Glassdoor Privacy Policy

Revised July 27, 2023 (major update summary and previous version)

This Privacy Policy (the “Policy”) applies to personal data Glassdoor processes when providing our services, including various Glassdoor websites, such as Glassdoor.com and Fishbowlapp.com, applications, ads, communications, and other instances where we link to this Policy (collectively “services”). Any term not defined in this Policy has the meaning set forth in our Terms of Use. As used in this Policy, the word “including” means “including but not limited to.” Glassdoor affiliates include Indeed and Indeed Flex. You can read more about our affiliates and our shared commitment to privacy at our Privacy Center.

Personal Data We Process and How We Use It

We process personal data in order to provide our services. The personal data we collect from and about you will vary depending on how you interact with our services. We also change our services from time to time, so your options for providing us with personal data may also change. You aren’t required to provide us with personal data. However, if you don’t share certain data with us, we may not be able to provide you with our services or respond to your requests.

We May Collect the Following Categories of Personal Data

How We May Use Personal Data

Advertising (On & Off the Services)

We may use your personal data to enable our advertising, advertising for our customers (including job and display ads), and sponsored Content.

• We may use personal data we collect from you, our affiliates, and third parties to personalize ads for our services as well as ads available on our services. 
• We may also use data we collect via our services and third-party ad partners (including affiliates) to measure the effectiveness of ads and to help recognize your device(s) to serve you ads on and off of our services. Some of our ad partners may also enable us to collect similar data directly from their website or app by integrating our or our affiliates advertising technology.
• Personal data shared by ad partners and affiliates or collected by us from the websites and apps of ad partners and affiliates may be combined with the other data you share with us and that we receive, generate, or infer about you, as described in this Policy.
• If you respond to ads posted by third parties or submit data to third parties via the services, these third parties receive data about you subject to their respective privacy policies.

Creating an Account & Profile

You will need to create an account and provide personal data to access most of our services. 

• In order to provide you with access to features across our services, we may create and link different service accounts for you.
• If you sign up or into our services with a third-party service, that service may share your personal data with us, such as your name and email address. You control the personal data you authorize to be shared with us via your third-party service accounts.
• When you set up an account on our services, we create a member “Profile” for you that includes the personal data you provide. We may update your Profile with data we obtain from third parties or extract from your resume. We may also use personal data you provide to us via our other services.
• We may attempt to verify your employment history or status through various methods, including third-party integrations or services. We may also utilize signals we may receive from your current or former employer. 
• Portions of your Profile may be visible to other users and the public, depending on the services you use and the choices you make regarding your anonymity. We may also allow you to share your Profile with third parties or provide you with the ability to change your Profile’s visibility settings in certain circumstances. However, your Profile will not publicly include or link to Your Content submitted semi-/anonymously to our services.

Communicating with Glassdoor & Affiliates

We and our affiliates may send service-related and promotional communications to our users. We and our affiliates may also send promotional communications to prospective users and customers to inform them about our services.

• These communications may be via email, text message, calls, push notifications, direct messages, or otherwise.
  • To opt out of receiving text messages, you must reply “STOP” from the device receiving the messages. 
  • To unsubscribe from emails, please use the unsubscribe or email settings link in the email(s) you receive. If you unsubscribe only from an individual type of email communication (e.g., a particular job alert), you may continue to receive other emails. We may also offer a settings function via our services to manage your email preferences. 
  • To turn off push notifications, use in-app and/or operating system settings on your device. 
• Unless you choose to delete your account(s), you cannot unsubscribe from certain communications that are required as part of your use of our services (e.g., communications about changes to this Policy.)
• If you use our chat feature, we and our service providers may record your chats and keep transcripts.

Communications with, or Initiated by, Third Parties

We may allow users or customers to invite prospective users to our services. For example, we may allow them to invite prospective users to join a group, submit Content, or create an account. In order to do so, we may process the invitation’s contents and the invitee’s contact information. We may allow you to sync or upload a list of contacts in order to facilitate these communications. 

Communicating with Other Users

We may offer users the ability to communicate with each other. Users you interact with can see what you send them; if you send a message, the recipient can read your message and potentially share it outside of our services. You should never share more information than you are comfortable with.

Demographic Data

We may allow you to provide us with your demographic data. You can also update or remove previously supplied demographic data. If you provide your demographic data, we will use it across our services, including to:

• Provide insights into wage discrepancies (e.g., showing gender and racial/ethnic wage gap disparities)
• Provide demographic-based analysis of jobs, companies, and Content (e.g., we may utilize demographic data to generate reports highlighting employers that best embrace diversity, support specific groups or rights, or minimize wage gaps.)
• Provide diversity, equity, and inclusion metrics and ratings (e.g., provide insights for users who want to learn more about diversity, equity, and inclusion with respect to specific industries or companies)
• Provide search and filtering features (e.g., providing users the ability to filter Content or companies based on certain employer qualities or employee experiences and demographic attributes. As users provide demographic data, their Content may be associated with aggregated categories, such as filtering for all the ethnicities for a particular company/industry/group. In some instances, particular Content may be directly tagged with user demographic attributes.)
• Enhance employer/employee diversity disclosures for our users and the public (e.g., we may allow employers to share internal demographic data, diversity program details, and testimonials from their own employees; we may provide opportunities for users and employees to engage in discussions regarding demographic-related topics)
• Personalize recommendations and ads for job ads and offerings (e.g., help companies enhance the visibility of their jobs for veterans)

We take precautions to help prevent your demographic data from inadvertently revealing your identity on our services. For example, where there aren’t a sufficient number of user submissions, we may limit the visibility of certain demographic attributes to ensure we don’t inadvertently disclose sufficient information about a particular user’s personal attributes to make them identifiable. While we take your anonymity extremely seriously, and make our best efforts to ensure that demographic data doesn’t inadvertently lead to your identification, there are instances in which user identification or demographic data disclosure may occur.

• Users are free to self-identify in the Content they submit or in the communications they send.
• In order to provide a voice and agency to those who, regardless of the risks of identification, affirmatively wish to have their opinions and experiences heard, we may provide an option for users to opt into the disclosure of their demographic data in a manner and to an extent that may lead to loss of their anonymity.
• While we try our best to plan for all contingencies, we are not perfect. The preventative measures we take to protect your identity and our service’s technological performance may not always function the way we intend when combined with the complex realities of many millions of unique workplaces and lives into which we have limited, imperfect visibility. As we collect more personal data about our users that will be displayed publicly, there may be instances where the mechanisms we have designed to protect your anonymity aren’t perfect. It is never our intention that your identity be inadvertently revealed, and we take multiple steps to ensure this doesn’t occur. But, in the interests of transparency, we want to be sure you are fully aware of the potential risk of inadvertent identification.

Individuals Featured in Content

We allow users to submit Content that references other users and the public, provided that such Content complies with our Community Guidelines (Glassdoor Community Guidelines and Fishbowl Community Guidelines).

• We allow Content that names individuals in the highest positions in a company who have broad influence over the work environment, as long as the Content describes the individual’s behavior or performance at work. Individuals in this category include those who are the public face of the company (e.g., C-Suite, Executive Director, President, Owner, Founder). We believe this information is generally representative of a company’s culture and can be informative to job candidates and the public.
  • We don’t allow Content that includes negative comments about identifiable individuals outside of this group. 
• We may allow Content that mentions demographic attributes about an identifiable person if we believe the Content is used to describe a workplace situation. General discussions of workplace misconduct are allowed, including most discussions of illegal activities, discrimination, and sexual harassment.

Researching & Applying to Jobs

• When you search for information on our services or the services of our affiliates, we may use your searches and other activities on and off our services (including activities conducted on our affiliates’ services or your interactions with ads) to personalize your experience and the jobs we show and recommend to you.
• We may provide you with the ability to submit job applications via our services. We work with our affiliates to provide this service. When you click the “apply” (or a similar) button to submit an application, your application is processed by our affiliates (subject to their respective privacy policies) and sent to the most appropriate contact information we and/or our affiliates have on file for that employer.

Submitting & Interacting with Content

We offer our users a variety of ways to submit and interact with Content. You should only submit Content to the services that you are comfortable sharing with others, including the public.

• Depending on the services you use, we may offer you different options for controlling how your personal data and identity are represented to other users, employers, and the public. Content submitted with semi-/anonymous identifiers such as your company name or job title is not associated with the publicly-visible portion of your Profile.
  • When you submit conversational Content such as a post, comment, or question, you may be able to control how you represent yourself using different anonymity options. For example, when using some of our services, you can choose to submit Content with your company name, your job title, or your full name. 
  • When submitting other Content, such as reviews, you may be required to include certain personal data designated for public display, such as your employer, job title, and location. 
  • In some groups, we may allow you to interact with other users
    • We may allow you to make your Profile visible to other members of the group so you can interact.
    • We may allow group leaders to limit access to a group and approve new members. When you request access to a group, your Profile and any answers to member-approval questions may be shared with the leader(s) for that group.
  • We endeavor to offer opportunities to use our services while preserving your anonymity. However, Glassdoor cannot guarantee your anonymity as, depending on your specific situation, the circumstances and information you disclose in your Content, and the semi-/anonymous identifiers you use may allow someone to identify you or narrow down your identity to a small group of people (e.g., employees in a particular department at your company). You should understand this risk before submitting Content to our services.
• We may offer you the ability to join live audio or video conversations. Your audio or video is processed if you choose to participate in the discussion, otherwise, your Profile is included in the listener’s section of the service.
  • Some of the live audio/video events hosted on or through our services may be recorded.
• We may display some linked information in-line on our services via “embeds.” In general, we do not control how third-party services collect data when they serve you their information directly via these embeds. As a result, embedded information is not covered by this Policy but by the policies of the service from which the information is embedded.

Notes regarding the table above:

1. When we process your data for a specific purpose, we, our affiliates, and our partners may also process it to improve our respective services and/or conduct research.
2. We use affiliated and unaffiliated service providers. Where we use an affiliate as a service provider, they are grouped under the applicable service provider category. Where we share data with them in a non-service provider capacity, we list them under the affiliate category.
3. At Glassdoor, our mission is to help people everywhere find a job and company they love. One of the ways we do this is by sharing data with some of our affiliates who share our goals. Our affiliates are companies that are owned by the same parent company that owns Glassdoor. You can read more about our affiliates and our shared commitment to privacy at our Privacy Center. Under some laws, this type of data sharing may be considered a “sale”.
4. “Sharing” data, as defined by applicable law, is also known as targeted or behavioral advertising. 
5. In some jurisdictions, we’re required to identify the legal basis for our processing activities.
   1. Performance of a Contract: Most of the personal data we use is to provide our services and is necessary for the performance of our agreements with you (including our Terms and this Policy), or in order to take steps at your request prior to entering such an agreement. 
   2. Legitimate Interest: Some of the personal data we process is necessary for the purposes of legitimate interests pursued by us or one of our affiliates. This may include instances where we believe you have a reasonable expectation that we will perform a particular type of processing. We only rely on these grounds where a legitimate interests assessment has been performed, balancing the interests and rights involved with the necessity of the processing.
   3. Consent: In certain circumstances, we rely on your consent in order to process your personal data. Where we require your consent in order to collect and process certain personal data, we seek your consent at the time of data provision, and this processing will only be performed where consent is secured unless we have another lawful basis on which to rely. For example, depending on applicable laws in your country, your consent may be sought before we place certain types of cookies on your device.
   4. Compliance with a Legal Obligation: Sometimes it is necessary for us to process personal data in order to comply with a legal obligation, such as a law, regulation, legal process, or court order.
   5. Vital Interests: In certain, limited circumstances, we may rely on the vital interests of our users or the public in order to protect someone’s life.

Other Instances When We May Disclose Your Data

We may disclose data if we believe in good faith the disclosure is necessary in order to:

1. Comply with relevant laws or to respond to subpoenas, warrants, or legal processes served on us (though we reserve the right at our sole discretion to take action on behalf of our users and their possible right to anonymity when we believe there is a legitimate basis to do so)
2. Enforce our Terms of Use, this Policy, and any other agreements we may have;
3. Prevent physical harm or financial loss, or in connection with an investigation of suspected or actual illegal activity;
4. Act in a manner we otherwise deem necessary and is permitted by applicable laws to protect and defend the rights or property of us, the users of our services, or third parties; or
5. Act as permitted under applicable laws to meet national security and similar requirements.

We may also disclose personal data in a reorganization or sale of our company or assets, subject to the acquirer and its affiliates (as applicable) accepting the commitments made in this Policy and compliance with applicable law.

Cookie Policy and Ad Choices

Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored on your devices when you visit a page. We may use cookies, web beacons, mobile identifiers, and similar technologies (collectively “cookies”) to help us recognize you, enhance your user experience, understand usage of our services, and show you relevant advertising. The provision of your data via cookies is voluntary except for those cookies that we place on your device because we need them for the performance of our services.

• Cookies may also be set by other websites or services that provide information on the page you’re visiting. 
• After you register on the services, we may connect data we collect from the cookies set by us and our partners with other data received from you. 
• We use two types of cookies on our services: “session cookies” and “persistent cookies.” Session cookies are temporary cookies that remain on your device until you leave the services. A persistent cookie remains on your device for much longer or until you manually delete it (how long the cookie remains will depend on the duration or “lifetime” of the specific cookie and your browser settings).
• Cookies transmit data about you and your use of the services, such as your browser type, search preferences, job titles, data relating to advertisements that have been displayed to you or that you have clicked on, and the date and time of your use. Cookies may also allow us and our service providers to collect data about your use of our services, including text you enter, screen recordings of your mouse movements, and other interactions as you browse and use our services, even if you don’t have an account or Profile.
• We use four types of cookies: Strictly Necessary, Functional, Analytics, and Targeting. You can reference which specific cookies fall into each category by using the cookie settings tool in the footer or settings of our websites. 
• Below are some examples of how we use cookies.

Targeting Cookies

• We may work with third parties (including our affiliates) to provide you with personalized and non-personalized advertising (collectively “ad partners”).
• We may use cookies (both on and off our services), which may include data from our ad partners, to help deliver ads to you.
• We work with third parties, such as Google Analytics, to enable analytics services that use the cookies set on your device to measure the performance of advertising and track traffic to our services generally. We may have also implemented Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting, which categorizes cookie data so that we and our ad partners can better deliver ads that are relevant and useful to you on our services and various websites across the internet. In addition, a cookie on some of our affiliates, partners, or employer clients’ sites may provide us and/or our affiliates with aggregate data about the number of applications submitted to those sites by users of our services.

Consenting to and Opting Out of Cookies

As we describe in our cookie banner (for our users in jurisdictions where we display a cookie banner) and in our cookie settings tool (located in the footer or settings of our services’ websites), we use cookies that are strictly necessary for us to provide the services you use and you cannot opt out of these cookies on our services. 

• By utilizing our cookie settings tool, you can reject all but Strictly Necessary cookies, or opt out of specific categories of cookies at any time (as described above and in the Tool). You’re also able to disable placement of some (but not all) cookies by setting your browser to decline cookies, though this may worsen your user experience. Additionally, you can control, manage, and/or delete cookies via your browser settings. A useful resource for information about deleting and controlling cookies can be found at Aboutcookies.org. 
• If you enable location data for the mobile version of our services (including any version installed as an application), we may use your location data to serve you geo-targeted ads for employers and other advertisers that are local to you. We may also derive your general location based on your IP address. You may disable location services at any time in your device’s settings.
• On some of our services, we may respond to “do not track” signals and similar settings or mechanisms.

You can also use third-party tools to manage the third-party cookies that may be used by our ad partners

• You can opt out of some third-party advertiser and ad-network placement of cookies or targeted advertising generally by visiting the following links: Network Advertising Initiative; Digital Advertising Alliance; European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance (for users in the EU); The Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada (for users in Canada); You will continue to receive generic ads by companies not associated with these opt-out tools.
• You can opt out of tracking by Google Analytics and Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting services by visiting Google Ads Settings or by downloading the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-on.
• Please note: If ads or other features on our services are provided by third parties, they set and use their own cookies that are subject to those third parties’ privacy notices and policies. We do not have access to, or control over, these cookies.

Data Controller & International Transfers

Data Controller

Glassdoor LLC is the data controller for our services.

• Our representative in the EU for GDPR: Glassdoor Hiring Solutions Ireland Ltd.
• Our representative in the UK for GDPR: Glassdoor Global Ltd.

International Transfers

The data we process is hosted, controlled, and services are provided by Glassdoor LLC, including, where applicable, outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), Switzerland, and the UK, including in the United States. Your personal data may be transferred to or accessed by entities around the world, including Glassdoor-affiliated companies and our services providers, to perform processing activities such as those described in this Policy. Glassdoor complies with laws on the transfer of personal data between countries to help ensure your data is protected, wherever it may be.

• Glassdoor’s transfers of personal data collected in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland are governed by European Commission or UK Information Commissioner adequacy decisions about certain countries, as applicable, or the EU-US, Swiss-US, or UK Extension to the Data Privacy Framework, Standard Contractual Clauses, and/or UK International Data Transfer Agreements or Addendums.
• Glassdoor complies with the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (EU-U.S. DPF) and the UK Extension to the EU-U.S. DPF, and the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (Swiss-U.S. DPF) as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce. We have certified to the U.S. Department of Commerce that Glassdoor adheres to the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework Principles (EU-U.S. DPF Principles) with regard to the processing of personal data received from the European Union and the United Kingdom in reliance on the EU-U.S. DPF and the UK Extension to the EU-U.S. DPF. We have certified to the U.S. Department of Commerce that Glassdoor adheres to the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework Principles (Swiss-U.S. DPF Principles) with regard to the processing of personal data received from Switzerland in reliance on the Swiss-U.S. DPF.  If there is any conflict between the terms in this Policy and the EU-U.S. DPF Principles and/or the Swiss-U.S. DPF Principles, the Principles shall govern. To learn more about the Data Privacy Framework (DPF) program, and to view our certification, please visit https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov/
• As a current participant, we are required to disclose the following information:
  • Glassdoor shall remain liable under the Principles if our service providers process such personal data in a manner inconsistent with the Principles unless we prove that we are not responsible for the event giving rise to the damage.
  • With respect to personal data received or transferred pursuant to the Data Privacy Frameworks, Glassdoor is subject to the regulatory enforcement powers of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. In certain situations, Glassdoor may be required to disclose personal data in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.
  • If you have an unresolved privacy or data use concern related to our participation in the Data Privacy Framework that we have not addressed satisfactorily, please contact our U.S.-based third-party dispute resolution provider at feedback-form.truste.com/watchdog/request. You may also have the right to invoke binding arbitration.

Additional Information About Our Data Practices

Anonymized, Aggregate, and De-Identified Data

We may anonymize, aggregate, and/or otherwise de-identify your data and subsequently use and/or disclose such data for the purpose of research, improving our services, or for another business purpose authorized by applicable law, provided that we have implemented technical safeguards and business processes designed to prevent the re-identification or inadvertent release of anonymized, aggregate, or de-identified data. 

Automated Decision-Making

We do not use algorithms or profiling to make any decision that would have a significant legal effect on you without the opportunity for human review.

How Long We Keep Your Personal Data

We keep your personal data only so long as we need it to provide or offer our services to you and fulfill the purposes described in this Policy. This is also the case for any party that we share your personal data with and which carries out services on our behalf. Retention periods can vary significantly based on the type of data and how it is used. Our retention periods are based on criteria that include legally mandated retention periods, pending or potential litigation, our intellectual property or ownership rights, contract requirements, operational directives or needs, the expected lifetime of our users’ use of our services, and historical archiving. When we no longer need to use your personal data and there is no need for us to keep it to comply with our legal or regulatory obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements, we’ll either remove it from our systems or, anonymize, aggregate, or de-identify it so that we can’t identify you.

Privacy of Minors

To access or use our services, you must be at least 18 years of age or, if older, the age of majority in your jurisdiction, otherwise you may not use the services. If you become aware that a child has provided us with personal data without parental consent, please contact us. If we become aware that a child has provided us with personal data without parental consent, we remove such data and terminate the child’s account (except where we are required to retain all or a portion of such data for compliance purposes). Therefore, we do not “sell” or “share” data (as defined by applicable law) belonging to minors.

Security Safeguards

We employ physical, electronic, and managerial measures to safeguard the data we collect online. However, no company can fully eliminate security risks, so we cannot make guarantees about any part of our services. You are responsible for keeping your username and password secret. Once you have registered with us, we will never ask you for your password. Please create a unique password for your account and do not use it for any other web services or applications. Do not share your password with anyone else.

Controlling Your Personal Data

If you would like to access/download, delete, rectify/update, ask a question about, or withdraw consent regarding your data, please submit your request through our automated, self-service system. Upon submission, you will receive an email with a link to verify your identity via your registered email address.

• User Content: To learn how to edit/remove your user Content on Glassdoor-branded services, visit our FAQ. If you would like to delete individual Content on Fishbowl-branded services, please contact us via the contact method found at the bottom of this Policy.

• You can also update your account info via the settings page in the app or web experience. Please contact us using the form above if you have issues.
• On some of our services, you can deactivate your account within the application or web settings page.

• Communications:
  • To opt out of receiving text messages, you must reply “STOP” from the device receiving the messages. 
  • To unsubscribe from non-service-related emails, please use the unsubscribe or email settings link in the email(s) you receive. If you unsubscribe only from an individual type of email communication (e.g., a particular job alert), you may continue to receive other emails. We may also offer a settings function via our services to manage your email preferences.  
  • To turn off push notifications, use in-app and/or operating system settings on your device. 
  • Unless you choose to delete your account(s), you cannot unsubscribe from certain communications that are required as part of your use of our services (e.g., communications about changes to this Policy.)
• To request that we do not “sell” or “share” your data (as defined by applicable law), please utilize our opt-out mechanism. We also respond to Global Privacy Control (GPC) signals when received via Glassdoor-branded domains. As no sale or sharing of your data occurs via non-Glassdoor-branded domains, our other domains do not currently respond to GPC signals, but you are still free to utilize the opt-out mechanism above.
• Authorized agents can utilize the same processes as described above when making a request on behalf of a user; we will still require the user to authenticate their request. 
• Glassdoor does not discriminate against any user for exercising their privacy rights.
• If you are unsatisfied with our response to your request, please use the contact information found at the bottom of this Policy to appeal. We will follow the same processes and policies as we do for the initial request, including verifying your identity and the nature of your request. In some jurisdictions, you may also have the right to file a complaint with the relevant regulatory authorities or in a court of competent jurisdiction.

Metrics for privacy requests received by Glassdoor during the last calendar year are available here.

Updates to Our Privacy Policy

We may revise this Policy from time to time by posting an updated version. If we make a change that we believe materially reduces your rights or increases your responsibilities, we will notify you by email (sent to the email address specified in your account) and/or by means of a notice on or linked via our services prior to the change becoming effective. We may provide notice of changes in other circumstances as well. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices. Your continued use of our services is subject to the most current effective version of this Policy. If you object to the Policy after it becomes effective for you, you may no longer use our services.

Contact Us

For all routine inquiries please use the contact details provided below.

• If you would like to access/download, delete, rectify/update, ask a question about, or withdraw consent regarding your data, please submit your request through our automated, self-service system.
• For service-related inquiries: contact us here.
• Security researchers can find out about our public bug bounty program here.

You may reach our Data Protection Officer at DPO @ glassdoor.com. This email is intended only for inquiries related to this Policy and our data processing activities.