1. Overview

We respect your privacy and we are committed to protecting the privacy of the users of this website. Accredicon (PTY) Ltd (also referred to as “we”, “our” and “us”) want you to be familiar with our privacy policy and has been developed to acknowledge the importance of and assisting in providing a framework for, the appropriate level of protection for consumer identification, collection, holding, using, disseminating, merging, collating, disclosing and protection of your personal information (“process” or “processing”).

The policy represents the Accredicon (PTY) Ltd’ commitment to compliance with its obligations under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (“POPI”) as well as for the purposes that are listed in this Privacy Policy. In order to access/collect/process your information, we act on our customer’s behalf as the “responsible party” requesting to access their personal information under South African legislation. This information will be kept by us as long as is necessary for us to use your information as described above or to comply with our legal obligations (including fraud prevention, anti-money laundering and sanction screening).

We reserve the right, at our discretion, to modify or remove portions of this Internet Privacy Policy at any time. This Policy is in addition to any other terms and conditions applicable to the website.

Personal information about visitors to our site is collected only when our customers knowingly and voluntarily register to our website. This Internet Privacy Policy should be reviewed periodically so that you are updated on any changes. We welcome your comments and feedback.

2. How we collect personal information

We collect the personal information of our customers when they register and more specifically through:

• IP Addresses:
  Our web servers gather our customer’s IP address when they register on our website. Information is gathered in aggregate only and cannot be traced to an individual user;
• Cookies and Applets A cookie is a small text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web page server. Cookies contain information that can later be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Our customers have the ability to accept or decline cookies. These cookies and Applets allow us to increase our customer’s security by storing their session ID and are a way of monitoring single user access. This aggregate, non-personal information is collated and provided to us to assist in analysing the usage of the site.

3. The processing of personal information

We provide this policy in accordance with POPI, detailing the lawful approach we take in the collection of information and in regard to the management, use and processing of all information collected from our customers.

In the course of our business we only process personal information in relation to our customers when voluntarily register on our website takes place.

4. The types of personal information collected and processed

The types of personal information that we may collect includes information that is submitted when our customers register on our website. This may include personal information which contains identifiable information such as (amongst other things) the first names and surname, contact number, company name, title, email address and residential address of our customers. By clicking ‘submit’ on our website our customers are expressly providing their consent to us to collect their details to process the information provided to us.

5. Once our customers have registered on our website, we are entitled to use their personal information as follows:

• for identification purposes;
• understand broad demographic trends;
• to check when was the last time our customers used our services, if at all;
• to inform our customers of goods, services and/or products which we think they may be interested in (unless they have opted out);
• for business purposes, such as analysing and managing our business, market search, audits, developing new products, improving our services and products, gauging customer satisfaction and providing customer service;
• for statistical purposes, such as the number of visits, the pages viewed, which website you came from before clicking into the Interchange website, the key words used to find our site, your IP-address, the browser type and language, access time, etc. Interchange uses this information for improving its sites and services;
• for security, administrative and legal purposes.

6. What do we do with your personal information?

We will not sell, rent, share, trade or give away any personally identifiable information to any third parties. We will only disclose personally identifiable information when required to do so by law, in situations where we have reason to believe that doing so is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against anyone damaging, injuring, or interfering (intentionally or unintentionally) with our rights or property, users, or anyone else who could be harmed by such activities.

7. Security

We strive to ensure the security, integrity and privacy of personal information submitted to our sites, and we review and update our security measures regularly to improve these security measures and to keep them in line with legal and technological developments. It is however important to keep in mind that no data transmission over the internet is totally secure. To mitigate this risk, we have implemented organisational security measures to protect the Personal Information of our customers against accidental or intentional manipulation, loss, misuse, destruction or against unauthorised disclosure or access to the information that we collect. In all circumstances the information is held by us on our secure systems or data base. Additionally, our employees and contractors who provide services related to our information systems are obliged to respect the confidentiality of any personal information held by us. We will however not be held responsible for events arising from unauthorised access to your personal information.

8. Access to Information

Access to our client’s personal information is controlled by use of appropriate passwords and other computer and software security techniques. If, at any time, our clients discover that information held about them is incorrect or outdated, they may contact us to have the information corrected.

9. What about personal information that is publicly available?

If at any time our website offers any question and answer (“Q&A”) session or services or any other interactive sessions or services, we will collect the information that our customers disclose. Such information will be used in accordance with this Privacy Policy. Please note that we are not responsible for other parties’ use of the Personal Information which our customers make available to such third parties through our interactive sessions or services.

10. Use of the website by children

This website is not accessible and should not be accessed by children under the age of 18 years.

11. How you may complain about our failure to comply with POPI? There are 2 ways our customers may complain:

• Verbally, or in writing, by contacting Accredicon (PTY) Ltd. After an appropriate internal investigation, we will write to our customers as soon as practicable after a decision has been reached, outlining the decision and the reasons for reaching it.
• By lodging a complaint to the Regulator completing the form as prescribed which is free of charge if you are a South African resident.

If any provision of this Privacy Policy is judged to be illegal, void or unenforceable due to applicable law or by order of a court of competent, it shall be deemed deleted and the continuation in full force and effect of the remainder of the provisions will not be prejudiced unless a court of competent jurisdiction determines that the substantive purpose of this Privacy Policy is then frustrated, in which case our clients may contact us in order to opt-out of the Privacy Policy.

Disclaimers

You acknowledge and agree that:

Although we strive to provide information on the latest developments relating to specific ISO compliance standards and accreditation requirements, we do not warrant the accuracy, effectiveness, and suitability of any information contained in this websites. The information is presented “as is” and may include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Accredicon (PTY) Ltd reserves the right to make additions, deletions, or modifications to the information at any time without any prior notification.

The views, opinions, discussions, recommendations, comments, teachings, findings and/or criticism expressed on this website are those of Accredicon (PTY) Ltd only and do not reflect any official policy or position, nor does it constitute an endorsement of any national body, agency or organisation’s policies and procedures. The information contained herein is provided for educational purposes only.

While every effort is made to update the information regularly and to offer the most current, correct and clearly expressed information possible, Accredicon (PTY) Ltd cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracy, errors, omissions or misinterpretations. Assumptions made relating to the information provided are not reflective of the position of Accredicon (PTY) Ltd.

This website may contain forward-looking statements that reflect the current compliance standards and accreditation requirements pertaining to specific ISO’s. Actual developments or results could differ materially from those projected, depend on a number of factors including but not limited to amendments to applicable legislation, regulations and industry specific standards and requirements.

Accredicon (PTY) Ltd, its officers and/or its employees do not accept or take any responsibility whatsoever for any loss, whether direct, indirect, special or consequential including, without limitation, any warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title or non-infringement which may arise from reliance on information contained on the pages and actions resulting therefrom. Any liability that would or could arise as a result of the contents of these pages is hereby excluded to the fullest extent allowed by law, regardless of whether Accredicon (PTY) Ltd has been advised as to the possibility of such damages

Except as otherwise provided, Accredicon (PTY) Ltd will not edit, censor, or otherwise control any content provided by third parties on any bulletin board, chat room or other similar forums posted on the Accredicon (PTY) Ltd websites. Such information should therefore be considered as suspect and is not endorsed by Accredicon (PTY) Ltd.

Accredicon (PTY) Ltd is not responsible, and provides no warranty whatsoever, for the accuracy, effectiveness, timeliness and suitability of any information, advise, guidelines or content obtained from third parties, including any hyperlinks to or from third-party sites.

Accredicon (PTY) Ltd shall not be regarded as having waived, or be precluded from exercising any right under these Terms by reason merely that we have provided any indulgence to you or we fail to exercise or delay exercising any right we may have, whether the same right or any other right.

No warranty is given that any files, downloads or applications available via this web site are free of viruses which have the ability to corrupt your system.