How your data are handled with respect to privacy depends on the settings chosen by the leaders who created the engagement. ThoughtExchange does not share participant identities with other participants, but there are some situations where the leaders of the engagement may know who shared which responses.

Identifying information is not available to leaders when:

When an engagement is Anonymous, the leaders of the engagement are not able to connect email addresses or other identifying information to the responses provided.

For Anonymous engagements, leaders can download a record of the data that shows all the responses provided by a single person. While explicitly identifying information (ex. email address) is not included, the leaders may be able to infer a participant’s identity in certain situations. For example, if the participant answered demographic questions indicating they worked in communications at a small regional office where there is only one communications employee, the identity of the participant could be easily determined.

Participants can know if they are in an Anonymous engagement if the privacy message they see reads:

Identifying information is available to leaders when:

When an engagement is Confidential, the leaders of the engagement are able to download a record of the data which includes the email address of participants when that information is available. 

Email addresses are available to leaders when:

• Participants are required to login to my.thoughtexchange.com to participate in the engagement.
• Participants have chosen to login to my.thoughtexchange.com prior to participating.
• The leaders of the engagement have sent out unique participation links using an email list (email lists may also contain other identifying information - ex. location, job title, etc.)
• Participants login using SSO (Single Sign On)

Participants can know if they are in a Confidential engagement if the privacy message they see reads:

Engagements Collecting Contact Information

Some leaders may choose to collect participants’ contact information for follow up, to incentivize participation or for a multitude of other reasons. In these cases, participants provide their email address in a separate dialogue box that is never linked to their responses.