Lastra Research Group is committed to building trust and confidence by complying with legislation and good business practices that help to protect privacy and safeguard personal data. The terms of this privacy policy apply to all marketing research and associated services that we provide.

 

Personal Data
 

We consider personal data to be any information that identifies an individual such as email address, first and last name, billing or shipping address, credit card information, etc. We do not request or collect any personal data apart from what is necessary to conduct our business.

Collection and Handling of Personal Data
 

Lastra Research Group works mostly with transcripts of market research interviews that do not contain personal data. In some cases, interview audio recordings are directly supplied by commercial clients via a secure channel, which may be passed to third parties to carry out transcription services, the results of which are received by email.
 

During any interviews for market research purposes, interviewers are trained to never ask for names during recorded interviews. However, the possibility exists that a participant may state their name or provide other identifiable information. There also exists a possibility that a voice in an audio recording may be identified. In these cases, Lastra Research Group does not retain the data and promptly notifies the commercial client from which it was received.

 

Lastra Research Group may conduct market research surveys on behalf of our commercial clients. These studies collect data for research purposes only and the information gathered is not used for direct marketing or sales. The details provided are used for aggregated analysis – that is, responses are pooled with those of other survey participants and are reported anonymously.
 

When Lastra Research Group conducts a research study, your cooperation in any such study is voluntary and you may withdraw from participating at any time. Personal data will only be recorded upon consent. 

 

During the course of a survey we may ask you to provide information such as:
 

• Contact information that allows us to verify or validate any answers you provide, including for drug safety reporting or internal quality control procedures.
   

• Demographic or firmographic information about you or the organisation for which you work.
   

• Extended (open-ended) information that helps to provide context for your survey responses – for example, the nature of a complaint that has arisen while using our clients’ products or services.
   

In online surveys, we may collect your IP address. This is only used for quality checking purposes and to prevent fraud. We never use an IP address to identify individuals.
 

Information you provide in response to or in connection with a survey which may be conducted online, by telephone or during face to face meetings will only be reported to our clients anonymously – i.e. without identifying you individually, directly or indirectly.
 

In some cases, we may ask for explicit permission to share personal data and responses with a third party in digital (data file), audio or some other format for reasons directly related to the market research study. We may send personal data collected from research surveys to third party organizations such as companies providing transcription services, but only when:
 

• We have your express consent to share the information, for a specified and limited purpose;
   

• We retain a third party to provide us with services, subject to that third party being able to comply with relevant legal requirements and obligations regarding the use of personal data;
   

• We need to share this information to provide you with information you have specifically requested;
   

• We need to respond to court orders or the requests of law enforcement agencies.
   

Lastra Research Group partners only with third parties that maintain high standards for compliance and privacy. Personal data is never sold to any third parties.

 

Lastra Research Group may occasionally conduct surveys for a variety of other purposes which may be completed online, via telephone or face to face meetings. Accordingly, our lawful basis for approaching you to participate in a survey will depend on the study. The various lawful bases for inviting you to a research study are described below:
 

• Legitimate interests: We may ask you to participate in the study and process your personal information for our or our clients’ legitimate business interests. In these circumstances, we will ensure that we always keep such personal data rights in high regard and take account of these rights. In these cases, we have taken care to consider and balance any potential impact on you through an impact assessment. You will always have the right to object to this type of processing if you wish. If you wish to exercise this right, please contact us using the information below.
   

• Contract: We may ask you to participate in a study due to a contract or similar business relationship that exists between you / your organization and our client. In these cases, Lastra Research Group has been appointed as an independent market research agency that is authorised to carry out the study.
   

• Consent: You may be invited to a Lastra Research Group survey via a third party. In these cases you will be asked to consent to participate in the research study through the third party company. If you wish to withdraw consent, or enforce other rights relating to your personal data, you should approach the relevant third party organization. This is usually the company that invited you to the study by e-mail, telephone or social media.

Retention of personal data
 

Our standard retention period for personal data relating to market research studies is until project completion, or for as long as there is some other legitimate reason to do so or required by law. After this time, your personal data will be made anonymous or deleted.
 

Storage of personal data
 

All personal data that we collect or receive from our commercial clients is stored on servers located within the United States of America. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that personal data is treated securely and in accordance with this Policy. Any transfer of personal data to or from the European Economic Area will be subject to Standard Contractual Clauses (pursuant to the European Commission’s Decision 2010/87/EU of February 5th, 2010) allowing such a transfer to a third country. We will put in place measures to provide adequate protection for personal data information when transferred to or from the European Economic Area.
 

At all times, we will use reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. We will also require that any third parties storing data on our behalf shall use reasonable and appropriate security measures for such stored on our behalf.
 

Website and email
 

When someone visits www.lastraresearch.com we may collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to measure the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. We collect this information in a way which does not identify anyone.

Our third-party hosting provider stores server logs to ensure network and IT security and so that the server and website remain uncompromised. This includes analysing log files to help identify and prevent unauthorised access to our network, the distribution of malicious code, denial of services attacks and other cyber-attacks, by detecting unusual or suspicious activity.

Unless we are investigating suspicious or potential criminal activity, we do not make, nor do we allow our website server provider to make any attempt to obtain personal data from the information collected via server logs.
 

Google Analytics

Google collects information through our use of Google Analytics on our websites. Google uses this information, including IP addresses and information from cookies, for a number of purposes, such as improving its Google Analytics service. Information is shared with Google on an aggregated and anonymized basis. To find out more about what information Google collects, how it uses this information and how to control the information sent to Google, please see the partners page of Google’s privacy policy.

Cookies

Cookies are data files which are sent from a website to a browser to record information about users for various purposes. We use cookies, including essential, functional and analytical cookies.
 

You can reject some or all of the cookies we use on or via our website by changing your browser settings but doing so may impair your ability to use our website or some or all of its features. For further information about cookies, including how to change your browser settings and other ways in which you can reject cookies, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

Email
 

When you send an email to the email address displayed on our website, we collect your email address and any other information you provide in that email (such as your name, telephone number and the information contained in any signature block in your email).

Our legal basis for collecting such information is that it is in our legitimate interests to enable us to respond to enquiries and messages we receive and keeping records of correspondence.
 

Complaints or queries
 

Lastra Research Group will always strive to meet the highest standards when collecting and using personal information. For this reason, we take any complaints we receive about this very seriously. We encourage people to bring it to our attention if they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate. We would also welcome any suggestions for improving our procedures. Any correspondence should be sent to the address below.

You may request a copy of any personal data that we hold about you. If you would like a copy of some or all of your personal information, please contact us using the information below. You may ask us to correct or remove information you think is inaccurate.

Links to other websites

This privacy notice does not cover the links from our website to other websites. We encourage you to read the privacy statements on any other websites you visit.

Changes to this privacy notice

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice was last updated in December 2020. Requests for information about our privacy policy or other queries relating to our use of personal data can be emailed to us at privacy@lastraresearch.com or in writing to:
 

Data Protection Officer,

Lastra Research Group

147 College Avenue

Poughkeepsie, NY 12603