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Tracking & Identifying Respondents Using Their IP-address

Collecting the IP-address from participants may have analytical values. For example, it may enable you to identify whether one person has participated in the same survey several times to affect the results.

illustration of survey respondents IPs
Collect IP address setting dialog

If needed for your research, you can collect IP-addresses of your survey respondents. This may enable you to verify weather the same person participates in the same survey or quiz more than one time.

To address this need, we have implemented a feature called “Collect IP-address“.
Collect IP-address
Turning this setting ON, enables storing the IP-addresses of your participants along with the collected data. This setting is off by default; IP addresses are not added to survey response data unless you enable it. Before enabling this feature, review the data protection requirements below.

Before you start collecting IP addresses, you must have a lawful basis for processing them and tell respondents how their data will be used. Consent is one of several possible lawful bases. The basis you can rely on depends on why and how you process the data. Other data protection requirements still apply.

Note:
Even when the IP collecting feature is OFF, our system will still be able to show you which country or city are your respondents coming from; both in your Live Analytics or Individual Responses view

How are IP-addresses shown to you

There are two ways you can see the IP addresses.

In exported data

One of them is when you export your collected data, like the example below.
Note:
When you download the data, each row in the Excel file represents one participant or participation.
A B C … Z
Did you come to our seminar last week? How satisfied are you with the following aspects of the seminar? What is your current position? … IP
Yes Satisfied Supervisor … 247.205.10.215
Yes Satisfied Marketing … 140.8.220.85
No N/A Accounting … 138.178.112.104
Yes Very satisfied IT … 82.225.210.133
* The above data are fake.   The above table shows an example of a downloaded spreadsheet file. First row shows survey questions, and each of the next rows represent one respondent. When you download a spreadsheet of your survey responses, you will see each respondent’s IP-address too, if this feature is enabled.  

In “Individual responses” view

The other way is by going to the individual responses view. The IP-addresses are stated for each respondent, under the Metrics tab. An illustration of individual responses, showing how IPs and External IDs are shown to survey creators.
An illustration of individual responses, showing how IPs and External IDs are shown to survey creators.

An illustration of individual responses, showing how IPs and External IDs are shown to survey creators.

The illustration above shows an example of what is shown under the Metrics tab in the Individual Responses view. Note how IPs and External IDs are shown to survey creators.

Does SurveyLegend collect IP addresses automatically?

IP address collection for survey response data is off by default. You can enable it in the survey settings.
Note:
Before you start collecting IP addresses, you must have a lawful basis for processing them and tell respondents how their data will be used. Consent is one of several possible lawful bases. The basis you can rely on depends on why and how you process the data. Other data protection requirements still apply.

Are IP-addresses reliable identifiers?

Well, not 100%. If your respondent uses a VPN for instance, they may get a fake IP address, every time they open your survey link. Also, if many people from the same network (for example students in a school library) open your survey, all of them would have the same IP-addresses.
Tip:

If you want to make sure that a respondent does not “cheat”, it’s a great idea to add an external ID to the survey link that you send to them. This will empower you to track how many times respondents have actually provided their feedback.

Learn more about making your surveys and forms compliant with GDPR.

Limiting number of participations

SurveyLegend also allows you to limit the number of participations. If this feature is enabled, a respondent can participate in a survey only one time, from the same browser. Read more about limiting number of participation in a survey here. This feature uses cookies to work. Therefore, if a respondent opens your survey link in another web-browser, or cleans the browser’s cache, they can participate in the survey again.