Privacy Policy – Protection of Personal Information

1.1 Preamble

This privacy policy, (“Policy”) outlines how, why, and what, electronic, or other, personal information data is collected by CAP in the normal course of its operational activities. The Policy applies to all personal information data collected by CAP.

We may collect personal information disclosed whenever you submit a form, participate in CAP’s community or committee meetings, or in our educational, research, or survey programmes, when you express an interest in or have signed up for our newsletters, apps, community meetings, or when you activate your CAP user account, or when visiting our public and/or member-based websites or social media sites, or personal information gathered from existing or prospective volunteers, staff, members, or suppliers and others.

1.2 About CAP

CAP is a South African-based environmental protection organisation. Our value objectives are to conserve the existing natural environment and natural resources and, where possible, educate others on ways to repair the damage and reverse adverse environmental trends. By gathering information, we hope to derive insights about members and the public and present such findings, observations, results, and conclusions, to our members and the public who subscribe to our values, objectives, and services.

1.3 What is Personal Information

Personal information means any information pertaining to an identifiable, living, natural person or to an identifiable, existing, juristic person, including, but not limited to:

1.3.1 the name of the natural or juristic person as it appears with other personal information relating to the natural or juristic person or if the disclosure of the name itself may reveal information about the natural or juristic person.

1.3.2 any identifying number, symbol, e-mail address, physical address, telephone number, location information, online identifier, or other identifiable designation to a particular natural or juristic person;

1.3.3 information relating to age, gender, sex, language, place of birth, culture, ethnicity, social origin, colour, race, or other such data of the person;

1.3.4 information relating to the education, medical or employment history, financial, or criminal record of the person;

1.3.5 the biometric information of the natural person;

1.3.6 correspondence sent by a person that is explicitly or implicitly of a private or confidential nature, or other correspondence that could reveal the contents of the original correspondence;

1.3.7 personal opinions, views, or preferences of the person;

1.3.8 the views or opinions of individuals about other persons.

2. How Personal Information May be Obtained

2.1 Automatically Through Passively Submitted Information
When you visit our Sites and Forums, or when submit a nuisance complaint, or participate in some of our surveys, your browser and computer automatically provide us information on your browser type and version, your device type, your internet protocol (IP) address, your location, how you arrived on our Site or Forum, including the URL that referred you, the pages you visit as you navigate (clickstream data), how long you stay on those pages, and the hyperlinks you clicked on. This information may be collected using various technologies including server logs, cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies.

2.2 Consensual Information

2.2.1 You may also actively provide us with personal information when you use our Sites and Forums, or when you interact with us. For example, you will actively and consensually submit personal information to us when you fill out a nuisance complaint, research survey, or any of our other forms, sign up to become a member of our company or one of our committees, create an account, or send an email to our staff, volunteers, or support team. In such situations, we may ask you to provide contact information such as your name, email address, and physical address, social media information such as your social profile, login information such as username and password (only in respect of our Sites or Forums), and other information such as nuisance complaint or research survey responses, photo uploads, and forum posts. In such situation, you will know what data categories you provide, as you will be actively entering the information requested. You may also provide personal information in the form of an agreement or other documented format.

2.2.2 Volunteers. staff and suppliers may provide their personal information to CAP in the normal course of our activities. This information may be in the form of an agreement, completed form (online or manual) or in the form of a CV (Curriculum Vitae).

2.3 Cookies

Cookies are extremely common and used on most websites. Each cookie will typically contain the name of the domain from which the cookie has come, the lifespan of the cookie, and a value (usually a unique number).

When you visit some of our Sites and Forums, or when or when submit a nuisance complaint or participate in some of our surveys, the Site or Forum may send you a cookie. Cookies are small text files that may be placed in your browser directory on your computer or mobile device. When a website or forum is accessed the cookie that is placed on your personal device will send information to the party that placed the cookie.

You may visit the two sites listed below for comprehensive explanation of what cookies are and how they operate.

www.aboutcookies.org or
www.allaboutcookies.org

2.4 Combined Information Sources

We may link information that you passively provide with information that you actively submit. When such a linkage occurs, we treat all the combined data as personal data.

3. How We Use Information

3.1 We use automatically and passively collected information on your technical environment and browsing history to operate and optimise our sites, forms, and surveys.

3.2 We may use the information you actively provide to us to respond to your queries, requests or to contact you with invitations to take part in our environmental nuisance reporting. surveys and other environmental initiatives, and fundraising drives. We use your contact information including your email address and phone number to send you the information you have requested; for example, when you fill out the Contact Us or a Form on our site, sign up for newsletters and promotions, subscribe to our blog or apply for a volunteer position or job. When you become a member of our company or our committees, we may send you regular environmental news and service emails as part of your ongoing membership and may contact you to notify you of member benefits or rewards such as airtime or contest winnings.

3.3 Each of our Sites, Communities, Forms and Surveys may include their own separate Privacy Policy, which will be referenced in the specific Site, Community, Form, or Survey.

3.4 We use information you provide to us to register you as a member, volunteer, employee, or supplier and to carry out activities associated our company, such as invoicing, processing payments, marketing, or the sharing agreements, etc.

3.5 You may, at any time, choose to stop receiving communication from us, by using one of the unsubscribe options we provide. Please see the Your Choices and Rights section of this Policy for more information about opting out of our communications.

3.6 Your personal information will only be retained by us for the legally permissible purposes and periods for which it was collected as outlined in this Policy, and as required under applicable retention policies, and as required or permitted in accordance with the applicable legislation.

3.7 Personal information received from staff, volunteers, members, and suppliers, such as, identification number, business registration and VAT numbers, may be used for references and referral purposes for example employment and services reference checks, criminal record checks, commercial solvency checks, credit checks or academic reference checks.

4. Data Recipients

4.1 We do not share your personal information with third parties, except:
4.1.1 when redirecting your complaint and to appropriate environmental authorities;

4.1.2 when attending to your legitimate requests or stated interests;

4.1.3 to fulfil contractual obligations with you, our members, volunteers, users, and others;

4.1.4 when engaging in various forms of consensual direct marketing;

4.1.5 to identify potentials for enhanced service delivery or funding sustainability;

4.1.6 in connection with legal proceedings;

4.1.7 for statistical or research purposes, in a redacted or aggregated form that cannot be used to identify you personally;

4.1.8 with affiliated and unaffiliated services providers that act on our behalf and under our instructions to help us operate our company (data processors);

4.1.9 if required or permitted by law to protect the rights or safety of our website, other users, or third parties (for example, for fraud, protection, credit risk reduction purposes, to protect and defend CAP’s proprietary rights, or the rights of CAP’s members, other users, or the public).

4.1.10 with your consent, in all other circumstances.

5. Your Choices and Rights

5.1 You have several choices on what personal information we may collect, process, and use and to what purpose. Wherever reasonably practical, we will provide you with the ability to use the features of our Sites and Forums without submitting personal information to us.

5.2 Some areas of our Sites, Apps and Forums, such as nuisance complaints, registration forms, questionnaires, and other submissions pages, will require you to provide accurate and up to date personal information for you to proceed, your only alternative choice, is to not use such areas and features.

5.3 CAP has limited control over the use of personal information on posted on popular Social Media Platforms and thus cannot ensure the integrity or anonymity of such information. We undertake not publish your identifying personal information on any Social Media Platform without your consent. Social media users are urged to read the terms and conditions associated with the various platforms and users should be aware that most social media platforms routinely allow for the distribution of personal information to third parties without consent.

5.4 You may opt-out of receiving marketing and other promotional emails from us at any time by contacting us directly at info@cap-mzansi.com.

5.5 Users of our Sites, Forms, or Surveys can opt-out of participating by using the “Unsubscribe” links embedded in emails, or by using the “Unsubscribe” option available on our websites and forums.

5.6 Some emails are of a transactional nature and may include emails we send to our members and the public regarding products, items, or services they have purchased. These emails will not provide the ability to opt-out option.

5.7 You may wish to browse our Sites and Forums without being tracked by cookies, there are several options available to you depending on the specific type of opt-out you wish to perform. More detail on this can be found in Cookies section of this Policy.

6. Checking Your Personal Information

You can contact us to request that we update, correct, or stop using your personal information, or to check what personal information we may have collected about you, by:

6.1 Data Access, Correction and Deletion – you may request access to your personal information to confirm that it is in our possession, to ensure that it is accurate and to make corrections, or to request that it be removed or anonymised. We will respond to your request as quickly as possible, but we will need to verify your identity before providing you with access to the personal information we hold about you.

6.2 In some cases, we may be unable to accommodate your request if:

6.2.1 we are unable to verify your identity;

6.2.2 we are prohibited by law;

6.2.3 disclosure would result in the disclosure of the personal information of others; or

6.2.4 the request is unreasonable or impractical.

6.3 Should we be unable to process your request for these or any other reasons, we will provide you with an explanation of the reason for denial, and you will be permitted to request a review. When making a request please use the email address provided below info@cap-mzansi.com.

7. Links

Some of our Sites, Forums, Complaint or Survey Forms may contain links to external websites not affiliated with us. CAP encourages you to review the Privacy Policies and terms of use of these external sites before you submit any personal information to them. Your use of an external site or any information or other content found on such external websites, is subject to and governed by the terms and conditions pertaining to such site.

CAP does not make any representations, warranties or endorse regarding the external websites and will not in any way be liable for any content, products, services, or other materials available on or through any external websites.

8. International Considerations and Data Transfer

Some of the information collected on our Sites, Forums, Complaint or Survey Forms may be processed outside of the country from which you are accessing the Sites, Forums, Complaint or Survey Forms. We may process some of your personal information in the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. Occasionally, we use service providers located in other jurisdictions to process data on our behalf and under our instructions. At all times, we take appropriate measures to ensure that your personal information is processed securely, and in accordance with international data transfer laws and this Privacy Policy.

9. Security

CAP and its information technology providers have implemented commercially reasonable safeguards and precautions to protect your personal information, including technical and organisational measures against unauthorised access, improper use, alteration, unlawful or accidental destruction, and accidental loss.

10. Interaction with Others on Forums

Some of our Sites and Forums allow members and followers to engage directly with each other to gain valuable insights from their participation. Any data collected by the members or followers, via these Sites and Forums, is governed solely by their own privacy policies and views. If you have any questions or concerns about other users accessing your personal information, please contact them directly.

11. Children’s Data

Our Sites, Forums, Complaint or Survey Forms are not intended for, or directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from any person under the age of 16 (sixteen) without parental consent. If we discover that we have inadvertently collected personal information from a person under 16 (sixteen) years of age (without parental consent), we will promptly take commercially reasonable measures to delete such information from our systems.

12. How You Contact Us

12.1 Compliance

CAP has appointed a Privacy Officer who is responsible for monitoring and enforcing compliance of this Policy.

Should you have any questions regarding this Policy, you may contact the Privacy Officer. Please see the how you can contact us below.

12.2 Contact Options

Should you have any questions regarding this Policy, you may contact the Privacy Officer:

• Via email at: info@cap-mzansi.com or
• By postal mail addressed: Attention: Privacy Officer, Communities Against Pollution NPC, P.O. Box 6070, Zimbali, 4418, South Africa.
• Telephonically at any of the numbers listed at www.cap-mzansi.com

13. How We Contact You

Through the contact details you have provided when registering, opting-in to our platforms, or when submitting Complaint or Survey Forms. We will only use these details to contact you when required.

Should there be any breach of personal information, affected individuals will be personally notified (using contact details available) of the breach including, the nature of the breach, how the breach is being handled to minimise the impact on individuals as well as what will be done to mitigate the risk of the same or similar breaches in the future.

14. Primary References

14.1 This Policy is based on the requirements of Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013, and focuses on these 8 (eight) principles:

• Accountability
• Processing Limitations
• Purpose Specification
• Further Processing Limitation
• Information Quality
• Openness
• Security Safeguards
• Data Subject Participation

14.2 This Policy follows the guidelines issued under the Non-Profit Organisations Act 71 of 1997, and focuses on these 4 (four) criteria:

• Ethical and Responsible Behaviour
• Accountability and Transparency
• Leadership
• Financial Management

14.3 This Policy should be read in conjunction with the CAP Code of Conduct.

15. Changes To This Policy

We may change the terms of this Policy at any time and at our sole discretion so please review it periodically.