Privacy Policy – Afriforte Cloud User

 

Your privacy is important to Afriforte, so we’ve developed a Privacy Policy that covers how we collect, use, disclose, transfer, and store your personal information.

 

Collection and Use of Personal Information

Personal information is data that can be used to identify or contact a single person.

 

You may be asked to provide your personal information anytime you are in contact with Afriforte. Afriforte and its partners may share this personal information with each other and use it consistent with this Privacy Policy. As a user of the Afriforte Cloud System you are required to provide the personal information that we have requested, if you choose not to do so, we will not be able to provide you with our products or services or respond to any queries you may have.

 

Here are some examples of the types of personal information Afriforte may collect and how we may use it:

 

What personal information we collect

As an Afriforte Cloud user we will collect your name, surname, email address and mobile phone number. Your email address will be verified using a verification email and your mobile number will be verified by ‘n 6-digit random verification number (RVN) that will be sent to the mobile phone number via SMS. We may also collect a variety of information such as a profile picture, contact preferences, IP address and location information.

 

How we use your personal information

We may process your personal information: for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, with your consent, for compliance with a legal obligation to which Afriforte is subject or when we have assessed it is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by Afriforte or a third party to whom it may be necessary to disclose information.

 

• The personal information we collect allows us to keep you posted on the latest product announcements from Afriforte which may include updates to our reporting platforms and other software updates, training events or any other event related to the services rendered by Afriforte.
• We also use personal information to help us create, develop, operate, deliver, and improve our products, services, content, and for loss prevention and anti-fraud purposes. We may also use your personal information for account and network security purposes, including in order to protect our services for the benefit of all our users, and pre-screening or scanning uploaded content for potentially illegal content. Where we use your information for anti-fraud purposes it arises from the conduct of an online transaction with us. We limit our uses of data for anti-fraud purposes to those which are strictly necessary and within our assessed legitimate interests to protect our customers and our services. For certain online transactions we may also validate the information provided by you with publicly accessible sources.
• We may use your personal information to verify identity, assist with identification of users, and to determine appropriate services.
• From time to time, we may use your personal information to send important notices, such as communications about our services and changes to our terms, conditions, and policies. Because this information is important to your interaction with Afriforte, you may not opt out of receiving these communications.
• We may also use personal information for internal purposes such as auditing, data analysis, and research to improve Afriforte’s products, services, and customer communications.

 

Source of your personal information where they are not collected from you

To register your account, we may have received some of your personal information from other users of the Afriforte Cloud platform or other Afriforte systems. We may also validate the information provided by you when creating your Afriforte Cloud account with a third party for security and fraud prevention purposes.

 

Collection and Use of Non-Personal Information

We also collect data in a form that does not, on its own, permit direct association with any specific individual. We may collect, use, transfer, and disclose non-personal information for any purpose. The following are some examples of non-personal information that we collect and how we may use it:

 

• We may collect information such as dialing code, referrer URL, location, and the time zone where an Afriforte service is used so that we can better understand customer behavior and improve our products and services.
• We may collect information regarding customer activities on our website, the Afriforte Cloud Platform, the Afriforte Products Lab and from our other products and services. This information is aggregated and used to help us provide more useful information to our customers and to understand which parts of our website, products, and services are of most interest. Aggregated data is considered non personal information for the purposes of this Privacy Policy.
• We may collect and store details of how you use our services, including search queries. This information may be used to improve the relevancy of results provided by our services. Except in limited instances to ensure quality of our services over the Internet, such information will not be associated with your IP address.

 

If we do combine non-personal information with personal information the combined information will be treated as personal information for as long as it remains combined.

 

Cookies and Other Technologies

Afriforte’s website and other online services may use “cookies” to temporarily store information to assist with the functioning of our services. We treat information collected by cookies and other technologies as non‑personal information. However, to the extent that Internet Protocol (IP) addresses or similar identifiers are considered personal information by local law, we also treat these identifiers as personal information. Similarly, to the extent that non-personal information is combined with personal information, we treat the combined information as personal information for the purposes of this Privacy Policy.

As is true of most internet services, we gather some information automatically and store it in log files. This information may include Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, browser type and language, Internet service provider (ISP), referring and exit websites and applications, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data. We may use this information to understand and analyze trends, to administer the site, to learn about user behavior on the site, to improve our product and services, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole.

Disclosure to Third Parties

It may be necessary − by law, legal process, litigation, and/or requests from public and governmental authorities within or outside your country of residence − for Afriforte to disclose your personal information. We may also disclose information about you if we determine that for purposes of national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance, disclosure is necessary or appropriate. We may also disclose information about you, but only where there is a lawful basis for doing so, if we determine that disclosure is reasonably necessary to enforce our terms and conditions or protect our operations or users.  This could include providing information to public or governmental authorities. Additionally, in the event of a reorganization, merger, or sale we may transfer any and all personal information we collect to the relevant third party.

Protection of Personal Information

Afriforte takes the security of your personal information very seriously. Afriforte online services such as the Afriforte Could system protect your personal information during transit using technology such as 256bit SSL Encryption. Sensitive information like passwords are encrypted using one-way cryptographic hash functions before being stored in our database. When your personal data is stored by Afriforte, we use computer systems with limited access housed in facilities using physical security measures.

 

The Existence of Automated Decision-Making, Including Profiling

Afriforte does not take any decisions involving the use of algorithms or profiling that significantly affects you.

 

Integrity and Retention of Personal Information

Afriforte makes it easy for you to keep your personal information accurate, complete, and up to date. We will retain your personal information for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy. When assessing these periods, we carefully examine our need to collect personal information at all and if we establish a relevant need we only retain it for the shortest possible period to realize the purpose of collection unless a longer retention period is required by law.

 

Access to Personal Information

You can help ensure that your contact information and preferences are accurate, complete, and up to date by signing in to your Afriforte Cloud Account. For other personal information we hold, we will provide you with access (including a copy) for any purpose including to request that we correct the data if it is inaccurate or delete the data if Afriforte is not required to retain it by law or for legitimate business purposes. We may decline to process requests that are frivolous/vexatious, jeopardize the privacy of others, are extremely impractical, or for which access is not otherwise required by local law. We may also decline aspects of deletion or access requests if we believe doing so would undermine our legitimate use of data for anti-fraud and security purposes as described earlier.

 

Third‑Party Sites and Services

Afriforte websites, products, applications, and services may contain links to third-party websites, products, and services. Information collected by third parties, which may include such things as location data or contact details, is governed by their privacy practices. We encourage you to learn about the privacy practices of those third parties.

 

International Users

All the information you provide may be transferred or accessed by entities around the world as described in this Privacy Policy.

 

Our Companywide Commitment to Your Privacy

To make sure your personal information is secure, we communicate our privacy and security guidelines to Afriforte employees and strictly enforce privacy safeguards within the company. This privacy policy is an extension of our Privacy Policy in terms of the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPI Policy). For more information on our POPI Policy please contact us at info@afriforte.co.za

 

Privacy Questions

If you have any questions or concerns about Afriforte’s Privacy Policy or data processing or if you would like to make a complaint about a possible breach of local privacy laws, please contact us on info@afriforte.co.za

 

When a privacy question or question about personal information received in response to an access/download request is received we have a dedicated team to address your issue. Where your issue may be more substantive in nature, we may request more information from you. All such substantive contacts receive a response within seven (7), days wherever possible – providing a response on the issue raised, requesting additional information where necessary or indicating that a response will require additional time. If you are unsatisfied with the reply received, you may refer your complaint to the relevant regulator in your jurisdiction. If you ask us, we will endeavor to provide you with information about relevant complaint avenues which may be applicable to your circumstances.

 

Where your complaint indicates an improvement could be made in our handling of privacy issues, we will take steps to make such an update at the next reasonable opportunity. In the event that a privacy issue has resulted in a negative impact on you or another person we will take steps to address that with you or that other person.

 

Afriforte may update its Privacy Policy from time to time. When we change the policy in a material way, a notice will be posted on our website along with the updated Privacy Policy. We will also contact you via your contact information on file, for example by email, notification or some other equivalent method.

 

Last Revised: 16 May 2023

 

AFRIFORTE (PTY) LTD,

Reg No 2005/024188/07