Stars Insight

Legal Notice

We, Kantar GmbH, operate the Online Community “Stars Insight” (hereinafter referred to as the “Online Community”) as part of a long-term online project. The sole purpose of the Online Community is to survey opinions and obtain the views of customers. The use of the Online Community is free of charge.

You can find out how to contact us by clicking on “Imprint” link on this website.

1 Scope

The following terms and conditions apply to use of the Online Community provided on the domain www.stars-insight.us . By registering, you consent to the Terms and Conditions of Use for the Online Community.

2 Registering as a member of the Online Community

(1) You may only use the Online Community if you

1. have attained the age of majority in the province, state or country in which you reside,

2. register properly as a member of the Online Community, and

3. accept and comply with these Terms and Conditions of Use.

(2) After you register using the online form, you are sent a confirmation mail so that you can verify your data and confirm your registration.

(3) You do not have any legal entitlement to activation of your account or participation in the Online Community. As the operator, Kantar reserves the right to prohibit members from or admit them to the Online Community.

(4) When choosing your user name, you are not permitted to use

- terms protected by trademark,

- company names or

- Internet addresses.

- Instead, use your first name or a pseudonym you have invented.

(5) Only you are allowed to use your membership account. As the account holder, you are likewise responsible for protecting your account against misuse. In particular, you are responsible for protecting your access data from being obtained by third parties.

(6) You may only register with the Online Community using only one account.

3 General duties on the part of members of the Online Community

(1) You as a member of the Online Community undertake to refrain from publishing contributions that violate the Community’s rules, public morality or prevailing law.

In particular, you are not allowed to:

1. publish offensive or untrue content,

2. publish content whose publication constitutes a criminal offence or regulatory offence,

3. send spam,

4. use content protected by law, in particular content that is copyrighted or protected by trademark, without authorisation,

5.post identical content in the Community multiple times (ban on duplicate postings),

6. conduct your own advertising or surreptitious advertising,

7.publish content with elements that are offensive, racist, hateful, discriminatory, pornographic, threatening or pestering toward or in the eyes of other members or the general public,

8. publish contributions through third parties if the third party’s personal identity can be deduced from them (such as through a name, address, telephone number or the overall circumstances), unless the third parties are public figures,

9. read content of the website using automated mechanisms (such as bots, robots, spiders or scrapers), unless you have our explicit written consent to do so,

10. upload viruses or other malicious code to the website.

(2) As a member of the Online Community, you are obliged to check that you have complied with the above subsection before publishing your contribution in the Online Community.

(3) If you violate the above subsection, we in particular reserve the right to take the following steps against you:

1. delete or amend the contributions you have posted,

2. prohibit you from posting further contributions in the Online Community, or

3. block your access to, or remove you as a member of, the Online Community.

(4) By giving your consent, you warrant that you will not create any contributions that violate the Community rules laid out in the above subsection (1).

(5) If you detect a violation of our Terms and Conditions of Use or prevailing law in individual contributions, we ask you to report them to us so that we can examine the contribution as soon as possible and delete it if applicable.

(6) The Online Community is accessible only to registered members. However, we recommend that you refrain from disclosing details that allow you to be identified (such as your address, telephone number or e-mail address) in your contributions. Your contributions should not reveal any information that you would also not make publicly available.

4 Your duty to maintain confidentiality

(1) Knowledge and information is communicated to you as a member of the Online Community, or made available to you on the website, in particular:

Results of studies and surveys held in the Community, provided photographic and video material, and documents from Mercedes-Benz AG and its subsidiaries, for example on planned product launches or marketing activities.

This constitutes Confidential Information, unless indicated otherwise.

(2) The Confidential Information shall remain the intellectual property of from Mercedes-Benz AG and its subsidiaries, Kantar, their affiliated companies or third parties and you shall not be granted any rights to use them or any license rights to them.

(3) You undertake to keep the Confidential Information secret and take appropriate measures to prevent third parties from gaining knowledge of and utilizing it. In particular, you are prohibited from utilizing the Confidential Information for your own purposes or disclosing it to third parties, except with our explicit written consent.

(4) The obligation to maintain confidentiality shall not apply if

- Confidential Information is in the public domain – without that involving a violation of this section 3 – and so is no longer secret or capable of being protected,

- Kantar respectively Mercedes-Benz AG and its subsidiaries has given you its prior written consent in the specific individual case to disclose Confidential Information to a third party,

- you have obtained the Confidential Information from a third party before joining the Online Community or obtained it afterwards from a third party – without that involving a violation of this section 3 –, provided the third party has come into possession of the Confidential Information lawfully and does not violate a binding obligation on itself to maintain confidentiality by disclosing it, or

- you are obliged to disclose the Confidential Information by law or pursuant to an order by a competent court of law, public authority or other institution, in which case you must undertake all reasonable steps to prevent or restrict disclosure of the Confidential Information to the maximum possible extent.

The onus to prove that one of the above exceptions from the obligation to maintain confidentiality exists shall be on you.

(5) Subject to subsection 4 above, this obligation to maintain confidentiality shall remain in effect after your membership of the Online Community ends.

(6) Kantar does not warrant that the Confidential Information is correct or complete.

5 Transfer of usage rights

(1) As a member of the Online Community, you have sole responsibility for ensuring compliance with the applicable copyright laws and legislation when you publish contributions in the Online Community.

(2) You grant us the following permission in relation to the content (contributions, comments, suggestions, ideas, information, photos, texts, videos, etc.) that you have posted as part of use of the Online Community and that are covered by intellectual property rights (hereinafter referred to as “IP Content”):

You grant us – waiving any claims for payment and reference to your name – the irrevocable, non-exclusive, assignable rights to use your IP Content without any restriction as to time and place. In turn, we undertake to confine use of your IP Content to those purposes that are stated in the preamble at the outset of these Terms and Conditions of Use.

(3) The above usage rights shall remain in effect even after your membership ends.

6 Granting of incentives

Your participation in and membership of the Online Community is voluntary. Kantar can grant rewards or reimbursement of expenses or offer contests (jointly referred to in the following as “Incentives”) on a case by case basis, but shall not owe any payment for your participation in the Online Community and in particular for the content you post. Kantar shall not assume any obligations in connection with the payment of tax on any Incentives granted to you. You yourself shall be responsible for paying tax on the Incentives or income you receive from Kantar as part of the Online Community.

7 DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES:
YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK.KANTAR AND its RESPECTIVE SUPPLIERS PROVIDE THE SERVICE, INCLUDING ALL CONTENT, SOFTWARE, FUNCTIONS, MATERIALS AND INFORMATION MADE AVAILABLE ON OR ACCESSED FROM OR THROUGH THE SERVICE, "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. KANTAR AND ITS RESPECTIVE SUPPLIERS MAKE NO WARRANTY THAT: (i) THE SERVICE WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS; (ii) THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, ERROR-FREE, AND FREE FROM VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS; AND (iii) THE QUALITY OF ANY PRODUCTS, SERVICES, INFORMATION OR OTHER MATERIAL OBTAINED BY YOU THROUGH THE SERVICE WILL MEET YOUR EXPECTATIONS. ANY MATERIAL DOWNLOADED OR OTHERWISE OBTAINED THROUGH THE USE OF THE SERVICE IS DONE AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION AND RISK, AND YOU WILL BE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE TO YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM OR LOSS OF DATA THAT RESULTS FROM THE DOWNLOAD OF ANY SUCH MATERIAL.

8 LIMITATION OF LIABILITY:
IN NO EVENT WILL KANTAR BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD-PARTY FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, EXEMPLARY, PUNITIVE, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SERVICE OR THIS AGREEMENT, EVEN IF kantar OR ANY OF its RESPECTIVE SUPPLIERS HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES,. IN NO EVENT WILL kantar’s AGGREGATE LIABILITY TO YOU OR ANY THIRD-PARTY ARISING FROM OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THIS AGREEMENT EXCEED $500.00. SOME STATES DO NOT ALLOW CERTAIN LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY SO SOME OF THE ABOVE LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

9 Term and termination of membership

(1) Your membership of the Online Community shall commence when you register and consent to our Terms and Conditions of Use.

(2) Your membership shall run for an indefinite period of time and can be terminated without notice by either Party at any time, without the need to give any reason for doing so.

(3) If you wish to delete or terminate your account, please notify the Community’s moderator by e-mail (support.starsinsight.us@kantarcommunities.com ).
Alternatively, you can cancel your account yourself. To do this, click on "My profile" and then on "Edit account". At the bottom of this page, you will find the option to click "Cancel membership in the community".
The comments and contributions you have posted in the Online Community shall then remain visible to the other members. They are then indicated by “Anonymous” instead of your user name. Your personal data shall be deleted.

You can find more information on deletion of personal data in our Privacy Policy.

10 Reservation of the right to make amendments

(1) We reserve the right to amend or expand the content and structure of the Online Community and the related user interfaces. Any such amendment shall be communicated in the Online Community in reasonable form.

(2) We shall have the right to amend the Terms and Conditions of Use at any time. Any such amendment shall be communicated in the Online Community in good time before it takes effect and in reasonable form. If you continue using the Online Community after the amendments take effect, that shall denote your consent to the modified Terms and Conditions of Use.

11 Place of jurisdiction

If no amicable agreement can be reached on any disputes that may arise, we agree – where permissible under the law – that the courts of law with competence for the place of the registered offices of Kantar in Germany (Munich) shall have jurisdiction and venue for any disputes that arise from or in connection with, result from or are based on the application of these Terms and Conditions of Use.

12 Consumer arbitration

Kantar is neither willing nor obliged to take part in proceedings to resolve disputes before a consumer arbitration board.

13 Severability clause

Should one or more provisions in these Terms and Conditions of Use be or become invalid, the validity of the remaining provisions shall not be affected thereby. The Parties undertake to replace the invalid provision by an arrangement which corresponds as closely as possible to the economic purpose of the invalid provision.

14 Information for California Residents

Under California Civil Code Section 1789.3, Members located in California are entitled to the following consumer rights information: (a) The Service is provided by the Company located at: Kantar GmbH, Landsberger Str. 284, 80687 Munich/Germany; support.starsinsight.us@kantarcommunities.com (b) You may contact Company at the address in subsection (a) immediately with complaints or to request additional information about the Service. Also, the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs may be contacted in writing at 1020 N. Street, #501, Sacramento, CA 95814, or by telephone at (916) 445-1254

Please find below the statutory information on data protection. We ask you to read this privacy notice carefully.

This privacy notice describes how we process personal data which you provide to us as part of your participation in the study within the Online Community and on this website. This privacy statement applies exclusively to the website https://www.stars-insight.us.
The statement does not apply to other websites, services or products which are performed or provided by ourselves or third parties.

Who is the controller?

Kantar as data controller is responsible for processing your data within this community. Our contact details are as follows:

Kantar GmbH
Landsberger Str. 284
80687 München/Deutschland

Phone: +49–89–5600-0

support.starsinsight.us@kantarcommunities.com

What is the purpose of the online Community?

The aim and purpose of our online Community is for members of the Community and purchasers concerned to share and exchange opinions and experience and discuss potential brand, product and communication ideas.
For this purpose, we will provide information e.g. on planned product launches, communication tools or marketing activities on the www.stars-insight.us website and discuss them with you in the website forums.
We will from time to time send you invitations to your registered email address asking you to participate in new surveys or discussions within the Online Community. These will cover planned product launches, communication tools or marketing activities from Mercedes-Benz.
We will collect your information and feedback, analyze it and compare it with information from other users. The final reports however, which we prepare for Mercedes-Benz will be anonymized. The final results of the analysis will be used in marketing and product decisions of Mercedes-Benz.

What are personal data within our Community?

This means for example your name, your email address, your telephone number or postal address but also your individual contributions to the Community, in short, all information which identify you personally.
If you are located in California personal data also includes any information relating to a specific household.

Why and on what legal basis was I contacted?

We have contacted you because you have either given Mercedes-Benz AG your consent to this or you have otherwise found out about us and have completed our registration process.

Will my data be treated confidentially?

Of course! Protection of your privacy is a matter of particular concern to Kantar. We will, therefore, treat your information with the utmost confidentiality and only as you wish. This means: your data will only be collected, processed or used to the extent you have permitted us to do so e.g. by accepting the terms of use or by explicit enquiry on our part. Furthermore, you have control over which data you wish to disclose or would prefer to keep private.

Kantar GmbH works according to the EU General Data Protection Regulation and all other data protection provisions.

Do I have to participate in the online Community?

Participating in our online Community is, of course, always voluntary. You will not suffer any disadvantages by not participating.

Regardless of whether you participate or not, you can object at any time to the future collection, processing or use of your personal data. If you wish to object, simply send an e-mail to: support.starsinsight.us@kantarcommunities.com

Children data collection

You must have attained the age of majority in the province, state or country in which you reside.

Sources of data:

Sources of your data are:

All information that you provide us directly in connection with your participation within our online Community
The information collected on the website (e.g. through the use of cookies) as outlined in the chapter below

Specific information on this website and the use of cookies

Collection of General Information when this website is used

When you access this website, general information is automatically collected. This information includes, for example, the type of web browser, the operating system used, the domain name of your Internet service pro- vider and similar information. This information is technically required in order to correctly deliver the content you have requested from websites and is mandatory when using the Internet. Furthermore, the collection of such data is technically required to ensure stability and security.

Anonymous information of this kind is statistically evaluated by us in order to optimize our Internet presence and the technology behind it. This information is also used to avert threats in the event of attacks on our in- formation technology systems and to provide law enforcement authorities with the information necessary to prosecute criminals in the event of a cyber-attack.

Use of Cookies

Similar to many other websites, we also use "cookies". Cookies are small text files that are transferred from a website server to your hard drive. This automatically provides us with certain data such as the IP address, the web browser used, the operating system and information about your computer and your connection to the Internet.

Cookies cannot be used to start programs or to transmit viruses to a computer. We use the information con- tained in cookies to help you navigate and display our websites correctly. In addition, they serve to make our website more user-friendly and effective.

Under no circumstances will the data we collect be passed on to third parties or linked to personal data with- out your consent.

You can also view our website without cookies. Web browsers are regularly set to accept cookies. You can deactivate the use of cookies at any time via the settings of your web browser. The help functions of your web browser will show you how to change these settings. Please note that some functions of our website may not function or only function to a limited extent if you have deactivated the use of cookies.

Please see this list to understand which cookies we are storing:

All cookies used are technically necessary cookies which are necessary for providing the community.

Cookie Name	Purpose	Persis-tence	Type
SESS[Unique ID]	This cookie allows logging in and remembering which contact forms you have submitted. This cookie is essential for site functionality and the user experience.	30 days	Functional Cookie
Drupal.visitor.login_history	Drupal sets this cookie to track user login behavior	1 year	Functional Cookie
Drupal.tableDrag.showWeight, has_js	Drupal sets these cookies to store user interface preferences.	1 year	Functional Cookie
Hash SessionID	This cookie is placed when you start a survey session on the same browser where you are working on another one.	Length of session	Functional Cookie
QST	The purpose is to prevent respondents from taking survey multiple times	6 months	Functional Cookie
TRACK_TLS1_0	This cookie is used for tracking clients connecting to Qualtrics using TLS1.0. Qualtrics is working to deprecate TLS1.0 in the future.	1 year	Functional Cookie
Site History Session	This Cookie tracks the URL of the Web page that the user visited	Length of session	Functional Cookie
__cfduid	Helps to detect malicious visitors to the website and minimizes blocking legitimate users. It is necessary for security features. The _cfduid cookie collects and anonymizes End User IP addresses using a one-way hash of certain values so they cannot be personally identified. addresses using a one-way hash of certain values so they cannot be personally identified.	1 year	Functional Cookie

Who receives my data apart from Kantar GmbH?

Within the community your comments and posts as well as the username that you have chosen will be visible to the other members of the community. Among these members are employees of our client Mercedes-Benz AG who are observing and involved in the discussions.

Please note, that our client Mercedes-Benz AG takes part in the Online Community and has full access and admin rights, in order to directly discuss with you and other members of the community and to create surveys at short notice. Mercedes-Benz therefore can see your posts and other content provided by you within the Community.

When conducting our studies and providing our community we use service providers, which process personal data on our behalf. In particular we work with service providers which carry out the interviewing process or evaluate the interviews and with software providers. In addition we rely on providers which work for us in the course of our general business operations and administration, e.g. providers for our IT-infrastructure.

We have entered into data processing agreements with all our service providers in accordance with Art. 28 of the European General Data Protection Regulation. The service providers are hereby obliged to strictly follow instructions with regard to their data processing activities on our behalf. Where we send data outside the European Economic Area, we obtain suitable guarantees in order to guarantee the level of protection provided for by the European General Data Protection Regulation.

The incentive voucher will be sent by Kantar's service provider, 360Insights Ltd., to whom we will pass on the winners' e-mail addresses. In this case the data will be processed in the USA, i.e. outside the European Union or the European Economic Area. In order to guarantee an appropriate level of data protection outside the EU, Kantar has concluded the so-called EU Standard Contractual Clauses with the service provider.

You may have become aware of our community through a recruitment service provider (e.g. a panel of which you are a member). In this case, the recruitment service provider has invited you to register on our community. We will provide the recruitment service provider with feedback on your participation in the entry questionnaire and any registrations made on our community. The legal basis for the disclosure of the personal data required for this purpose is our legitimate interest in possibly compensating the recruitment service provider depending on the number of successful registrations in our Community. Furthermore, the comparison is necessary to ensure the quality of the recruitment and to prevent misuse (e.g. multiple registrations).

The purpose of this Online Community is to provide anonymized contents of the discussions and surveys as part of our final report(s) to our clients and to the public. This could mean, that we use selected comments, statements and discussion posts and quote them in documents, reports and other media.

We do not sell any of your personal data.

How long will my data be stored?

Your personal data will be processed for the above-mentioned purpose as long as the online Community is in operation and as long as you have not asserted a right to erasure.

As required by legal regulations and the standards DIN-ISO 27001, ISO 9001, ISO 20252, backups are performed and archived for our electronic systems. These are stored securely for a specified period and protected against unauthorized access. After expiry of the storage periods, this data is finally deleted and the storage media destroyed.

What are my rights with respect to my personal data?

You can assert the following rights vis-à-vis Kantar: right of access, right to rectification, right to erasure, (“right to be forgotten”), right to restriction of processing, right to data portability, Right to object.

You also have a right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority on data protection. You can lodge your complaint both with the supervisory authority in the federal Land where you reside or work and with the supervisory authority competent for the controller in the respective federal Land.

If you are located in California, you have furthermore the right to not be discriminated against for exercising any of the rights available to you under applicable data protection laws.

If necessary, we will notify any other parties such as our suppliers or service providers to whom we have transferred your personal data of any changes that we make when you make a request.

Whom can I contact if I have questions?

You can contact the data protection officer of Kantar GmbH regarding all questions of data protection at:

Kantar GmbH
Landsberger Str. 284
80687 München/Deutschland
Email: datenschutz@kantar.com
Phone: +49–89–5600-0

When you make a request you should indicate the divison of Kantar in which you are making the request (and, for example, your panelist ID or other identifier). If you contact us using an email address or contact details for which we do not hold a record of, you will also need to provide a copy of a valid government issued or official identification (such as drivers license or passport).

If you have any questions concerning the community, please do not hesitate to contact the team at support.starsinsight.us@kantarcommunities.com .

Notification of Material Changes:

We keep our privacy policy under regular review and it may be amended from time to time. We will always have the most up-to-date policy on this web page. We will record when the policy was last revised.

Date created: 10/20/2020

Last revised: 27/04/2022

Kantar GmbH
Landsberger Str. 284
80687 München

Registered in: Munich, AG Munich, HRB 114447
Managing Directors: Frank Paule, Andreas Pohle, Ingo Schier, Dr. Stefan Stumpp
VAT-Number: DE183656850

Contact
support.starsinsight.us@kantarcommunities.com