Privacy Statement

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General Privacy Notice

Introduction

Thank you for visiting our website and showing an interest in Agbiz. We take the protection of your (and /or your organisation’s as applicable) personal information seriously and want you / the organisation you represent, to feel safe when you are visiting our website and/or engaging with us.

This Notice sets out how we will handle your personal information, as defined under applicable law, and covers any information, including personal and special personal information, that you give to us or which we collect from third parties (“Personal Information”).

In carrying out our services / membership offering, we may process the Personal Information belonging to you and/or the organisation you represent, in accordance with this Notice and applicable law.

Whilst we try to balance our legitimate interests with your reasonable expectation to privacy and to take all reasonable measures to prevent unauthorised access to, or disclosure of your Personal Information, it is impossible to guarantee that your Personal Information will, at all times, be 100% secure.

How this Notice applies to you

This Notice will apply whenever you submit Personal Information to Agbiz, which will include (but is not limited to) when you browse our website and software applications and/or any related (and/or enhanced) mobi-sites, software applications or any other portals specifically made available by Agbiz in relation to this platform (“Website”) or engage with us or any of our product and/or service offerings including instances where your / your organisation’s Personal Information is submitted to us through or by a third party (collectively “Services”).

Your continued use of our Website and membership offerings indicates that you (which may include any representative acting on your behalf) have both read and provided consent to the terms of this Notice and hereinafter you / the organisation you represent shall be referred to as “you”, “your or “user”).

If you do not agree to any of the provisions of this Notice, then you should not submit any Personal Information to Agbiz. However, we note that if you do not consent to this Notice, or any parts thereof, we may not be able to provide you with our services.

Scope of our Processing

What we Collect

In the execution of our Services,/ membership offerings we may collect information that allows you to be identified, such as:

  1. General identification and contact information including your name, ID number, race, physical address, postal address, email address, telephone numbers, gender, marital status, date of birth and/or the internet address of your domain;
  2. Financial information and account details, such as bank account numbers, bank name;
  3. Academic information when job applicants apply for a job with Agbiz; and/or
  4. Other sensitive and special categories of personal information (including health, religious, biometric (e.g images) and criminal behaviour information, - to the extent that such is necessary for the purposes of carrying out Agbiz’s services / membership offerings).

How we Collect

You may provide Personal Information to us either directly or indirectly (through an agent or intermediary) through completing a job application, a membership application form or requesting further information about Agbiz, whether in writing, through our website, over the telephone, via our social media channels, or through submitting physical information to us at our office/s during the course of our business hours or any other means.

We may also, to the extent such is legally permitted, collect your personal information from your appointed agent, any regulator, or other third party that may hold such information.

How we Use Personal Information

We may collect, use, transfer or process your Personal Information:

  1. to provide and perform our Services to you and to improve or evaluate the effectiveness of Agbiz, its services or membership offerings;
  2. to comply with internal and external health and safety protocols;
  3. to respond to and comply with your instructions, complaints or requests;
  4. to operate, develop and manage our website/other platforms including personalising your experience on our site to allow us to deliver the type of content in which you are most interested.
  5. for security (including fraud and crime prevention/reporting), administrative, auditing, operational, marketing and legal or regulatory purposes (which will include complying with any law enforcement agency requests);
  6. for operational, marketing, auditing, legal and record keeping requirements;
  7. to third parties for reasons set out in this Notice or where it is not unlawful to do so (this may include but is not limited sharing information with the Department of Employment & Labour);
  8. outside of the Republic of South Africa, in accordance with applicable law, including for cloud storage and payment purposes and the use of any of our websites;

We may from time to time contact you for market research about our membership services and offerings available from Agbiz or specific affiliates or subsidiaries which we believe may be of interest to you, by email, phone, text or other electronic means, unless you have unsubscribed from receiving such communications. You can unsubscribe from receiving such communications by clicking here.

Disclosure of Personal Information

Your Personal Information may be disclosed with Agbiz’s affiliates, subsidiaries, employees, agents, sub-contractors, national authorities, government departments and selected third parties who process the information on our behalf.

We may also disclose your Personal Information to third parties for the purposes of rendering our Services / membership offerings and for the reasons recorded in clause above, including any third parties with whom our services / membership offerings are carried out/provided in conjunction with and/or who are involved in the completion of our supplies and services and who may need to have your Personal Information in order to fulfil your request or the services.

Wherever these persons are located outside of the country (and your Personal Information may be transferred cross-border) we will adhere to applicable laws, we will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Notice.

Security

While we cannot ensure or warrant security on the internet or of any of the Personal Information you provide us, we implement a variety of security measures when a user enters, submits, or accesses their information to maintain the safety of your personal information. We continue to maintain and improve our security measures over time and in line with legal and technological developments.

Retention

We may store your Personal Information directly or on a central or separate database. If the location of the central database is in a country that does not have substantially similar data protection laws, we will take all legally mandatory required steps to ensure that your Personal Information is adequately protected.

We may retain your personal information indefinitely, unless you object, in which case we will only retain it if we are permitted or required to do so in terms of applicable law. However, generally, we will not retain your information for longer than is necessary or for the periods required by applicable law.

Your Rights

As a user/data subject, you have certain rights, including the right:

  1. to access your Personal Information stored and processed by us. This may be done by emailing us at the address referred to in clause 5 below. Details of the personal information which we hold about you can be requested under the Promotion of Access to Information Act, 2000 (“PAIA”). If you would like to obtain a copy of your personal information held by us, please review our PAIA Manual located on our website;
  2. to correct/rectify Personal Information that we hold on your behalf, in instances where such Personal Information is incorrect or incomplete;
  3. to erase Personal Information (also known as ‘the right to be forgotten’). In simple terms, this enables you to request the deletion or removal of your information where there is no compelling reason for us keep using it. This is not a general right to erase; there are exceptions. For example, we have the right to continue using your personal data if such use is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims;
  4. to restrict/suspend processing of Personal Information to only that which is strictly necessary for us to perform our services to you. Please note that this right is limited in certain situations: when we are processing your personal information that we collected from you with your consent you can only request restriction on the basis of: (a) inaccuracy of data; (b) where our processing is unlawful and you don’t want your personal information erased; (c) you need it for a legal claim; or (d) if we no longer need to use the data for the purposes for which we hold it. When processing is restricted, we can still store your information, but may not use it further;
  5. to complain- if we breach any of the terms of this Privacy Notice, to complain to the requisite data protection authority in South Africa;
  6. to withdraw your consent at any time, if the processing of the Personal Information is based on consent;
  7. to object to processing of Personal Information if such processing is based on legitimate interests; and
  8. to object to the processing of Personal Information for direct marketing purposes.

The exercise of these rights is free of charge.

Complaints

If, you wish to raise a complaint regarding the processing of your Personal Information then please first reach out to Agbiz’s designated Information Officer at liezl@agbiz.co.za.

However, if you are still unsatisfied with how we have handled your Personal Information, you can lodge your complaint with the Information Regulator on the following contact details:

Information Regulator
Tel: 012 406 4818
Fax: 086 500 3351
Email: POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za
Website: www.inforegulator.org.za

Indemnity

In agreeing to the provisions of this Notice, you hereby unconditionally agree to indemnify us against any liability that may result from your use of this website and the processing of your Personal Information, including any loss, damage or injury arising from any inaccurate or incomplete Personal Information provided to us by the you and/or any third party and/or any unintentional disclosure of your Personal Information to any unauthorised persons.

Log Files

When you visit our website, we may collect information, such as your IP address, the name of your ISP (Internet Service Provider), your browser, the website from which you visit us, the pages on our website that you visit and in what sequence, the date and length of your visit, and other information concerning your computer's operating system, language settings, and broad demographic information.

This information is aggregated and anonymous data and does not identify you specifically. However, you acknowledge that this data may be able to be used to identify you if it is aggregated with other Personal Information that you supply to us.

This information is not shared with third parties and is used only within Agbiz on a need-to-know basis. Any individually identifiable information related to this data will never be used in any way different to that stated above, without your explicit permission.

Cookies

We use cookies. A cookie is a small piece of information stored on your computer, smart phone or device by the web browser for record-keeping purposes.

You can view and edit cookies by looking in the cookies’ directory of your browser installation. Certain cookies are not required for the Website to work but may enhance your browsing experience. Likewise, if you do not accept certain cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of the Website/our online Services.

The following types of cookies are used on the Website :

  1. "Session cookies": which are used to maintain a so-called 'session state' and only last for the duration of your use of the website. A session cookie expires when you close your browser, or if you have not visited the server for a certain period of time. Session cookies are required for the Platform to function optimally but are not used in any way to identify you personally; and
  2. "Permanent and/or Functional cookies": these cookies permanently store a unique code on your computer or smart device in order to be able to identify you as an individual user.

Third Party Links on the Website

The services available through the Website, may contain links to other third-party websites.

We are not responsible for the content or privacy policies of these third-party websites.

Amendment of this Notice

We may amend this Notice from time to time.

Any such amendment will come into effect and become part of any agreement you have with Agbiz when notice is given to you of the change by publication on our website. It is your responsibility to check the website often.