Privacy Policy

INTRODUCTION

This Privacy Policy should be read together with our Website Terms and Conditions. All terms and conditions, including defined terms, of our Website Terms and Conditions, are incorporated by reference into this Privacy Policy and have the same meaning unless the context indicates otherwise. In the event of any conflict between any terms in our Website Terms and Conditions and the terms of this Privacy Policy, this Privacy Policy shall prevail. If you or your organization has an individual agreement with us, that agreement may have privacy terms that also apply to the personal information you provide to us under that agreement. Please review the terms in that agreement as they may be different or more restrictive than the terms in this Privacy Policy.

PURPOSE OF THIS PRIVACY POLICY

ProfitShare Partners respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your Personal Information. This Privacy Policy aims to give you information on how ProfitShare Partners collects and processes the Personal Information you provide through your use of the Website or by way of your interaction with us. Please also use the Glossary below to understand the meaning of some of the terms used in this privacy notice. This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children. ProfitShare Partners is made up of different legal entities. This Privacy Policy is issued on behalf of the ProfitShare Partners Group so when we mention “ProfitShare Partners”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this Privacy Policy, we are referring to the relevant company in the ProfitShare Partners Group responsible for processing your data. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, including any requests to exercise legal rights, please contact us at: Email: queries@profitsharepartners.com Address: Investment Place Office Park, Block C Ground Floor, 10th Road, Hyde Park, Gauteng, South Africa.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY AND YOUR DUTY TO INFORM US OF CHANGES.

This Privacy Policy was last updated on 12 May 2021. It is important that the Personal Information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your Personal Information changes during your relationship with us.

THIRD-PARTY LINKS

The Website may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our content creation, development and distribution networks and their affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any Personal Information to these websites.

DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU

Personal Information, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data). We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of Personal Information about you which we have grouped together follows:

Identity Data includes first name, last name and photograph.

Contact Data includes billing address, email address and any phone number used to call our customer service number.

Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details.

Transaction Data includes details about payments from and to you and details of products and services you have purchased from us.

Technical Data includes IP address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website. As well as information about your visit, including the full URLs, clickstream to, through and from our Website (including date and time), products you viewed or searched for, page response times, errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs) and methods used to browse away from the page.

Profile Data includes your username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.

Usage Data includes information about how you use our website, products and services.

Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your Personal Information but is not considered Personal Information in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific Website feature. We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Information about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political persuasion, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

ACCEPTANCE REQUIRED.

We rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your Personal Information. You are therefore required to accept all the terms of this policy when you register for or use our website or any of our products or services. If you do not agree with anything in this policy, then where we need to collect Personal Information by law and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to evaluate an application from you or enter into a contract to provide products or services to you. Where we need to collect Personal Information under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have with you. We will notify you if this is the case at the time. By using our products or services, you understand that we will collect and use your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy. You have the right to decline consent and/or if provided, to withdraw consent at any time. This will not affect the lawfulness of processing prior to the withdrawal of your consent. At any time, you can request that we stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes.

HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

  1. Direct interactions.

You may give us your Identity, Contact and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by phone, email or otherwise. This includes Personal Information you provide when you register to use our Website, engage with learning content, purchase or subscribe to our products and services, search for a product, participate in discussion boards or other social media functions on our Website, enter a competition, promotion or survey, and when you report a problem with our Website.

  1. Automated technologies or interactions.

We automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns as you use the Website. We collect this Personal Information by using cookies and other similar technologies.

  1. Third parties or publicly available sources.

We also work closely with other third parties (including, for example, business partners, sub-contractors in technical and payment services, analytics providers, search information providers, credit reference agencies) and we may receive Personal Information about you from them where they are legally allowed to share your personal information with us.

HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We will only use your Personal Information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your Personal Information in the following circumstances:

  1. Where we need to perform the contract, we are about to enter or have entered into with you or the operator of your Personal Information.
  2. Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
  3. Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

PURPOSES FOR WHICH WE WILL USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your Personal Information, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate. Note that we may process your Personal Information for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground, we are relying on to process your Personal Information where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Purpose/Activity Type of data Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest.
To register you as a new customer (a) Identity (b) Contact Performance of a contract with you
To process and deliver in terms of our agreement including: (a) Manage payments, fees and charges (b) Collect and recover money owed to us (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Financial (d) Transaction (e) Marketing and Communications (a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to recover debts due to us)
To manage our relationship with you which will include: (a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy (b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Marketing and Communications (a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our products/services) 
To enable you to partake in a competition or complete a survey (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Usage (e) Marketing and Communications (a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them and grow our business)
To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical (a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise) (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation.
To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Usage (e) Marketing and Communications (f) Technical Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy) 
To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences (a) Technical (b) Usage (c) Profile Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy)
To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you (a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical (d) Usage (e) Profile Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services and grow our business) 

MARKETING

We strive to provide you with choices regarding certain Personal Information uses, particularly around marketing and advertising:

PROMOTIONAL OFFERS FROM US

We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services and offers may be relevant for you (we call this marketing). You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased services from us or if you provided us with your details when you entered a competition or registered for a promotion and, in each case, you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

OPTING OUT

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you or. Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to Personal Information provided to us because of a product/service purchase, product/service experience or other transactions.

COOKIES

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of the Website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our Cookie Policy.

CHANGE OF PURPOSE

We will only use your Personal Information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us. If we need to use your Personal Information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so. Please note that we may process your Personal Information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We will not sell Personal Information and no Personal Information will be disclosed to anyone except as provided in this privacy policy. We may disclose your Personal Information if required:

  1. by a subpoena or court order; or
  2. to comply with any law.

We may share your Personal Information:

  1. with other companies within the ProfitShare Partners Group;
  2. with our service providers under contract, as permitted by law;
  3. with credit bureaus to report account information, as permitted by law;
  4. with social media platforms when you use tools or functionality on our website provided by those platforms (such as “recommend” or “share” buttons); and
  5. with marketing partners where you register for events, webinars;
  6. with public or government authorities to follow applicable law or to respond to legal process (like a subpoena). We also may share your personal information when there are threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of this Privacy Policy or other agreements, or to protect the legal rights of third parties, including our employees, users, or the public as required by law;
  7. for business transactions like a merger, or sale of our assets, or as part of the due diligence for such contemplated transactions. If a corporate transaction occurs, we will provide notification of any changes to control of your personal information, as well as choices you may have;
  8. with your consent. For example, with your consent, we post user testimonials that may identify you;
  9. and with your employer or organization where you create an account or user role with an email address assigned to you as an employee, contractor or member of an organization, that organization may find your account and take certain actions that may affect your account.

We may need to disclose Personal Information to our employees that require the Personal Information to do their jobs. These include our responsible management, human resources, accounting, audit, compliance, information technology, or other personnel. Any of our employees or personnel that handle your Personal Information will have signed non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements.

INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS

We may transmit or transfer Personal Information outside South Africa to be stored on servers located outside South Africa where the laws protecting Personal Information may not be as stringent as the laws South Africa. You consent to us processing your Personal Information in a foreign country whose laws regarding processing of Personal Information may be less stringent.

DATA SECURITY

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your Personal Information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your Personal Information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your Personal Information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected Personal Information breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so. We execute regular penetration tests using third party software to continually test and indicate the strength of our technical defences.

DATA RETENTION

How long will you use my Personal Information for? We will only retain your Personal Information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for Personal Information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the Personal Information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your Personal Information, the purposes for which we process your Personal Information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. By law we must keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) after they cease being customers, for tax and other purposes. This period of retention is dependent on the jurisdiction (e.g., in terms of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, 2001 this period is equal to five years after our business relationship with you has been terminated and in terms of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 2002 this period is at least one year from the date when the information was last being used by ProfitShare Partners). In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see below for further information. In some circumstances we may anonymise your Personal Information (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your Personal Information, as described within this Privacy Policy. These are the rights to:

  1. Request access to your Personal Information.
  2. Request correction of your Personal Information.
  3. Request erasure of your Personal Information.
  4. Object to processing of your Personal Information.
  5. Request restriction of processing your Personal Information.
  6. Request transfer of your Personal Information.
  7. Withdraw consent.

PROMOTION OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION ACT

The Promotion of Access to Information Act, 2000 (‘PAIA’) gives persons the right to access information that is required to exercise or protect their rights. In terms of PAIA, before access to information requested by persons is granted, certain requirements must be met. PAIA also requires private bodies such as ProfitShare Partners to compile a manual, designed to assist persons who want to exercise their right to access information. In general, you can visit our website without having to divulge any personal information about yourself. However, while using this website you may provide information about yourself or it may be collected by ProfitShare Partners. Access to your personal information held by ProfitShare Partners may also be requested by you or third parties. PAIA regulates and sets out the procedure for such a request and under what circumstances such access may be refused. The PAIA manual, the prescribed request form and information on applicable fees payable for access to this information, is available here. What we may need from you We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your Personal Information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that Personal Information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response. Time limit to respond We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made several requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

LAWFUL BASIS

 Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your Personal Information for our legitimate interests. We do not use your Personal Information for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us. Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you or the controller of your Personal Information are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract. Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation means processing your Personal Information where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.

THIRD PARTIES

 Internal Third Parties Other companies in the Group that provide IT, system administration services, customer services, back office administrative functions and undertake leadership reporting. External Third Parties Service providers acting as processors.

YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

You have the right to: Request access to your Personal Information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the Personal Information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it. Request correction of the Personal Information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us. Request erasure of your Personal Information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove Personal Information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your Personal Information where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your Personal Information to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request. Object to processing of your Personal Information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your Personal Information for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms. Request restriction of processing of your Personal Information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your Personal Information in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it. Request the transfer of your Personal Information to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your Personal Information in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you. Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your Personal Information. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent. Right not to be subjected to automated decision making without being given an opportunity to make representations about the decision after having been given enough information about the underlying logic for the automatic processing to enable you to make representations.