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A Word about Data Privacy, Data Ownership and Sacred Trust

12/19/2012

In light of the recent news and uproar surrounding Instagram's updated terms of service describing their ability to sell photographs that are stored by users on their website, I thought it would be prudent and timely to remind you, our SurveyGold customers, of our position regarding the surveys and survey data that you collect, manage and track through the SurveyGold application and the surveygold.com, surveygoldplus.com and surveygoldcloud.com websites.

Your online surveys and your online survey response data are processed by our websites and reside on our websites. However, your online surveys and your online survey responses belong to you. They do not belong to us. We are stewards of your data and nothing more. This means that the entire SurveyGold solution exists to serve your needs and not to serve our needs.
We do not use your data for our business purposes. We proactively protect your survey and online survey response data via encryption and other measures. We do not scour your data looking for self-serving bits of information. We do not give anyone access to your data, unless required by law...which has never happened since opening our doors in 1999.
We do not perform any other business activity with your online survey responses data other than making it available to you. We will never sell or provide your data to anyone or any institution without your knowledge and consent or, again, as required by law. We say so formally in our published privacy policy.
As a reflection of our commitment to protecting the data you entrust to our SurveyGold survey solution, all of our websites are routinely scanned by an independent compliance organization and are attested to be compliant with PCI Security Standards.

My intention in making this statement is not to stir up a hornet's nest of inquiry and suspicion. Rather, my intention it so assure our SurveyGold users around the world that we consider it a sacred trust to process and store your online surveys and survey response data. We will never, ever, ever violate that trust. This is the very foundation of our SurveyGold brand promise to you.

Sincerely,
Chuck Boudreau
Founder, Golden Hills Software, Inc.
Makers of SurveyGold

How Secure Are Your Web Responses?

SurveyGold Privacy Policy

PCI Compliance Attestation

Tip: How to Transfer Ownership of an Online Survey

12/19/2012

You've created an online survey using your SurveyGold application and for the longest time you have been the one responsible for collecting responses, performing analysis and reporting on results. The day has come when your job responsibilities have changed and you need to pass along responsibility of collecting responses of this online survey to another SurveyGold user in your organization so that they can take over your survey management responsibilities.

If this describes your situation, the following guidance describes how to accomplish this. For the sake of this discussion, there are two people involved in this process and there are step-by-step instructions to follow for each person:

Original Survey Owner
You, the person who currently has the survey in your SurveyGold application and wants to permanently transfer ownership to another person while retaining your SurveyGold application
New Survey Owner
The other person who wants to get your survey and responses permanently transferred to their SurveyGold application and who wants to collect online survey responses for this survey into their SurveyGold application from now on

What the original survey owner Must Do:

1) Remove your existing online survey from circulation

This prevents anyone else from being able to respond to the online survey while you are in the process of transferring the survey.

If the online survey is currently published on the SurveyGold website (because you used your SurveyGold application to publish your online survey):

Launch your SurveyGold application, if it is not open
Select the Setup Survey tab
Right-click on the survey and select Remove Web Form from SurveyGold Website from the popup menu

In contrast, if the online survey is on your organization's website, remove the online survey from your website (or work with a webmaster to do so).

2) Collect the remaining online survey responses for your survey into your SurveyGold application

This ensures that you have collected all responses for your online survey form prior to transferring ownership of the survey.

Select the Dashboard tab
Perform the Update Activity action

3) Export your survey and responses from your SurveyGold application into a survey definition file

This makes it possible to transfer your survey and response data to another SurveyGold user.

Select the Setup Survey tab
Right-click on the survey and select Lock from the popup menu (do not specify a password)
Right-click on the survey again and select Export from the popup menu
Save the survey definition file to a folder accessible by the new survey owner (e.g., network folder, DropBox, OneDrive, Google Drive, USB flash drive)

4) Remove your survey from your SurveyGold application

This permanently removes the survey and responses from your SurveyGold.

Select the Setup Survey tab
Right-click on your survey and select Delete from the popup menu

What the New Survey Owner Must Do:

1) Import the survey definition file into your SurveyGold application

This causes the survey and responses to be imported into your SurveyGold application.

Launch your SurveyGold application, if it is not open
Select the Setup Survey tab
Select the folder that you want to contain your survey (normally this is My Surveys)
Select Import from the Folder group in the button bar
Select the network shared folder where the Original Survey Owner moved the survey definition file in step 3 above
Select the survey from the list of surveys
Select the Import Responses option and select OK

2) Distribute the survey as an online survey form via your SurveyGold application

This causes a new online survey to be created by and distributed by your SurveyGold application. Doing this ensures that any new responses submitted via the online survey form are collected into your SurveyGold application.

Select the Setup Survey tab
Select the newly imported survey
Select Save as Web Form from Survey group in the button bar
Complete the specific steps to create the online survey form and distribute to your liking (most people publish the online survey form to the SurveyGold website)

Tip: If your online survey form is accessed by a web link (URL) on an existing website that you manage, you should update the web link on your website (or work with a webmaster to do so) so that respondents are directed to the newly created online survey form. This is because the web link (URL) for the online survey form produced by your SurveyGold application is different than the original web link (URL) created by the original survey owner's SurveyGold application.

A Word about Data Privacy, Data Ownership and Sacred Trust

Tip: How to Transfer Ownership of an Online Survey

What the original survey owner Must Do:

What the New Survey Owner Must Do:

Chuck Boudreau

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