Privacy Policy & Terms and Conditions

Introduction

This Privacy Policy applies to all the products, services, websites, and apps offered by Cityzen Solutions Inc. and their affiliates (collectively “PublicInput.com”), except where otherwise noted. We refer to those products, services, websites, and apps collectively as the “services” in this policy. Unless otherwise noted, our services are provided by Cityzen Solutions Inc. inside of the United States.

References to “data” in this Privacy Policy will refer to whatever data you use our services to collect, whether it be survey responses, data collected in a form, or data inserted on a site hosted by us – it’s all your data!

References to personal information or just information, mean information about you personally that we collect or for which we act as custodian.

 

Information we collect

Who are “you”?

We use the following to describe key partners, respondents, and visitors:

Partners – You hold an administrator account and you either directly create surveys, content, forms, applications, or questionnaires or you are collaborating on, commenting on, or reviewing surveys, forms, applications, or questionnaires within an account.

 

Respondents – You have received a survey, form, application, or questionnaire powered by a PublicInput.com service.

Website Visitor – You are visiting one of our websites because you are looking for information provided by a Partner, or you’re learning more about our public engagement tools.

Information we collect about you.

  • Contact Information (for example an email address or phone number).
    • You might provide us with your contact information, whether through use of our services, a form on our website, an interaction with our sales or customer support team, or a response to one of PublicInput.com’s own surveys.
  • Usage information.
    • We collect usage information about you whenever you interact with our websites and services. This includes which webpages you visit, what you click on, when you perform those actions, what language preference you have, and so on.
  • Device and browser data.
  • We collect information from the device and application you use to access our services. Device data mainly means your IP address, operating system version, device type, system and performance information, and browser type. If you are on a mobile device we also collect the UUID for that device.
  • Information from page tags.
    • We use third party tracking services that employ cookies and page tags (also known as web beacons) to collect data about visitors to our websites. This data includes usage and user statistics. Emails sent by PublicInput.com or by users through our services include page tags that allow the sender to collect information about who opened those emails and clicked on links in them.
  • Log Data.
    • 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, device type and timestamps.
  • Referral information.
    • If you arrive at a PublicInput.com 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.
  • Information from third parties and integration partners.
    • We collect your personal information or data from third parties if you give permission to those third parties to share your information with us or where you have made that information publicly available online.
  • Account settings.
    • You can set various preferences and personal details on pages like your account settings page.
  • Registration information.
    • When you register for an account, we collect your first and last name, username, password and email address. If you choose to register by using a third party account (such as your Google or Facebook account), please see “Information from third parties” below.

Use of some of our services will also result in us collecting the following data on your behalf:

  • Address book information.
    • We allow you to import email addresses and phone numbers so you can easily invite people to take your surveys, or fill in your form via email or text messaging. We don’t use these email addresses and phone numbers for our own purposes or email them except at your direction.
  • Survey/form/application data.
    • We store your survey/form/application data (questions and responses) for you and provide analysis tools for you to use with respect to this data.
  • Profile data.
    • When you sign up for our services you are asked to provide us with information about yourself and to give us more detailed insights into who you are.

How we use the information we collect

Partners

  • We process personal data about you either with your consent or in order to:
    • Fulfill our contractual responsibility to deliver the services to you;
    • To pursue PublicInput.com’s legitimate interests of:
      • improving service experience; and
      • developing new products and service features.
  • In each of the instances where we describe how we use your data in this privacy policy, we have identified which of these grounds for processing we are relying upon.
  • You have consented to us using certain types of cookies on our websites. In particular we use:
    • Page tags and web beacons.
    • We collect information from page tags and web beacons to allow us to determine the success of our marketing campaigns. We also use page tags to allow the email sender (for a survey for example) to measure the performance of their email messaging and to learn how to improve email deliverability and open rates.
  • We process your personal information in the following categories of data for legitimate interests pursued by us, which are described in detail in this privacy policy. We have undertaken to ensure that we place clear limitations on each of these uses so that your privacy is respected and only the information necessary to achieve these legitimate aims is used. Our primary goal is to improve upon and make sure our services and messaging are relevant for all our users, while also ensuring that personal information of all users is respected and protected.
    • Contact Information.
      • We use contact information to respond to your inquiries, send you information as part of the services, and send you marketing information (for as long as you do not opt-out).
      • More details: We use your email address to send you marketing (newsletters), unless you indicate a preference to opt-out and for general updates on your account. You can opt out of marketing communications at any time by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link in them.
    • How you use our services.
      • We use information about how you use our services to improve our services for you and all users.
    • Device data.
      • We use device data both to troubleshoot problems with our service and to make improvements to it. We also infer your geographic location based on your IP address.
      • More details: Device and browser data: We collect this to help us improve your service experience through a specific device/browser by optimizing how the website looks in a particular browser, how your screen brightness affects your experience and to ensure the service operates optimally and as it should on different devices and browsers.
    • Log data.
      • We use log data for many different business purposes to include:
        • To monitor abuse and troubleshoot.
        • To create new services, features, content or make recommendations.
        • To track behavior at the aggregate/anonymous level to identify and understand trends in the various interactions with our services.
        • To fix bugs and troubleshoot product functionality.
      • More details: Your IP address is used to determine where an unknown/unauthorized access may have occurred in your account (abuse monitoring).
    • Referral information.
      • We use referral information to track the success of our integrations and referral processes.
    • Third parties and integrations.
      • We will collect and use information from third parties and integration partners to:
        • Ensure you can sign-up to our service from a third party integration like Facebook/LinkedIn/Microsoft/Google/SSO/Zoom;
        • To personalize our services for you; and
        • Ensure you can use our service in conjunction with other services.
    • Service and Marketing uses.
      • Machine learning. We use machine learning techniques on certain data in order to provide users with useful statistics and more relevant insights from the data they have collected using our services and to optimize our marketing campaigns.
    • To manage our services we will also internally use your information and data, for the following limited purposes:
      • To enforce our agreements where applicable.
      • To prevent potentially illegal activities.
      • To screen for and prevent undesirable or abusive activity. For example, we have automated systems that screen content for phishing activities, spam, and fraud.
      • Legal uses.
      • To respond to legal requests or prevent fraud, we may need to use and disclose information or data we hold about you. If we receive a subpoena or other legal request, we may need to inspect the data we hold to determine how to respond.
  • We collect and use the following data on the basis that we have to use this information in order to fulfill our contract with you:
    • Your Account Information.
      • We need to use your account data to run your account, provide you with services, bill you for our services, provide you with customer support, and 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 cannot opt out of these communications since they are required to provide our services to you.
    • Your Profile.
      • We process other aspects of your account information (like the personal information you provide about your job, your job title, and your marketing preferences) for legitimate interests like providing you with a personalized experience and relevant and useful marketing information as well as to make other product, feature and service recommendations to you to optimize your use of the services we offer.
    • Your Survey Data.
      • We also use survey questions and responses on an aggregated and anonymized basis as described in this Privacy Policy, but we will never sell individual response data or identify / contact individual respondents except on your request or where required by law.

Respondents

  • We process your personal information in the following categories of data for legitimate interests pursued by us, which are described in detail in this privacy policy. We have undertaken to ensure that we place clear limitations on each of these uses so that your privacy is respected and only the information necessary to achieve these legitimate aims is used. Our primary goal is to improve upon and make sure our services and messaging are relevant for all our users, while also ensuring that personal information of all users is respected and protected.
    • Cookies (to include page tags).
      • We collect information using cookies when you take a survey. These cookies are used to ensure that the full functionality of our survey service is operational, to ensure the survey operates appropriately and optimally. After completion of a survey, in most cases, you will be re-directed to our website and treated as a website visitor where other cookies may be used so you should read our Website Visitor section if this is of interest to you.
      • We use page tags to allow the email sender (for a survey or form for example) to measure the performance of email messaging and to learn how to improve email deliverability and open rates. We also use cookies to ensure a respondent can only take a survey once (where the Partner has set this function) and to track completion rates of surveys.
    • Contact Information.
      • As a Respondent, we only use contact information to respond to an inquiry which you submit to us.
      • If you subscribe to receive updates from one of our Partners, such as text message updates about local parks, our partners may use your contact information to send you information and follow-up questions. You may opt-out to this at any time by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ button in the email or replying ‘stop’ to the text message you receive.
    • How you use our services (applicable to survey Respondents only).
      • We use information about how you use our services to improve our services for you and all users.
      • We collect information about the types of questions you answer. This data will be aggregated and anonymized so we can examine patterns in terms of respondent preferences when submitting responses. We collect and use all this data for our legitimate interests like helping us improve the experience for respondents (so that questions are easier to answer), to understand industry trends in and to help improve the completion rates on surveys/forms.
      • We will also use usage information such as the type of survey, form, questionnaire or application that you answered to personalize products we show you on completion of a survey when you are re-directed to our website.
    • Device Data
      • We use device data to, for example, troubleshoot issues to make improvements with our services and to infer your geographic location based on your IP address.
      • We collect this to ensure that service experience works well across all possible devices and to infer geographic location to produce aggregated data around Respondent location trends. We also want to use this information to provide an additional data layer to Partners so that they can filter responses by e.g. inferred geographic location.
    • Log Data
      • We use log data for many different business purposes to include:
        • To monitor abuse and troubleshoot.
        • To create new services, features, content or make recommendations.
        • To track behavior at the aggregate/anonymous level to identify and understand trends in the various interactions with our services.
        • To fix bugs and troubleshoot product functionality.
    • Third parties and integrations.
      • We will collect and use information from third parties and integration partners to facilitate Partners in sending surveys/forms/applications/questionnaires to you.
    • Machine learning.
      • We will use machine learning techniques on response data, metadata (as described above) and cookie data, in order to provide Partners with useful and relevant insights from the data they have collected using our services, to build features, improve our services and to develop aggregated data products. You can read more about this in relation to surveys below.
  • To manage our services we will also internally use your information and data, for the following limited purposes:
    • To enforce our agreements where applicable.
    • To prevent potentially illegal activities.
    • To screen for and prevent undesirable or abusive activity.
  • To respond to legal requests or prevent fraud, we may need to disclose any information or data we hold about you. If we receive a subpoena or other legal request, we may need to inspect the data we hold to determine how to respond.
  • Use of survey responses
    • Survey responses to surveys are controlled and managed by the Partner (the organization who sent or deployed that survey). In those instances PublicInput.com is only processing those responses on behalf of the Partner.

PublicInput.com uses data in the ways described below, for legitimate interests pursued by it which are described in this section:

  • The data impacted by this section includes:
    • Survey type, question type and responses (at an aggregated and anonymized level only);
    • Device data
    • Log data
  • PublicInput.com will use automated processes and machine learning, to analyze survey responses, which in turn helps us to:
    • Aggregate response data and activity: We will aggregate responses, activity and behavior of Respondents so that we can identify trends, build product features that optimize responses, and help Partners improve response rates.
    • Extract and analyze usage patterns: By understanding response data and Respondent interaction in different types of surveys we can:
      • improve our services and ease of use: for example, we might identify when respondents prefer multiple choice versus open text questions and make predictive response suggestions when certain question types are selected. We might also use this data to help improve analysis of responses,
      • undertake personalization for survey Partners and Respondents (for example by customizing the page on our website which a Respondent sees at the end of a survey),
      • improve user experience (for example, by collecting and using device and browser information from Respondents to improve how our survey service operates on those devices and in those browsers), and
      • identify insightful data trends (which never identifies any individuals).
  • We process personal data about you where:
    • You have consented or;
    • PublicInput.com has legitimate interests of improving service experience and developing new products and service features.

Partner and Respondent trust is paramount to everything we do and so when we do use data about Respondents, we put Partners and Respondents first. When we do analysis of response data we only do so once we have ensured the anonymity of individual respondents (by aggregating and anonymizing the data). Our goal is to improve the user experience across PublicInput.com services while maintaining the confidentiality and privacy of responses.

Information you share

Many of our services let you share information with others. Remember that when you share information publicly, it can be indexable by search engines and may be subject to public records laws. Our services provide you with different options on sharing and deleting your content but we cannot delete content from search engines or fully delete content subject to public records laws.

Information we share: Partners and Integrations

We do not share your information or data with third parties outside PublicInput.com except in the following limited circumstances:

  • If you are a Partner that is part of a team using PublicInput.com, your account information and data will be shared with the primary administrator(s) and your survey data may also be visible to other members in your team with whom you share your surveys or with whom you collaborate.
  • To help us provide certain aspects of our services we use our affiliates and trusted key partners – in particular, we engage third parties to:
    • facilitate our email collectors for sending surveys by email to Respondents.
    • help us track website conversion success metrics.
    • manage our sales and customer support services.

We enter into confidentiality and data processing terms with partners to ensure they comply with high levels of confidentiality and best practice in privacy and security standards and we regularly review these standards and practices.

 

  • On your instructions, we share your information or data if you choose to use an integration in conjunction with PublicInput.com services, to the extent necessary to facilitate that use.
  • We also have to share information or data in order to:
    • meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.
    • enforce applicable policies, including investigation of potential violations.
    • detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues.
    • protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of our users, the public or to PublicInput.com and/or as required or permitted by law.

 

Cookies

We and our Partners use cookies and similar technologies on our websites. We use certain cookies, as described in our Privacy Policy, that you agree to when you use our sites and, in the case of some cookies, for legitimate interests of delivering and optimizing our services (where the cookie delivers essential functionality). 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 gather metrics about your online experience.
  • To make our site easier to use.
    • We store your username in a cookie to make it quicker for you to sign in whenever you return to PublicInput.com.
  • For security reasons.
    • We use cookies to authenticate your identity and confirm whether you are currently logged into PublicInput.com or determine if an incident impacts you.
  • To provide you with personalized content.
    • We store user preferences, your default language, device and browser information, your profile information which includes, the level of usage of service and the web-pages on our site which you visit, so we can personalize the content you see.
  • 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 (it helps us focus on the parts of the service you seem most interested in) and optimize the content we display to you (which may include marketing content).
    • We, or our service providers and other third parties we work with, 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.
  • Google Analytics
    • Some pages or services include Google Analytic features. Visitors to our websites may opt out of certain types of Google Analytics tracking. If you do not wish to participate in Google Analytics, you may also download the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

You can choose to remove or disable cookies via your browser settings.

 

Data Retention

If you hold an account with PublicInput.com we do not delete the data in your account – you are responsible for and control the time periods for which you retain this data. If you are a Respondent, you will need to ask the Partner how long your responses will be stored in PublicInput.com services.

 

Safety of Minors

Our services are not intended for and may not be used by minors. “Minors” are individuals under the age of 13 (or under a higher age if permitted by the laws of their residence). PublicInput.com does not knowingly collect personal data from Minors or allow them to register. If it comes to our attention that we have collected personal data from a Minor, we may delete this information without notice. If you have reason to believe that this has occurred, please contact customer support.

 

Changes to our privacy policy

We can make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will identify the changes we have made on this page. In circumstances where a change will materially change the way in which we collect or use your personal information or data, we will send a notice of this change to all of our account holders.

 

Who is my data controller?

As mentioned above – all response data at an individual level is controlled by the Partner. PublicInput.com can be a controller of data about Respondents only in the very limited ways described in the section here called “How we use the information we collect – Respondent”. To the extent that is the case we have identified the correct controller below.

 

Your rights

Some of you (in particular, European users and those whose information we receive under the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield) have certain legal rights to obtain information about 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.  To request this, please reach out to us via the contact info in the “Privacy Inquiries” section below. Some of these rights may be subject to some exceptions or limitations. We will respond to your request to exercise these rights within a reasonable time (and in all cases within 30 days of receiving a request).

Rights which you are entitled to are:

 

  • Data access rights
  • Right to restrict processing
  • Right of Rectification
  • Right to Erasure (Right to be Forgotten)
  • Right to object to processing
  • Right to withdraw consent; and
  • Data portability rights

 

Privacy Inquiries

For any and all privacy questions, you may direct questions to:

Cityzen Solutions, Inc.
16 W Martin Street
Raleigh, NC 27601

Phone: 919-295-9051
Email: Support@PublicInput.com
Website: PublicInput.com

 

Engage using standard survey question formats that you’re used to with consumer survey tools. From the single and multi-select, to Likert, slider, and text input formats, you’ve got the basics covered.