WHO ARE WE?

This privacy policy sets out how TAAC Africa trading as Platform Centre Pty Ltd uses and protects any information that you give TAAC Africa (TA) when you use its website or services. TA may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check regularly to ensure that you are happy with any change. Our registered office is at 2 Baanbreker Avenue, Helderkruin, Roodepoort, Johannesburg, South Africa and we are a company registered in South Africa under company number K2021920262.

INFORMATION THAT WE COLLECT

We process your personal information to meet our legal, statutory and contractual obligations and to provide you with our products and services. The personal data that we collect from you may include: contact information included in our membership forms, such as your name, job title, postal address, including your home address, business address, telephone number, mobile phone number, and email address; information collected from publicly available resources, integrity databases and credit agencies; if required by relevant laws or regulations, personal information such as: Your date of birth, nationality, country of birth, country of residence, employment status and tax identification number (i.e. National Insurance Number); Passport details, driving licence and utility bills; Details of the services you request from us; Payment details, including credit/debit card numbers, security code numbers, and other related billing information; And other personal data regarding your preferences where it is relevant to the services that we provide.

HOW WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We may collect personal information about you in a number of circumstances, including when you apply to use any of our services, become our client, or contact us in person, by telephone, by email, or by post. In some circumstances, we collect personal data about you from a third-party source. For example, we may collect personal data from your organisation, other organisations with whom you have dealings, government agencies, an information or service provider, or from a publicly available record.

LAWFUL GROUNDS FOR THE PROCESSING OF PERSONAL DATA

Under the Data Protection Laws, we need a lawful basis to collect and use your personal data. The law allows for six lawful bases to process people’s personal data, and one of them allows personal data to be legally collected and used if it is necessary for a legitimate interest of the organisation – as long as it is fair and balanced and does not unduly impact the rights of individuals. Due to the nature of our business and the size of our database, it is not practical for us to ask every individual for his/her consent. We have assessed our interests in carrying out our business activities and we have carefully considered the impact the collection and use of personal data could potentially have on individuals’ rights. Our database contains mainly data about individuals solely in their business capacity, which is used for the purposes of our normal business activities. Such activities are unlikely to affect the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals concerned. We have therefore concluded that the most appropriate lawful ground for the processing of your personal information is our legitimate interest in maintaining our business database, and promoting, running, and managing our business. TA uses the legitimate interest’s legal basis for processing the type of data listed below: Email and other addresses for communicating with our members for the purpose of administering their membership with TA Email addresses and telephone numbers to communicate with individuals who raise a membership inquiry on our website Use of email addresses to send newsletters and marketing material to members and other individuals who have recently interacted with TA or used TA’s services on the basis that these categories of individuals would reasonably expect to receive this type of material. Any individual is able to object to receiving such material through the use of the unsubscribe facility contained in each email communication Individual names of attendees at conferences or events organised by TA or held at TA or its partners’ premises are used to create a list of delegates.

SHARING AND DISCLOSING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers located in the United Kingdom. The data we collect may be transferred to and stored at, a destination outside the United Kingdom. It may also be processed by staff operating outside the United Kingdom who work for us or for one of our suppliers. We will take the necessary steps to ensure that your data is treated securely and that any such transfer outside the United Kingdom is in accordance with the Data Protection Laws. Keeping personal information secure is very important to us and we take appropriate precautions to protect against the loss, misuse, and alteration of personal information. However, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be totally secure. As a result, whilst we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information which is sent via the internet. We may disclose your personal information to any of our affiliated companies, to our suppliers, agents, or representatives, or to other users for the purposes associated with our legitimate interests (see above). We may also disclose your personal information to third parties where this is necessary for connection with the services we provide or our legitimate interests. If our services are provided in conjunction with, or by the involvement of third parties, such third parties may need to have your personal information in order to fulfill your request. We do not sell, trade, or rent personal information to third parties.

HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR DATA

We only ever retain personal information for as long as is necessary and we have strict review and retention policies in place to meet these obligations. We are required under UK tax law to keep your basic personal data (name, address, contact details) for a minimum of 6 years after which time it will be destroyed. Where you have consented to us using your details for direct marketing, we will keep such data until you notify us otherwise and/or withdraw your consent. These retention periods vary depending on the location, type of data, product type and the extent of our interaction with you. 

We use the following criteria to determine the retention period: 
           Has the customer provided personal data with the expectation that we will retain such data until they specifically ask for its erasure?

           In such cases, TAAC Africa will follow the guidelines of applicable law and keep data for no longer than is necessary for the purpose for which it is being processed, or until you request for the erasure of your data

          Has TAAC Africa contractually agreed to a retention period?

          Organisations may ask that we retain data for at least a specified period. Your rights are not affected. Personal erasure requests will take priority in such circumstances.

 Is TAAC Africa under a legal obligation to retain or delete the data?

Examples of this include, but not limited to; mandatory data retention laws set by governing bodies or data retained for the purposes of litigation.

WHERE WE STORE AND PROCESS PERSONAL DATA

We may store or process personal data collected by TAAC Africa in any country that we operate. This includes, but not limited to; South Africa, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong and Tokyo.
A full list of our countries of operation can be found here
TAAC Africa’s primary data storage location is London, however, services such as our CRM, Identity and Access Management system and website are hosted in the United Kingdom. We will ensure that ‘adequate safeguards’ are in place when transferring data between regions, following the guidance of applicable laws. Company entities of TAAC Africa may also process personal data following Applicable Law.

YOUR RIGHTS

You have the following rights:

Right of access to personal data that we process about you, which includes the right to obtain confirmation as to whether or not
we process any of your personal data, and if this is the case, you have the right to request a copy of your personal data, and the
details of our processing of your personal data;

to require us to correct any inaccuracies in your data;

to object to our processing of your personal data (including for direct marketing purposes) or to withdraw your consent if you
have previously given us your consent;

in certain circumstances you may have the right to request the erasure of your personal data (often referred to as the “right to
be forgotten”), for example, if we no longer have any legal ground for processing your personal data, e.g. we no longer need it for
our legitimate interests (as set out above);

instead of erasure, you can request the restriction of processing of your personal data (i.e. limit the use of your data by us), for
example when the accuracy of your data is being verified by us, or if we no longer need your data for our legitimate interests but
we need to hold some of it for the purpose of legal proceedings; and

you may request the transfer of any personal data you have provided to us to a different organisation.

If you wish to exercise any of the above rights, you should:

put your request in writing and email it to us at taac@taac.africa; 

include proof of your identity and address (e.g. a copy of your driving licence or passport, and a recent utility or credit card bill).

This is to allow us to verify your identity and prevent disclosure to unauthorised third parties; and
provide the details of the request that you are making, for example by specifying the personal data you want to access, the
information that is incorrect, and the information with which it should be replaced.

You should not provide TAAC Africa with any personally identifiable information or submit or post any personally identifiable information to the site unless you would like that information to be used by TAAC Africa in accordance with this policy.

Likewise, you should not submit or post any personally identifiable information to the website unless you want that information to be accessible by other users of the website, as information posted on the website may be made available to other users of the website.
Personally, identifiable information posted to the service site is not accessible by other users of the service site who do not belong to your peer user group or organisation and who are also registered on the service site.

The personally identifiable information that TAAC Africa collects from users of the Sites (both registered and unregistered) may be used for a variety of purposes, for example, to provide the services and products offered through the Sites to users of the Sites, to customise content and/or layout of the Sites for each individual user of the Sites, to notify users of the Sites about updates to and activities on the Sites and about goods and services that we feel may be of interest to you, to improve the content of the Sites, to analyse data and patterns regarding usage of the Sites, to contact users of the Sites for marketing purposes, and to contact users of the Sites for information verification purposes.

TAAC Africa may collect and publish statistics and usage information related to the Users’ consumption and feedback of content only in Anonymous Information cases. We may publish consumption data associated with a certain keyword or piece of content, but never in relation to your Account. We may collect certain information from visitors to the Site and users of the Services, such as Internet addresses. This information is logged to help diagnose technical problems and prevent security breaches.

LODGING A COMPLAINT

We only process your personal information in compliance with this privacy notice and in accordance with the relevant data protection laws. If, however you wish to raise a complaint regarding the processing of your personal data or are unsatisfied with how we have handled your information, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority.

CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

We may change this Policy from time to time. The current version of this Policy will always be available from us in hard copy or on our website. We will post a prominent notice on our website to notify you of any significant changes to this Policy or update you by other appropriate means.

NOTIFICATION OF CHANGES

If we decide to change the Policy, we will either notify users by way of an email or post material changes on the Sites so our users are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and if we disclose it. Unless we seek and receive your consent, we will use information in accordance with the Policy under which the information was last collected. Users may prevent their information from being used for purposes other than those for which it was originally collected by emailing us at ‘taac@taac.africa

SECURITY

We will use at least industry standard measures on the Sites to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of the information under our control. We use a secure server hosting location, firewall protection, controlled access and secure data storage to protect your data. We do not store your passwords in plaintext, nor do we store your credit card information on our systems. The Sites fully support SSL and current encryption standards. We also limit access to your data to our employees whom we believe reasonably need to come into contact with that information. While no system is guaranteed to be completely secure, we work hard to ensure our security measures protect all information in a responsible manner.

COOKIES

TAAC Africa uses “cookies” to improve the experience of the Sites. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web page server, often including an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.
We may use cookies for various purposes, for example, to save user preferences, customise Site content for individual users, to ensure that users are not repeatedly sent the same content, to record session information, to alert users to new areas that might be of interest upon return to the Site, and to save certain information about users of the Site and others who visit the Site. We also use cookies to record current login information; however, you are still required to log in to your account after a certain period of time has elapsed to protect you against others accidentally accessing your Account.

IP ADDRESSES AND COOKIES

We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and to report aggregate information to our advertisers. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual and we will not collect personal information in this way.
We may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer’s hard drive. They help us to improve our site and to deliver a better and more personalised service. They enable us:

To estimate our audience size and usage pattern.

To store information about your preferences, and so allow us to customise our site according to your individual interests.

To speed up your searches.

To recognise you when you return to our site.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you log on to our site. 

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to member needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system. Cookies help us provide you with a better website by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us. You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website. When someone visits we use Google Analytics and Google Console to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. We do not make and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website. When you register as an TAAC Africa member or request to join our mailing lists, we collect personal information. We use that information for a couple of reasons: to update you on activities pertinent to the interests you have advised us of; to contact you if we need to obtain or provide additional information; to check our records are up-to-date and to monitor your satisfaction. We use Constant Contact, to deliver our newsletter. We gather statistics around email opening and clicks using industry-standard technologies to help us monitor and improve our e-newsletter. For more information, please see Constant Contact’s privacy notice. You can unsubscribe to general mailings at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of our emails or by emailing taac@taac.africa

When you purchase a ticket (or tickets) or register for events online, your name, address data, email, and contact number will be stored in Eventbrite or other payment platform we use now or in the future which is integrated into our internal CRM and CMS systems. Please be assured that we do not share your personal details with any other company without your consent. For more information please see Eventbrite’s privacy policy. In order to deliver our information and data services to members, we share limited member email information with our partner Asoko Insight and others. These relationships are supported by relevant Non-Disclosure Agreements. Their respective privacy policies can be found here and here. You may opt out of these services by contacting our data protection officer. Data is stored until such date as you cease using our services or request that it be deleted. You are entitled to view, amend, or delete the personal information that we hold.

DISCLOSURE AS REQUIRED BY LAW

Though we make every reasonable effort to preserve user privacy, we may need to disclose personally identifiable information of certain users of the Sites when we have a reasonable and good-faith belief that the disclosure is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order, or legal process served on TAAC Africa or the Sites. In this situation, we will use reasonable efforts to provide notice of this disclosure to all affected users, to the extent reasonably possible under the circumstances.

POPI, PATA & CPA

By using our Website, you have given us consent to share and use your information for anything that seeks to advance the cause of PLATFORM CENTRE PTY LTD and its 3rd party, either for marketing, information and any other thing.

SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS

On occasion, it is necessary to send out service-related announcements. For instance, if the Sites or any of the services offered through the Sites are temporarily suspended for maintenance, we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account. These communications are not promotional in nature.

SPECTAL OFFERS AND UPDATES

We send all new registrants of the Sites a welcoming email to verify passwords and usernames. Subscribing users will occasionally receive information on products, services and special deals, and periodic newsletters in accordance with their subscription agreements. We may occasionally send existing and expired subscribers’ information on products, services and special deals, and periodic newsletters which are not part of their subscription.

NON-PERSONALLY IDENTIFTABLE INFORMATION

Where possible, our server automatically recognises each visitor’s Internet Protocol addresses. We also collect information about how visitors use the Sites (for example what pages are viewed and products and services are purchased). This information, which is collected and maintained in an anonymous and non-personally identifiable form, allows us to improve the content of the Sites and facilitate market research. Sometimes, we utilise the services of a third party to help us understand this information better, although the information that is disclosed to these entities remains at all times in anonymous and non-personally identifiable form. Other than improving the Sites and the experience of visitors to the Sites, we make no other use of this information.

TRANSFER OF INFORMATION

As we continue to develop our business, we may participate in corporate transactions such as mergers and acquisitions, and it is possible that another company may acquire TAAC Africa Ltd. or its business assets in the future. If TAAC Africa elects, in its reasonable discretion, to transfer ownership or control of the Sites to a third party, whether or not in the context of an acquisition of TAAC Africa or a merger of TAAC Africa with a third party, you consent to the transfer of your personally identifiable information and non-personally identifiable information to that third party, provided that all use of your information by that third party remains subject to the terms of this Policy.

ACCESS, REVIEW, UPDATE

Users may review, delete/deactivate and update the personal information that was previously provided to us by emailing us at ‘taac@taac.africa. We may ask you to provide identification before progressing with your enquiry.

OTHER WEBSITES; LINKS

Third-party websites may be accessible through the Sites. These third-party websites have their own privacy and data collection policies and practices. TAAC Africa is not responsible for any actions or privacy policies of such third parties. You should check the applicable privacy policies of those third parties when providing personally identifiable information through linked websites.

CONSENT TO THE USE OF THIRD-PARTY PROVIDERS

In addition to the specific third parties noted in this Policy, TAAC Africa may also contract with other third parties to provide various services to TAAC Africa relating to the Sites on an outsourced basis rather than performing the services itself. For example, TAAC Africa may contract with an email provider to handle the distribution of email messages to subscribers of the Sites. Likewise, TAAC Africa may contract with a website hosting provider to host all or a portion of the Sites for Oxford Economics. By visiting the Sites, all visitors consent to TAAC Africa providing both personal and non-personal information received from those visitors to these third-party providers for the purpose of enabling the third-party provider to provide these outsourced services to Oxford Economics. In addition, all visitors consent to the collection, maintenance, and processing of their personal and non-personal information by TAAC Africa and these third-party providers.

CONTACT INFORMATION 

Any questions or suggestions about this Privacy Policy should be addressed vTA email to: “taac@taac.africa
This notice is reviewed intermittently and may be updated at any time. We are regulated by the Information Commissioner’s Office You can contact them for advice and support.