Privacy policy

How we handle personal data — what we hold, why, for how long, and what you can require of us. The section on research participation is the substantive one, because that is where we hold the most about the most people.

1. Who this covers

This policy applies to three groups: people who visit this website, people at client and prospective client firms who correspond with us, and people who take part in our research — the experts, operators and customers we interview or survey. Where a section applies to only one group, it says so.

The controller is Heatseeker Advisory LLC, trading as Parallax, of VUNE0104, Compass Building, Al Hulaila, Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates. Write to contact@parallaxintel.ai about anything in this policy.

2. What we hold

Website visitors

Our host records ordinary server logs — IP address, request time, page requested, browser and device type. We do not run analytics on this site and we set no cookies (see the cookie policy).

Client contacts

Your name, work email, firm, role, and whatever you choose to tell us in an enquiry or during an engagement, together with the correspondence itself and the records a commercial relationship generates — contracts, invoices, delivery records.

Research participants

Your name and contact details; your professional background, meaning role, employer, seniority, sector and location; your consent records; what you said in an interview or answered in a survey, and the recording and transcript where one was made; and payment details where you are compensated.

3. Where it comes from

Mostly from you. For research participants we also identify candidates from sources that are public or lawfully licensed — professional networks such as LinkedIn, company registers, trade directories, association listings and company websites — and from referrals by other participants.

Where we did not get your details from you, we tell you at first contact. The first message you receive from us says who we are, what study you are being invited to, where we found you, and how to make us stop. That notice is a legal requirement and we treat it as a design rule rather than a footnote.

4. Why, and on what basis

Legitimate interests

Identifying and inviting suitable research participants; carrying on correspondence with client firms; keeping our own records; securing our systems. Our interest is in operating a research and advisory practice; we have weighed it against your interests, and you can object at any time on the address above.

Contract

Delivering an engagement to a client, and paying a participant for their time.

Consent

Recording an interview, and processing that recording — transcription, coding and analysis. These are asked for separately from each other and separately from agreement to be interviewed. Consent can be withdrawn without giving a reason and without affecting your payment.

Legal obligation

Tax, accounting, and responding to lawful requests.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not use it to train models for anyone else.

5. Research participation

This section is the substance of the policy, because research is where we hold the most about the most people.

How an interview is arranged

A person invites you and you book a slot. We do not place unsolicited automated calls. Where the interview will be conducted by our voice system rather than by a person, the invitation says so before you accept, not at the start of the call.

Consents are separate and unbundled

Agreeing to be interviewed is one thing; agreeing to be recorded is another; agreeing that the recording may be transcribed, coded and analysed is a third. Each is asked separately, and agreeing to talk to us is never treated as agreement to any of the rest.

Special categories are minimised, not invited

Our instruments are designed not to elicit health, political opinion, religious belief, ethnicity, trade-union membership or comparable data. Where such material would arise incidentally, the question is rewritten or the passage is removed.

Your name comes off before analysis

Contact details are separated from answers, and analysis runs against an identifier rather than an identity. What reaches a client is what was said, attributed by role, segment, location and date — not by name or employer, unless you have specifically agreed otherwise.

You can stop

You can decline an invitation, skip any question, end an interview, or withdraw your consent afterwards. Withdrawal removes the recording and the transcript. Where a finding drawn from your answers has already been aggregated into a delivered analysis and can no longer be traced to you, it stays; nothing identifying you remains.

6. Who else sees it

Clients receive findings, not people. They do not receive participant names, contact details or employers, and they do not receive the participant list.

Service providers process data on our instructions and under contract: hosting and content delivery, email, the interview and scheduling platform, transcription, survey panel providers, payment processors, and document signing. They may not use the data for their own purposes.

Authorities, where we are legally required to disclose, or where disclosure is necessary to establish or defend a legal claim.

7. Where it is processed

We operate from the United Arab Emirates and work with clients and participants in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Personal data may therefore be transferred outside the country you are in, including to service providers in the European Economic Area and the United States. Where data leaves the EEA or the UK we rely on the appropriate safeguards available for that transfer, ordinarily the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses, and we can tell you which apply to a given processor on request.

8. How long we keep it

Recordings and unredacted transcripts

12 to 24 months after the study they were collected for, then deleted or irreversibly anonymised.

Anonymised findings

Kept indefinitely. Once anonymised they are no longer personal data and cannot be traced back to a person.

Participant records and consent state

Kept while you remain on the list, and removed on request. Consent and objection records are kept for as long as we need them to prove we honoured them.

Client and business records

For the life of the relationship and then for the period tax, accounting and limitation law requires.

9. Your rights

Subject to the law that applies to you, you can ask us for a copy of what we hold, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, ask us to restrict or stop a particular use, object to processing we base on legitimate interests, ask for it in a portable form, and withdraw a consent you gave. Write to contact@parallaxintel.ai. We answer within one month and we do not charge for it.

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom you may also complain to your national data protection authority. We would rather you told us first, but that is your right, not our permission.

10. Security

Encryption in transit and at rest, access limited to the people who need it, separation of contact details from research answers, and deletion on a schedule rather than on request only. No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim otherwise.

11. Cookies

This website sets no cookies and runs no analytics or advertising technology. See the cookie policy.

12. Marketing, kept separate

Being a research participant does not put you on a marketing list, and we do not use research recruitment as a route to selling anything. The two are kept apart as a matter of rule. Where we do send commercial messages, every one carries an unsubscribe.

13. Children

Our services are for professionals and are not directed at anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect data about children.

14. Changes

We may revise this policy. The version in force is the one on this page, and the date at the top of it is the date it took effect. Where a change materially affects participants, we say so directly rather than relying on this page being re-read.

15. Contact

Parallax, operated by Heatseeker Advisory LLC, VUNE0104, Compass Building, Al Hulaila, Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates.
contact@parallaxintel.ai