At a glance
- We are the controller for the data we hold to run your account, match you to studies, pay you and keep the marketplace safe.
- Researchers are separate controllers for what you tell them inside their study. Their privacy notice governs that data, not ours.
- We never give researchers your name, email address or phone number through matching. They see a pseudonymous identifier, the screening answers relevant to their study, basic demographics and your performance history.
- Optional sensitive answers are yours to give and yours to delete. We ask for explicit consent and we never hand a researcher your whole profile.
- We do not sell your personal data, and we do not use it to train general-purpose machine learning models.
- Automated signals help us spot fraud, but a person makes any decision that meaningfully affects your account, and you can appeal it.
1. Who is responsible for your data
Voxa Research Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales with company number 17430382 and registered office at 141 Belgrave Road, Leicester, United Kingdom, LE4 6AS ("Voxa", "we", "us" or "our") is the data controller for the personal data described in this notice. We operate a marketplace matching people who want to take part in research with the organisations and individuals conducting it.
Voxa Research Ltd is registered with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) as a data controller, registration reference ZC235808. The registration runs from 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027 (Tier 1).
Use the Contact page and choose Privacy and data rights. Signed-in users can also use Account & privacy to update preferences, download an account export or request deletion.
When a researcher collects information inside their study, that researcher decides why and how it is used and is a separate controller. We do not become the controller of a researcher's scientific data merely because we recruited the participant or processed the reward. Where a study runs on our own tools, we hold the responses as the researcher's processor: see our Voxa-Hosted Study Terms for Participants.
Voxa is established in the United Kingdom and offers the service to people in the European Economic Area, so the EU GDPR applies to us as well as the UK GDPR. Article 27 of the EU GDPR requires a company in our position to designate a representative inside the EEA: a named organisation that acts as a local point of contact for you and for supervisory authorities on every issue relating to our processing, and that holds a copy of our record of processing activities. Contacting the representative is an alternative to contacting us, not a replacement, and it does not limit any action you can take directly against Voxa Research Ltd. Where Voxa Research Ltd has designated a representative, its name and contact details appear in this section; until then, people in the EEA should contact us through the Contact page and may complain to their own supervisory authority without approaching us first.
2. What we collect
Most of this comes directly from you. Some is generated as you use the service: reservation, submission, reward, access and audit events. Researchers supply study details and review outcomes. Our payment, hosting, email, security and network-classification providers return transaction, delivery, service and risk information. Administrators add reasoned outcomes when they review identity evidence, reports, appeals, withdrawals or account issues.
| Category | What it includes |
|---|---|
| Account | Name, email address, date and place of birth, country of birth, residential address, password credential, account role and status, email-verification state, multi-factor enrolment, and a pseudonymous participant identifier used in place of your name. |
| Profile and matching | Country, timezone, languages, education, employment status, available devices, profile completeness, and your answers to optional demographic and screening questions. |
| Sensitive profile answers | Optional answers that may reveal racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, health, sex life or sexual orientation. Held separately from your ordinary profile, with the time you consented. |
| Study preferences | Minimum reward, maximum duration, device choices, and whether you are willing to see studies involving camera, microphone, sensitive content or personal-data collection. |
| Identity verification | Document type, an encrypted image or PDF of the document, an encrypted short verification video, the time you consented, the review outcome and reviewer notes. |
| Study activity | Invitations, reservations, dismissals, researcher blocks, completion codes, submissions, returns, reviews, appeals, reports, and participant lists a researcher has added you to. |
| Hosted study responses | Where a study runs on Voxa's own tools, your answers and any files you upload. We hold these as the researcher's processor. |
| Rewards and transactions | Wallet currency and balance, reward and bonus ledger entries, withdrawal requests, payout status, the payout route used and provider references. If you link a PayPal account to be paid, the PayPal account identifier, verified email address and verification status PayPal returns to us, when you linked it, and a copy of the destination email recorded with each withdrawal. We never receive your PayPal sign-in details, PayPal access tokens or raw card details. |
| Tax and platform reporting | Where you are resident in a reportable jurisdiction: full name, primary residence address, date of birth, tax identification number and the jurisdiction that issued it, any business registration and VAT number, the account identifier we pay you to, and the Rewards, transaction counts and fees for each reportable period. |
| Security and access | A one-way hash of your IP address, a masked network range, country, region and city derived from it, limited browser and device context, a device fingerprint hash, request identifiers, login and session events, multi-factor state, country-change flags, and VPN, proxy, Tor or relay classification. |
| Support and communications | Support requests, platform messages, notification history, and your choices about study invitations, message emails, product updates and analytics. |
| Consent and audit | Which version of which document you accepted and when, administrator decisions and their recorded reasons, and the audit records needed to show the marketplace was run properly. |
| How an answer was written | In a Voxa-hosted study that has authenticity checks switched on: how long an answer field was open, how quickly and how evenly you typed, how many characters arrived by pasting, how often the page lost focus, and whether the browser reported the input as script-generated. Never the words you typed. |
3. Why we use it, and our lawful basis
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have assessed the need, the benefit and the effect on you, and we apply safeguards: data minimisation, restricted access, one-way hashing of IP addresses, encryption of identity evidence and human review of significant decisions. You can object to legitimate-interest processing and we will consider your circumstances and whether we have compelling grounds to continue.
You can withdraw consent for sensitive profile answers at any time by deleting an answer or the whole sensitive profile. Withdrawal does not make earlier processing unlawful. A short cooldown applies before the same answer can be re-entered, which exists to stop people flipping answers to chase particular studies.
| Purpose | Lawful basis under UK and EU GDPR |
|---|---|
| Create and operate your account, and provide the platform | Performance of our contract with you (Article 6(1)(b)). |
| Match you to studies, and administer reservations, submissions and reviews | Performance of our contract. For sensitive profile answers used in matching, your explicit consent (Article 9(2)(a)). |
| Verify identity and prevent duplicate or fraudulent accounts | Our legitimate interests in marketplace integrity and fraud prevention (Article 6(1)(f)), and performance of our contract. Where identity evidence reveals special category data, your explicit consent. |
| Pay rewards, operate the wallet and keep financial records | Performance of our contract, and compliance with a legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)) for accounting and tax records. |
| Collect and report information to tax authorities under platform reporting rules | Compliance with a legal obligation. |
| Detect fraud and inauthentic participation, including authenticity signals | Our legitimate interests in protecting research quality, other users and the service, and performance of our contract. |
| Resolve disputes, appeals, reports and complaints | Our legitimate interests in fairness, safety and the establishment or defence of legal claims. |
| Send service communications about your account, studies and rewards | Performance of our contract, and our legitimate interests in operating the service. |
| Send optional product updates, or use non-essential analytics or storage | Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time. |
| Improve the platform using aggregated or anonymised data | Our legitimate interests in understanding and improving the service. Once data is genuinely anonymised it is no longer personal data. |
| Comply with law, regulators, courts and law enforcement | Compliance with a legal obligation. |
4. Matching, profiling and automated decisions
We compare a study's eligibility criteria against your saved profile on our servers. That is profiling, and it decides which recruiting studies appear to you. It is not a decision with legal or similarly significant effects: you are not being denied a service, and studies you do not match are simply not shown.
Researchers see aggregate audience availability when planning a study, and for a study you actually join they see your pseudonymous identifier and the eligibility information relevant to that study. They never receive your complete matching profile.
Fraud and integrity signals (a change of country, an indication that you are using a VPN, proxy, Tor or relay, a device fingerprint seen on another account, an unusually fast completion) are prompts for review. They do not by themselves suspend, reject or ban an account.
In a Voxa-hosted study with authenticity checks switched on, we also measure how an answer was written — typing rhythm, pasted text, and time spent away from the page — and show the researcher a rating of high, mixed, low or not checked. We do not analyse the words you wrote and we do not use text-based AI detectors, which are unreliable and tend to misjudge people writing in a second language. The rating is a prompt to read your answers, never a decision. A researcher who rejects a submission must still give a specific, verifiable reason, and your right to appeal is unchanged. Honest work can be rated low: drafting elsewhere and pasting, dictation and other assistive input, and switching tabs to reread instructions all look alike to a measurement of this kind.
Decisions that meaningfully affect you (account restrictions, identity verification outcomes, appeal decisions) involve a person and a recorded reason. Where an automated control provisionally restricts an account, you can ask for it to be reviewed by a person, and we will do that. You can also ask us to explain the decision, subject to not compromising our fraud controls.
5. Identity verification
To protect research quality and stop duplicate accounts, we may ask you to submit one approved identity document (passport, driving licence or national identity card) and a short verification video. We ask for your consent before you upload anything.
Files are encrypted before they are stored, are readable only by authorised reviewers, and are deleted from the verification record as soon as a reviewer records an approval or rejection. After that we keep the document type, the submission time, the outcome and limited audit information, but not the files themselves.
Where a scanning endpoint is configured, an uploaded file is sent once for malware scanning before it is stored. The scanner returns only a clean or not-clean result and does not retain the file.
This is a human comparison and liveness review. We do not use automated facial recognition and we do not create or store biometric templates. If we ever introduce an external identity provider or biometric matching, we will update this notice and obtain any consent or provide any alternative route the law requires before doing so.
8. International transfers
Some of our providers, and some researchers, are outside the United Kingdom. Where a transfer is not covered by a UK or European Commission adequacy decision, we use an approved safeguard (the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum, the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or another lawful mechanism) supported by a transfer risk assessment and additional protections where they are needed.
Our International Data Transfers document sets out the mechanism for each provider and for researcher transfers, and how to ask for a copy of the safeguards.
A researcher must tell you about transfers of their own study data in their own participant information. If that information is missing, or you are not comfortable with it, do not take part.
9. How long we keep it
We do not currently close accounts for inactivity on privacy grounds. Separately, our Participant Terms allow us to close an account and pay out the balance where no reward has been credited for 12 months; that is a payments measure, not a data-retention one.
| Record | Retention |
|---|---|
| Encrypted identity document and verification video | Deleted from the verification record immediately when a reviewer records an approval or rejection. |
| Access and security events | 90 days, then deleted automatically. |
| Responses to studies hosted on Voxa's own tools | Six months from submission, then deleted automatically, including uploaded files. |
| Account, profile and preferences | While your account is active, and until a deletion request completes. |
| Support requests and platform messages | Three years from the last message in the thread, or from account closure if later. |
| Reports, appeals and dispute records | Up to seven years, reflecting the limitation period for legal claims in England and Wales. |
| Financial, wallet and reward records | Seven years from the transaction, to meet accounting and tax obligations. |
| Tax and platform reporting records | Five years from the end of the reportable period to which they relate, which is the minimum the platform reporting rules require us to keep them for. |
| Consent and audit records | Seven years, so we can demonstrate what you agreed to and how decisions were made. |
| Fraud and enforcement records after a ban | Up to seven years, limited to what is needed to stop the same person re-registering. |
| Aggregated or anonymised records | Indefinitely. These contain no personal data and no individual can be identified from them. |
10. Your rights
Use the Contact page and choose Privacy and data rights. Signed-in users can also use Account & privacy to update preferences, download an account export or request deletion.
We may need to verify your identity proportionately before we act. We respond within one month; complex or numerous requests may lawfully take longer, and if so we will tell you why within that month. Requests are free, though the law allows a reasonable fee or a refusal where a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive.
We may lawfully withhold information that would reveal another person's data, our security or fraud controls, or material covered by legal privilege or another exemption. Where we do, we will tell you the basis unless the law prevents us.
- Access the personal data we hold about you, and receive supporting information.
- Have inaccurate data corrected and incomplete data completed.
- Ask for deletion where the right applies.
- Ask us to restrict processing in certain circumstances.
- Object to processing based on legitimate interests, and object to direct marketing at any time.
- Receive data you gave us in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format.
- Withdraw consent at any time where processing depends on it.
- Ask for human intervention, and challenge the outcome, where a decision is made about you by automated means.
- Complain to the ICO or to your own supervisory authority.
11. Security
We use role-based access control, encrypted transport, encryption of identity evidence at rest, hashed password credentials, revocable sessions, optional multi-factor authentication, rate limiting, one-way hashing of IP addresses, audit trails and provider access controls.
No online service can promise absolute security, and risk is inherent in all internet technologies. If you believe your account or your data is at risk, tell us immediately through the Contact page.
Where a personal data breach is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will notify the ICO within 72 hours of becoming aware of it, and will tell you directly where the risk is high.
12. Children
Voxa is not for anyone under 18 and we do not knowingly collect data from children. If you believe we hold data about a child, tell us and we will delete it in accordance with the law.
We do not permit studies that collect data from children.
13. Cookies and tracking signals
Our Cookie and Device Storage Notice lists every cookie and storage key we set. No advertising or third-party analytics technology is connected in the current release.
We do not currently respond to browser "Do Not Track" signals, because there is no agreed standard for how a service should interpret them. Where the law makes a universal opt-out signal such as Global Privacy Control binding on us, we will honour it. See our regional addenda.
14. Changes to this notice
We update this notice as the product, our providers or the law change. We post changes here with a new effective date, and where a change materially affects how we use data we already hold, we give a prominent notice on the platform or by email and, where the law requires it, ask for your consent before the new use begins.
15. If you are outside the UK
Additional rights and disclosures apply in some countries and US states. Our Regional privacy addenda cover California, other US states including consumer health data, and jurisdictions in Asia-Pacific and beyond. Where an addendum applies to you and conflicts with this notice, the addendum prevails for your personal data.
If this notice is translated into another language, the English version governs in the event of a conflict.