Privacy

We conduct online research for clients in government, business and non-profit organizations. This is done through an automated process using our proprietary search engine and subsequent data is analyzed by both Artificial Intelligence and human analysts.

We take your privacy very seriously. We do not collect personal information, nor do we resell information collected to third parties.

1. We do NOT, ever look at personal profiles in Facebook, unless you leave them open with your privacy settings. It is important to check and verify your privacy settings in social network services like Facebook, Bebo, MySpace or LinkedIn as an example. We are not responsible for how manage your privacy settings online and by reading this, you accept and understand this. We recommend looking into the privacy settings of the services you may use.

2. We only ever access information that is PUBLIC. We do NOT ever, provide or access information that is password protected for personal profiles or considered by a third party as private. Ever. If you write a blog post on a publicly available blog…remember, anyone, anywhere in the world at any time, can read it. Unless you lock it down it is NOT private. Ever. If a search engine like Google can see it, so can we.

3. Twitter, Plurk, Identi.ca…they are NOT private communications channels and it is important to check the User Terms & Conditions when registering for these services. Anyone in the world who checks out a service like http://search.twitter.com can see your “tweets”, or who signs into Plurk or has the API to Twitter or Plurk, Identi.ca and others…they can see what you post.

4. Newsgroups and Forums or Bulletin Boards – they’re open to the public unless the privacy rules for each individual service say otherwise. If they do NOT allow us to plug in and search them, then we don’t. Be sure to check the Terms & Conditions you agreed to when signing up or registering for these services.

So What Do We Do With All This PUBLICLY Available Data?

1. Provide Insights: We analyze the data we find and turn it into information that has meaning to our clients. This can be for marketing, public relations, investor relations, government relations and more. These insights benefit both our clients and you.

2. Data on You: We provide our clients with AGGREGATE data. That means “big picture” like how many of X age group talked about “this” issue or “400 people love your service” type of thing. Individual data is not important to our clients. The only exception is when we identify “Influencers” and “authority” people – bloggers or others online who are popular with an audience. The interest for our client is to potentially engage with these people to form a positive working relationship.

3. Resale: Never. We do not, ever, resell individual reports to anyone, third, fourth or fifth party. We do however, gather “meta data”, that is big picture stuff that shows major trends or issues and we sometimes compile that into reports, such as how people use Social Media tools in New England or Atlantic Canada or youth and social media or even seniors and how they use social media. We may sell that, but seriously, we do not ever include information on individuals.

4. Countries of Operations: We gather information from all over the world online. We do NOT sell or provide information on individuals to government.  With that being said we ONLY work with democratic governments in the NATO alliance. Our corporate policy is not to work with non-democratic governments or organizations affiliated with non-democratic or illegal organizations.

5. Personal Information: We can’t emphasize enough how seriously we take individual rights to privacy. We provide “group” and “demographic” or “psychographic” information to clients – which is actually more valuable for them.

6. It’s All In Canada: All the data we store (actually we dump it within 48 hours cause storage costs at the volume of data we process is very expensive!) Any data we do keep is kept in Canada at all times. We maintain complete compliance with Canadian federal privacy laws such as PIPEDA and FOIPOP and our lawyers make us take them very seriously.

Check In With The Privacy Officer:

Still concerned? Want to know if we have any personal information on you? Send an email to privacyofficer_at_mediabadger.com or call us at 902-832.1029 and ask for the  Privacy Officer. We will respond within 72 hours of receipt of a phone call or email. Conversely, you can send a letter to 1496 Bedford Highway, Suite 218, Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada, B4A 1V1.

Fees:
We don’t collect private data, but if we have to search the data we do keep, it may take several days. If we conduct a search there is a CAD$65 fee if you live in Canada and USD$85 if you live outside Canada. Please provide postage and handling for return mail.

Managing Your Online Privacy

Online privacy is a complex issue in today’s world. Laws are changing and adapting to issues we did not face a decade ago. It is very important for you to understand that you are responsible for your privacy and actions online. When you register or sign-up for a service like Facebook or Twitter or even Gmail with Google, be sure to read the Terms and Conditions – it is there where they will talk about what rights you have in using their services and their privacy rules.

Be careful about what you post online and where you post it. This includes pictures and videos. Remember that unless you are using a password protected service that you are absolutely positive is secure, your information may become available to the public.

Identity thieves and other criminals are crafty. They know how to bring a lot of seemingly innocent information together for their own nefarious purposes. For example, not a good idea to send out a Twitter message that tells the world you’ll be away on vacation for a week. So be careful about what you say, who you respond to and the type of content you post online. We are not responsible for your actions, you are. Be cautious at all times.