Data Ethics & Compliance

Surdatics only produces consented data.

• Every respondent sees what a study is for and what it pays before they answer.
• Nobody is enrolled without agreeing: no tracking, no bought contact lists.
• Consent is specific: answering a study is not agreeing to verification, and neither is agreeing to marketing.
• Consent can be withdrawn, and withdrawing it stops future use.

• Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 (NDPA) — our home regime, supervised by the Nigeria Data Protection Commission.
• EU / UK GDPR — where a respondent is in the EEA or UK. Consent for the biometric data Surdatics Verify uses is asked for separately and explicitly (Article 9).
• ePrivacy / PECR — cookies and electronic communications.
• Research ethics — informed consent, the right to stop part-way, no deception about purpose, and fair payment.

We do not claim certifications we have not earned. When we are independently audited, this page will name the standard, the auditor and the date.

Every answer is hashed the moment it arrives and anchored on the blockchain, and each study's results again when it closes, payment record included, so a buyer can confirm the data is the one that was collected, unchanged, and that the people in it were paid. Only the SHA-256 hash goes on the blockchain, never the answers or anyone's personal details.

The Surdatics Data Marketplace labels them distinctly everywhere they appear:

• Collected on Surdatics. Gathered here from consenting, paid respondents. We stand behind how it was obtained.
• Brought by the seller. Collected elsewhere. The seller warrants its lawful origin, and the listing says we did not witness its collection.

A buyer always knows which they are buying before they pay.

Direct identifiers are removed before any dataset is listed, and one person cannot be followed from one dataset to another.

Anonymisation is not absolute. Small datasets with rare combinations are flagged, re-identification is barred by contract, and anyone who attempts it loses access.

• We do not scrape, and we do not buy scraped data.
• We do not train models on your personal data.
• We do not sell personal data. Datasets on the Surdatics Data Marketplace are anonymised.
• Surdatics AI drafts questions, transcripts and reports, and a person reviews them before they have any effect.
• No automated system alone decides whether you are paid.

A buyer may train models on anonymised data where their licence says so. Nothing that could identify a respondent is ever sold.

• The reward is shown before a respondent starts, and does not change once they begin.
• Rewards are funded before a study goes live.
• A rejected answer can be disputed, and someone other than the researcher reviews it.
• We only offer payout methods that can actually pay.

If you believe a dataset was collected improperly, that a listing contains personal data, or that someone has attempted re-identification, tell us at ethics@surdatics.com. We investigate every report and suspend a listing while we do.

Security issues go to security@surdatics.com. We will not pursue anyone who reports a genuine vulnerability to us in good faith and gives us reasonable time to fix it.