The information stored in your member portal is massive. It includes personally identifiable information (PII) such as names, phone numbers, and addresses. It could also include your business contact information, as well as the names and ages of your children. We encourage you to provide as much information as possible, so that we can offer you more opportunities to participate in studies. At this point you might be wondering, “how is giving away all of that information safe?” With the increase of phishing scams, it’s often hard to know which sites are safe or not, which is why we want to be completely transparent when it comes to how we store your information.
First and foremost, we will never sell your information. In fact, all our employees sign legal agreements acknowledging that if they give your information away, they risk criminal prosecution. We also store all PII on secure servers; the same servers that protect data for large banks, agencies, and Fortune 500 companies. The servers utilize password protection and secure socket layering (SSL), which is an encryption-based security protocol that prevents unwanted parties from accessing or modifying the information being transferred and stored. One way to tell that a website, such as ours, uses SSL is that the URL will contain “https” instead of only “http” at the beginning. Look for the “s” that stands for “secure” to know that your information is safe. You may decline to share your information, or opt out by unsubscribing at any time, but be aware that doing so may make you ineligible to participate in future studies.
But what about third party sites? Some studies may require you to complete activities on a third-party platform in order to fully participate. These websites may operate independently from L&E and have their own privacy policies. L&E Research is not liable for any third-party site’s information practices, and we urge you to review their individual privacy policies.
