have certain legal rights to obtain information of whether we hold personal information about them, to access personal information we hold about them, and to obtain its correction, update, amendment or deletion in appropriate circumstances.  For some information, these rights may be exercised through the My Account page mentioned above, and in all cases, requests to exercise these rights may be directed to our customer support team. These rights are subject to some exceptions, such as where giving you access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of other individuals. We will respond to your request to exercise these rights within a reasonable time and, where required by law or where we deem it otherwise appropriate and practicable to do so, we will honor your request.

Download/backup your survey data. Depending on what subscription plan you have, we provide you with the ability to export, share and publish your survey data in a variety of formats. This allows you to create your own backups or conduct offline data analysis.

Delete your survey data. As long as you maintain an account with us, we may retain your deleted data for a limited time in case you delete something by accident and need to restore it (which you can request by contacting customer support). To the extent permitted by law, we will permanently delete your data if you request to cancel your account.

Cancel your account. To cancel and delete your account, please contact customer support. Deleting your account will cause all the survey data in the account to be permanently deleted from our systems within a reasonable time period, as permitted by law, and will disable your access to any other services that require a ClearlyRated account. We will respond to any such request, and any appropriate request to access, correct, update or delete your personal information within the time period specified by law (if applicable) or without excessive delay. We will promptly fulfill requests to delete personal data unless the request is not technically feasible or such data is required to be retained by law (in which case we will block access to such data, if required by law).

Other Important Information

Changes to this privacy policy. We may modify this privacy policy at any time, but if we do so, we will notify you by publishing the changes on this website. If we determine the changes are material, we will provide you with additional, prominent notice as is appropriate under the circumstances, such as via email or in another conspicuous manner reasonably designed to notify you. If, after being informed of these changes, you do not cancel your subscription and continue to use our services beyond the advance-notice period, you will be considered as having expressly consented to the changes in our privacy policy. If you disagree with the terms of this privacy policy or any updated privacy policy, you may close your account at any time.

Security. Details about ClearlyRated’s security practices are available in our Security Statement.

Data locations. Our servers are based in the United States, so your personal information will be hosted and processed by us in the United States.

Cookies. We and our partners use cookies and similar technologies on our websites. Cookies are small bits of data we store on the device you use to access our services so we can recognize repeat users. Each cookie expires after a certain period of time, depending on what we use it for. We use cookies and similar technologies for several reasons:

  • For security reasons. We use cookies to authenticate your identity, such as confirming whether you are currently logged into ClearlyRated.
  • To provide you with personalized content. We may store user preferences in cookies to personalize the content you see. We also use cookies to ensure that users can’t retake certain surveys that they have already completed.
  • To improve our services. We use cookies to measure your usage of our websites and track referral data, as well as to occasionally display different versions of content to you. This information helps us to develop and improve our services and optimize the content we display to users.
  • To advertise to you. We, or our service providers and other third parties we work with, may place cookies when you visit our website and other websites or when you open emails that we send you, in order to provide you with more tailored marketing content (about our services or other services), and to evaluate whether this content is useful or effective. For instance, we may evaluate which ads are clicked on most often, and whether those clicks lead users to make better use of our tools, features and services. If you don’t want to receive ads that are tailored to you based on your anonymous online activity, you may “opt out” of many of the companies that are involved in such tailoring by going to http://www.aboutads.info. Opting out in this way does not mean you will not receive any ads; it just means that you will not receive ads from such companies that have been tailored to you based on your activities and inferred preferences.
  • Google Analytics. In addition to the above, we have implemented on our websites and other services certain Google Analytics features that support Display Advertising, including re-targeting. Visitors to our websites may opt out of certain types of Google Analytics tracking, customize the Google Display Network ads by using the Google Ad Preferences Manager and learn more about how Google serves ads by viewing its Customer Ads Help Center. If you do not wish to participate in Google Analytics, you may also download the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

Online Tracking. We currently do not process or comply with any web browser’s “do not track” signal or other similar mechanism that indicates a request to disable online tracking of individual users who visit our websites or use our services (unless otherwise stated in a service-specific privacy statement).

Safety of Children and COPPA. Our services are not intended for and may not permissibly be used by individuals under the age of 13. ClearlyRated does not knowingly collect personal data from persons under the age of 13 or allow them to register. If it comes to our attention that we have collected personal data from such a person, we may delete this information without notice. If you have reason to believe that this has occurred, please contact customer support.

Additional Information for European Union, UK, and Swiss Users

“Personal data”. For users located in the EU, UK, or Switzerland, references to “personal information” in this policy are equivalent to what is commonly referred to as “personal data” in the EU, UK, or Switzerland.

About IP addresses. Our servers record the incoming IP addresses of visitors to our websites (whether or not the visitor has a ClearlyRated account) and store the IP addresses in log files. We use these log files for purposes such as system administration and maintenance, record keeping, tracking referring web sites, inferring your location, and security purposes (e.g. controlling abuse, spam and DDOS attacks). We also store IP addresses along with certain actions you take on our system.  By agreeing to this privacy policy, you expressly consent to ClearlyRated using your IP address for the foregoing purposes. If you wish to opt out from the foregoing consent to use your IP address, you must cancel your account (if you have one) or not respond to a survey if requested to do so.

Data controller. ClearlyRated is the data controller for billing and other account information that we collect from users in the EU, UK, and Switzerland. However, the data controller for survey data is the surveying company. The surveying company determines how their survey questions and responses are used and disclosed. ClearlyRated only processes such survey data in accordance with the instructions and permissions (including those given under this privacy policy) selected by the surveying company.

Accessing and correcting your personal data. You have the right to access and correct the personal information that ClearlyRated holds about you. This right may be exercised by visiting your account’s My Account page or by contacting customer support.

Your responsibilities. By using our services, you agree to comply with applicable data protection requirements when collecting and using your survey data, such as requirements to inform respondents about the specific uses and disclosures of their data.

Consents. By using any ClearlyRated service you expressly consent to the following:

  • You consent to the collection, use, disclosure and processing of your personal data in the manner described in this privacy policy, including our procedures relating to cookies, IP addresses and log files.
  • Our servers are based in the United States, so your personal data will be primarily processed by us in the United States. You consent to the transfer and processing of your personal data in the United States by ClearlyRated and by our service providers.
  • You consent and agree that we may transfer your data to data processors located in countries, including the United States, which do not have data protection laws that provide the same level of protection that exists in countries in the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, or Switzerland. Your consent is voluntary, and you may revoke your consent by opting out at any time. Please note that if you opt-out, we may no longer be able to provide you our services.
  • You consent to us sharing your personal data with relevant persons working for service providers who assist us to provide our services.
  • If you have enabled cookies on your web browser, you consent to our use of cookies as described in this privacy policy.

Survey Respondent

Information Collected

When you respond to surveys hosted by ClearlyRated, we collect, on behalf and upon instructions (including the ones provided in this privacy policy) of surveying companies, information relating to you and your use of our services from a variety of sources. These are listed below.

Survey responses. We collect and store the survey responses that you submit. The surveying company is responsible for this data and manages it. A survey may ask you to provide personal information or data. If you have any questions about a survey you are taking, please contact the surveying company directly as ClearlyRated is not responsible for the content of that survey. The surveying company is usually the same person that invited you to take the survey and sometimes they have their own privacy policy. In any case where we specifically tell you, usually through the email invitation, your survey response is anonymous our system will not allow the surveying company to see your survey response in connection with any identifying information that would allow the surveying company to know conclusively it was you that completed the survey. The surveying company still owns your survey response in that case, but they will not be able to see that it was you who completed it.

Usage data. We collect usage data about you whenever you interact with our services. This may include which webpages you visit, what you click on, when you performed those actions, and so on. Additionally, as with most websites today, our web servers keep log files that record data each time a device accesses those servers. The log files contain data about the nature of each access, including originating IP addresses, internet service providers, the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system versions, and timestamps.

Device data. We collect data from the device and application you use to access our services, such as your IP address, operating system version, device type, system and performance information, and browser type. We may also infer your geographic location based on your IP address. Your IP address will be linked to your survey responses.

Referral data. We record information about the source that referred you to a survey.

Information from page tags. We use third party tracking services that employ cookies and page tags (also known as web beacons) to collect aggregated and anonymized data about visitors to our websites. This data includes usage and user statistics.

Your email address. We collect your email address and basic contact information when the surveying company requests that we survey you on their behalf. We don’t use this to send you email except at the direction of a surveying company. The emails we send on behalf of a surveying company appear to come from that surveying company’s email address. If you no longer want to be contacted by a surveying company, please contact the surveying company directly or follow the unsubscribe link in the footer of the survey invitation email you received to opt-out of future surveys from the surveying company.

Providing survey responses is voluntary. You can always choose not to provide an answer to any given survey question.

Information Use

Your survey responses are owned and managed by the surveying company, and we treat that information as private to the surveying company. Please contact the surveying company directly to understand how they will use your survey responses. ClearlyRated does not sell survey responses to third parties and we do not use any contact details collected in our customers’ surveys to contact survey respondents.

We also use the information we collect from you (including usage data, device data, referral data and information from page tags) to manage and improve our services, for research purposes, and for the various purposes described in the Surveying Company version of this privacy policy.

Information Sharing and Limiting Use

ClearlyRated does not sell your survey responses. We will share your survey responses with third parties only as described in this privacy policy.

We disclose your survey responses to surveying companies. We host surveys for surveying companies, but they are the primary curator of survey data. Anything you expressly disclose in your survey responses will be provided to them. Please contact the surveying company directly to understand how they might share your survey responses.

Contact the surveying company to limit the use and disclosure of personal data collected in a survey response. We host surveys for surveying companies, but they are the primary curator of survey data. Anything you expressly disclose in your survey responses will be provided to them and to limit the use and disclosure of that information you should contact the surveying company. As previously described ClearlyRated does not sell your survey responses and will only share with a third party as described in this privacy policy.

Rights to Collected Information

Contact the surveying company to access and correct your responses and personal information. Because we collect survey responses on behalf of surveying companies, you will need to contact the surveying company if you have any questions about the survey, or if you want to access, update, or delete anything in your responses. You may request access to and correction of the personal information we hold about you by contacting customer support, but in most cases ClearlyRated cannot provide you with this access since survey responses are the surveying company’s private information and giving you access may have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of other individuals. We will respond to your request for access or correction within a reasonable time and, where reasonable and practicable to do so, we will provide access to your personal information in the manner requested by you.

Opt out of receiving surveys. You may opt out of receiving email invitations to take surveys which are sent by surveying companies via ClearlyRated.

Other Important Information

Changes to this privacy policy. We may modify this privacy policy at any time, but if we do so, we will notify you by publishing the changes on this website. If we determine the changes are material, we will provide you with additional, prominent notice as is appropriate under the circumstances, such as via email or in another conspicuous manner reasonably designed to notify you. If, after being informed of these changes, you continue to use our services beyond the advance-notice period, you will be considered as having expressly consented to the changes in our privacy policy. If you disagree with the terms of this privacy policy or any updated privacy policy, you may not respond to a survey.

Security. Details about ClearlyRated’s security practices are available in our Security Statement.

Data locations. Our servers are based in the United States, so your personal information will be hosted and processed by us in the United States.

Cookies. We and our partners use cookies and similar technologies on our websites. Cookies are small bits of data we store on the device you use to access our services so we can recognize repeat users. Each cookie expires after a certain period of time, depending on what we use it for. We use cookies and similar technologies for several reasons:

  • To provide you with personalized content. We may store user preferences in cookies to personalize the content you see. We also use cookies to ensure that users can’t retake certain surveys that they have already completed.
  • To improve our services. We use cookies to measure your usage of our websites and track referral data, as well as to occasionally display different versions of content to you. This information helps us to develop and improve our services and optimize the content we display to users.
  • Google Analytics. In addition to the above, we have implemented on our websites and other services certain Google Analytics features that support Display Advertising, including re-targeting. Visitors to our websites may opt out of certain types of Google Analytics tracking, customize the Google Display Network ads by using the Google Ad Preferences Manager and learn more about how Google serves ads by viewing its Customer Ads Help Center. If you do not wish to participate in Google Analytics, you may also download the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

Online Tracking. We currently do not process or comply with any web browser’s “do not track” signal or other similar mechanism that indicates a request to disable online tracking of individual users who visit our websites or use our services (unless otherwise stated in a service-specific privacy statement).

Safety of Children and COPPA. Our services are not intended for and may not permissibly be used by individuals under the age of 13. ClearlyRated does not knowingly collect personal data from persons under 13 or allow them to register. If it comes to our attention that we have collected personal data from such a person, we may delete this information without notice. If you have reason to believe that this has occurred, please contact customer support.

Additional Information for European Union, United Kingdom, and Switzerland Users

“Personal data”. For users located in the EU, UK, or Switzerland, references to “personal information” in this policy are equivalent to what is commonly referred to as “personal data” in the EU, UK, and Switzerland.

About IP addresses. Our servers record the incoming IP addresses of visitors to our websites (whether or not the visitor has a ClearlyRated account) and store the IP addresses in log files. We use these log files for purposes such as system administration and maintenance, record keeping, tracking referring web sites, inferring your location, and security purposes (e.g. controlling abuse, spam and DDOS attacks). We also store IP addresses along with certain actions you take on our system.  By agreeing to this privacy policy, you expressly consent to ClearlyRated using your IP address for the foregoing purposes. If you wish to opt out from the foregoing consent to use your IP address, you must cancel your account (if you have one) or not respond to a survey if requested to do so.

Data controller. ClearlyRated is the data controller for  billing and other account information that we collect from users in the EU. However, the data controller for survey data is the surveying company. The surveying company determines how their survey questions and responses are used and disclosed. ClearlyRated only processes such survey data in accordance with the instructions and permissions (including those given under this privacy policy) selected by the surveying company.

Accessing and correcting your personal data. You have the right to access and correct the personal information that ClearlyRated holds about you. This right may be exercised by contacting [email protected].

Your responsibilities. By using our services, you agree to comply with applicable data protection requirements when collecting and using your survey data, such as requirements to inform respondents about the specific uses and disclosures of their data.

Consents. By responding to a survey delivered to you by ClearlyRated on behalf of a surveying company:

  • You consent to the collection, use, disclosure and processing of your personal data in the manner described in this privacy policy, including our procedures relating to cookies, IP addresses and log files.
  • Our servers are based in the United States, so your personal data will be primarily processed by us in the United States. You consent to the transfer and processing of your personal data in the United States by ClearlyRated and by our service providers.
  • You consent and agree that we may transfer your data to data processors located in countries, including the United States, which do not have data protection laws that provide the same level of protection that exists in countries in the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, and Switzerland. Your consent is voluntary, and you may revoke your consent by opting out at any time. Please note that if you opt-out, we may no longer be able to provide you our services.
  • You consent to us sharing your personal data with relevant persons working for service providers who assist us to provide our services.
  • If you have enabled cookies on your web browser, you consent to our use of cookies as described in this privacy policy.

Security Statement

See our Data Security page for more details.