Answering a survey: your privacy and answers

You have been asked to answer a survey, and it runs on Polzy. An organization — your employer, a company you buy from, an event you attended — wrote the survey and decides what happens to the answers. Polzy hosts it for them, in the EU, and processes your answers only on their instructions. This page explains what you will see, what is kept, and what you can do.

Before you start

The first page usually says how long the survey takes, how many questions it has, and — when it is anonymous — Anonymous. If the organization may follow up on anonymous answers, it says so here too, before you answer anything.

Some surveys are only for members of the organization's workspace. You then see Sign in to answer this survey. and a Sign in button; after signing in you come straight back to the survey.

Your privacy notice

Choose Privacy — on the first page, at the top of every page, or on the thank-you page, where it may read Privacy and your answers. A panel opens called Your privacy.

• At a glance. Whether the survey is Anonymous or Name stored; the smallest group results are shown for ("Groups of 5+"); Hosted in the EU; and Never trains AI.
• Seven sections. Who runs this survey, What your answers are used for, What is stored, Your comments, How long answers are kept, AI and processing and Your rights. Open any one for the details.
• Who to ask. Questions about your data gives the organization's privacy contact, and How Polzy processes data opens Polzy's own notice.

Anonymous or named

• Anonymous. Your answers are stored without your name, email, IP address or browser, and only with the day you answered. The organization is never shown which answers are yours, and results only appear for groups of at least the number shown.
• Name stored. The organization can see your answers with your name. Grouped results still only appear for groups large enough to protect everyone.
• Your comments are shown as written. In both cases, what you type is shown as you typed it. Leave out details that could identify you or someone else.
• Follow-up questions. If the survey said so before you started, someone may send you a question about an anonymous comment by email, through Polzy, without learning who you are. You can reply — leave your name and signature out — or simply ignore it.
• AI follow-up questions. After some questions, AI may ask you one optional follow-up question about your answer. It is marked as an AI follow-up, and you can skip it.

Delete your answers

You can delete your own answers to a survey that stored your name, at any time.

1. Open Privacy on the survey: from the thank-you page, from the invitation you were sent, or after signing in.
2. Open Your rights and choose Delete my answers.
3. Confirm with Delete my answers. Polzy says Your answers have been deleted. The survey’s results no longer include them.

An anonymous answer cannot be deleted this way: because it is not linked to you in any way, nobody can find it to delete it. The notice says so in Your rights. You can still ask the organization how answers are used.

If you write about a risk to someone's safety

If an answer you type mentions harming yourself or someone else, a calm card appears under it — If you're thinking about harming yourself or someone else, please reach out now. — with the emergency number, crisis and support lines for your country, and any support line the organization offers. Nothing about you is sent to anyone because of it. Close it with the × and carry on whenever you are ready.

Where the organization reads comments for a risk to someone's safety, the survey also offers to put you in touch with its safety team — a small group of people it named, never your own managers:

1. Under your comment, tick I’d like someone to contact me about this. It is never ticked for you, and you can leave it.
2. Under How should the safety team reach you?, choose Contact me by name — the team sees your name for this answer only, and your survey answers stay anonymous — or Keep me anonymous, to get a case reference and a private code.
3. If you stay anonymous and the survey knows how to reach you, you can also tick to be told by email or text when the team replies. They never see your address.

Your case and private code

If you chose to stay anonymous, the thank-you page shows Your case: a Case reference to quote and a Private code. The code is shown only once — keep it: without it, the team's replies cannot be opened. Use Copy to keep both, and Open your private page to go there now.

If you chose to be contacted by name, the page says how the team will reach you — by email, text message, WhatsApp or Slack.

Your private page

1. Go to your private page: the link on your thank-you page, or app.polzy.ai/check-back.
2. Enter Your private code and choose Open. The code is never put in the page's address, so it does not end up in your browser history.
3. Read where your case stands — Received, Read by the safety team or New reply — and the conversation.
4. Write to the team at any time: Add something before they reply, Reply after.

The page also lists the numbers to call under Need to talk to someone now? If you would rather talk by name, Prefer to talk by name? lets you choose Share my details, agree that the team sees your name for this case, and Send my details.

Troubleshooting

Sign in to answer this survey. — the survey is only for members of the organization's workspace. Sign in with the account they gave you, or use the invitation link you were sent.

This survey is closed — the organization has stopped collecting answers.

To delete your answers, open this survey from your invitation, or sign in first. — Polzy needs to know the answers are yours. Open the survey from your invitation email, or sign in.

We found no answers from you to this survey. — nothing was stored under your name or invitation for this survey.

That code was not recognised. Check it and try again. — check for a typing mistake. Polzy only keeps a scrambled form of your code, so it cannot be looked up or sent to you again. If it is lost, that case cannot be opened any more; the support lines on the survey page are always there.

Good to know

• Your rights are exercised with the organization that runs the survey: its contact is in the privacy notice. You can also complain to a data protection authority.
• How long answers are kept is shown in the notice under How long answers are kept.
• Your answers are never used to train AI models.