+27 11 467-7870
Bothongo House, 16 Macbeth Avenue, Fourways, 2191, South Africa
7 in Johannesburg

Privacy Policy


This User Privacy Policy outlines our commitment to protecting and upholding the integrity of the personal information which you, the user, elect to provide to us.

This policy outlines the when, how and why we collect your personal information and describes the manner in which we store, use and protect your personal information, as informed by the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (“POPIA”).

 

OUR GENERAL WAIVER 

We hereby make no warranties or representations regarding any aspect of this website or any associated websites (the/our “websites”) including, but not limited to:

  • Its operation;
  • Its content;
  • The accuracy of the information provided; or
  • The goods and/or services advertised or referred to on any of our websites.

 

 APPLICATION TO USERS

This policy applies to you if you:

  • Visit any of our websites; or
  • Have previously made use of goods and/or services through any of our websites.

 

 ACCEPTANCE OF THIS POLICY 

To procure and make use of our goods and/or services, you must accept the terms of this privacy policy. Otherwise, you will not be able to access our products and/or services.

 

 USER WARRANTIES

By accessing our websites and procuring or goods and/or services, you warrant that you are at least 18 years of age or otherwise have the legal capacity to enter into binding agreements.

You warrant that, upon acceptance of this policy, you have read, understood, accepted and agreed to be bound by the terms of this policy.

You further warrant that the personal information you provide to us is given voluntarily or, where such information relates to another person, such information is given with that person’s consent.

 

 WHAT DO WE MEAN BY PERSONAL INFORMATION?

 Personal Information (“PI”) refers to any information which helps us identify you as an individual.

PI includes the following:

  • Certain information we collect automatically when you access our websites;
  • Certain information that you submit to us when you request information or otherwise contact us; and
  • Any other information which you may voluntarily provide to us but which is not strictly necessary.

PI excludes the following:

  • Information collected/submitted/provided anonymously is a manner that does not identify you specifically;
  • Information that has been de-identified and no longer relates to or otherwise cannot be traced back to you;
  • Non-personal statistical information collected and compiled by us for record-keeping purposes;
  • Information that you have made public elsewhere in an open forum such as on a blog post, online discussion group or any other public social media platform

Examples of information we collect:

  • Identifying information: your name, date of birth or any sort of identification number
  • Contact information: cellphone number or email address
  • Address information: physical or postal address
  • Financial information: your banking details

 

 WHAT IS SPECIAL PERSONAL INFORMATION?

Special Personal Information (“SPI”) includes all information relating to your religious or philosophical beliefs, race or ethnic origin, trade union membership, political persuasion, health or sex life, biometric information or criminal behaviour.

We will not collect or process your SPI unless:

  • You voluntarily provide it to us;
  • The processing thereof is necessary to establish, exercise or defend any right or obligation we have in law;
  • The processing thereof is necessary for historical, statistical or research purposes where doing so serves a public interest; or
  • You have deliberately made the information available on an open, public forum.

 

 CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

We reserve the right to amend this policy from time to time upon notice to all users, either by way of email or prominent display thereof on our websites or other digital platforms.

Each update will reflect the date on which such update was last made.

Where you do not agree with any updates made, you must stop using our websites and our goods/services.

If you continue using our websites, we will deem your actions as acceptance of any updated policy and the terms thereof will automatically apply to you.

 

 COLLECTION OF INFORMATION

When you access our website, we automatically receive and record Internet usage information on our server logs from your browser, such as:

  • Your Internet Protocol address (“IP address”),
  • browsing habits,
  • click patterns,
  • version of software installed,
  • system type,
  • screen resolutions,
  • colour capabilities,
  • plug-ins,
  • language settings,
  • cookie preferences,
  • search engine keywords,
  • JavaScript enablement,
  • the content and pages that you access on the website, and
  • the dates and times that you visit the website, paths taken, and time spent on sites and pages within the website (“usage information”).

Please note that other websites visited before entering our website might place personal information within your URL during a visit to it, and we have no control over such websites. Accordingly, a subsequent website that collects URL information may log some personal information.

When you request information or otherwise contact us you will be requested to provide us certain additional information.

 

WHY DO WE USE PERSONAL INFORMATION AND FOR HOW LONG?

We generally collect and process your personal information for various purposes, including:

  • Collecting information relating to access and procure of our goods and/or services;
  • Lawful marketing related activities, such as identifying our target audience and creating ad campaigns;
  • Other business-related activities such as internal audits, business planning, joint ventures and other proposed or actual transactions’
  • Otherwise complying with our legal obligations or in the pursuit of good legal governance.

We may use your usage information for the purposes described above and to:

  • Remember your information so that you will not have to re-enter it during your visit or the next time you access our websites;
  • Monitor website usage metrics such as total number of visitors and pages accessed; and
  • Track your entries, submissions, and status in any promotions or other activities in connection with your usage of our websites.

Importantly, we will only collect your information for a transparent, defined purpose and only where you have given us your consent to do.

We will only retain your personal information for as long as it is necessary to fulfil the purposes explicitly set out in this policy, unless:

  • Retention of the record is required or authorised by law; or
  • You have consented to the retention of the record.

During the period of retention, we will continue to abide by our non disclosure obligations and will not share or sell your personal information.

We may retain your personal information in physical or electronic records at our discretion.

 

 STANDARD COOKIES

Cookies are small text files stored in the user’s browser. These files do not contain personal information, but they do contain a personal identifier allowing us to associate your personal information with a certain device.

These allow us overall to better manage our websites and to facilitate improvements thereto.

Cookies further allow us to:

  • tailor our website’s functionality to you as an individual by remembering your preferences;
  • allow third parties to provide services to our website;
  • deliver targeted advertising where appropriate in compliance with the applicable laws.

You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies in your browser. You do this through your browser settings.

However, no longer accepting cookies or deleting them will prevent you from accessing certain aspects of our website where cookies are necessary.

 

  THIRD-PARTY COOKIES/LINKS 

Some of our business partners use their own cookies or widgets on our website. We have no access to or control over them. Information collected by any of those cookies or widgets is governed by the privacy policy of the company that created it, and not by us.

 

 WEB BEACONS

Our website may contain electronic image requests that allow us to count page views and to access cookies.

Any electronic image viewed as part of a web page (including an ad banner) can act as a web beacon.

We use this information collected off our site and share it with our advertising platforms to carry out marketing initiatives.

All the information that we share is encrypted and we make sure that our third-party service providers comply with relevant data protection laws.

We may provide this information including identifiers that allow our advertising platforms to deliver targeted online advertising on social media and websites.

 

 OPTIONAL DETAILS

You may also provide additional information to us on a voluntary basis.

This includes content or products that you decide to upload or download from our website or when you enter competitions, take advantage of promotions, respond to surveys, order certain additional goods or services, or otherwise use the optional features and functionality of our website.

Importantly, in the process of any of the above, you may provide us with SPI which we will treat will the highest level of confidentiality.

 

 USE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We may use your personal information for the purpose for which you have provided it and to fulfil our obligations to you.

We may send administrative messages and email updates to you about the website as well as primarily promotional messages.

 

 DISCLOSURE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We may share your personal information with:

  • other divisions or companies within the group of companies to which we belong so as to provide joint content and services like registration, for transactions and customer support, to help detect and prevent potentially illegal acts and violations of our policies, and to guide decisions about our products, services, and communications (they will only use this information to send you marketing communications if you have requested their goods or services);
  • an affiliate, in which case we will seek to require the affiliates to honour this privacy policy;
  • our goods or services providers under contract who help provide certain goods or services or help with parts of our business operations, including fraud prevention, bill collection, marketing, or technology services (our contracts dictate that these goods or services providers only use your information in connection with the goods or services they supply or services they perform for us and not for their own benefit);
  • credit bureaus to report account information, as permitted by law;
  • banking partners as required by credit card association rules for inclusion on their list of terminated merchants (in the event that you utilise the services to receive payments and you meet their criteria);
  • our third party suppliers who provide us with their goods; and
  • other third parties who provide us with relevant services where appropriate (for example our couriers).

Where necessary, we insist on concluding agreements to ensure that our suppliers, affiliates and other third parties to who we supply your personal information process such information according to the same standards of care and confidentiality that we observe in all our dealings with information processing.

We may disclose your personal information as required by law or governmental audits to certain governmental bodies or agencies.

We may disclose personal information to law enforcement agencies if required:

  • by a subpoena or court order;
  • to comply with any law;
  • to protect the safety of any individual or the general public; and
  • to prevent violation of our customer relationship terms.

Your personal information may be disclosed to our employees during the course and scope of their employment for them to fulfil their duties. Each employee has undertaken a duty of confidentiality as written into their employment contract.

 

NO SELLING 

We will not sell, trade or otherwise disseminate your personal information and no personal information will be disclosed to anyone except as provided in this privacy policy.

 

 CHANGE OF OWNERSHIP

If we undergo a change in ownership, or a merger with, acquisition by, or sale of assets to, another entity, we may assign our rights to the personal information we process to a successor, purchaser, or separate entity. We will disclose the transfer on the website.

If you are concerned about your personal information migrating to a new owner, you may request us to delete your personal information.

 

 UNAVAILABILITY OF ANY OF OUR WEBSITES

You acknowledge and accept that any of our websites may become unavailable from time to time due to various circumstances, including:

  • technical failure or problems with any of our websites;
  • technical failure or problems with third party information technology systems;
  • unavailability of telecommunication or electricity services; or
  • other circumstances beyond our control, in which case there shall be no claim whatsoever that may be brought against us.

 

 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

  • The full contents of our websites are copyright-protected.
  • All intellectual property associated with any of our websites and our brand as a whole, including but not limited to content, trademarks, domain names, design elements, software, databases, text, graphics and hyperlinks remain our sole property remain our sole and exclusive property.
  • Any unlawful or unauthorised use, modification, alteration or distribution thereof will be considered an offence and punishable by law.

 

 SECURITY MEASURES

 We take the security of personal information very seriously and always do our best to comply with applicable data protection laws.

Our hosting company will host our website in a secure server environment that uses a firewall and other advanced security measures to prevent interference or access from outside intruders.

We authorize access to personal information only for those employees who require it to fulfil their job responsibilities.

We implement disaster recovery procedures where appropriate.

 

 ACCURACY OF INFORMATION AND KEEPING OF INFORMATION UP TO DATE

We will try to keep the personal information we collect as accurate, complete and up to date as is necessary for the purposes defined in this policy.

From time to time we may request you to update your personal information on the website.

You are able to review or update any personal information that we hold on you by emailing or phoning us.

Please note that in order to better protect you and safeguard your personal information, we take steps to verify your identity before granting you access to your account or making any corrections to your personal information.

 

 TRANSBORDER TRANSFERS OF INFORMATION

We may not transfer your personal information to a third party in a foreign country, unless:

  • You have consents to this or specifically requested it; or
  • such third party is subject to a law, binding corporate rules or a binding agreement which protects the personal information in a manner similar to POPIA, and such third party is governed by similar rules which prohibit the onward transfer of the personal information to a third party in another country; or
  • the transfer of the personal information is required for the performance of the contract between you and ourselves; or
  • the transfer is necessary for the conclusion or performance of a contract for the benefit of the client/data subject entered into between ourselves and the third party; or
  • the transfer of the personal information is for the benefit of the client and it is not reasonably possible to obtain their consent and that if it were possible the client would be likely to give such consent.

 

CONTACT US

If you have any concerns or queries regarding this policy or our implementation of any of the sections of POPIA, or would otherwise like to amend or withdraw your consent, please contact us on the information below:

www.bothongogroup.co.za

16 Macbeth Road Fourways, South Africa

Johannesburg, Gauteng 2125

South Africa

info@bothongo.com

+27 11 467-7870