Crowdsignal

What Crowdsignal is

Crowdsignal, formerly known as Polldaddy, is a poll, survey and quiz platform operated by Automattic Inc. in the United States. It lets teams create interactive polls, surveys, quizzes and rating widgets and embed them directly on a website or share them through a link. The widget loads its code from Crowdsignal servers and renders inside the host page, where visitors can vote or answer questions in place.

What data and cookies Crowdsignal collects

When a visitor interacts with an embedded poll or survey, Crowdsignal sets cookies on the device to stop the same person voting more than once and to remember them as a respondent between visits. It also collects the answers people submit to polls, surveys and quizzes, along with technical details such as the time of the response. Because survey and quiz questions are open ended, the responses can include free text and questions that reveal personal or sensitive information about the respondent.

GDPR and ePrivacy implications

The voting identifiers and survey responses that Crowdsignal processes are personal data under the GDPR, because they relate to an identifiable respondent. Writing and reading cookies on the visitor device also falls within Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive, which the CNIL in France, the German authorities under the TDDDG and the AEPD in Spain all enforce as a strict prior consent obligation for non essential trackers such as the duplicate vote prevention and respondent cookies.

When consent is required

Consent is required before Crowdsignal sets its cookies, because they are not strictly necessary for the visitor to receive the content of the page. That consent must be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous under Article 6(1)(a) GDPR, and it must be as easy to refuse as to accept. Until the visitor accepts, the embedded widget should not write cookies to the device, and where responses include personal data the respondent should be told how that data will be used before submitting.

Transfers of data to the United States

Automattic Inc. processes Crowdsignal data on United States infrastructure, so European respondent data is transferred outside the European Economic Area. Such transfers require the EU Standard Contractual Clauses 2021/914 within the Automattic Data Processing Agreement and a documented Transfer Impact Assessment that considers United States surveillance law, in line with the Schrems II ruling and the guidance of the European Data Protection Board.

Practical steps for compliant use

Gate the Crowdsignal embed behind your consent management platform so it fires only after the relevant cookie category is accepted. Describe Crowdsignal in your cookie policy, including the duplicate vote prevention cookie and the respondent identifier and their lifetimes. Sign the Automattic Data Processing Agreement, complete a Transfer Impact Assessment and apply the shortest workable retention on responses. Keep survey and quiz questions to what is strictly necessary and avoid special category data unless you have an explicit legal basis for it.