FM SOLAR: Privacy Policy

GDRP:
The GDRP (General Data Protection Regulation) is a European regulation that was implemented in May 2018. It is intended to enhance EU citizens’ control over their personal data.
The regulation affects all countries, including South Africa and is being adopted internationally as best practice for all businesses.  
It stipulates how companies should diligently protect personal data and how they must provide proof about how the data is protected. Customers need to be given control on how their data is handled.

THERE ARE 7 KEY PRINCIPLES OF GDPR:
1. Lawfulness, fairness and transparency
– Lawfulness: There must be a good reason for needing to process data.
– Fairness: The company shouldn’t purposely withhold information about what and why they are collecting data.
– Transparency: The company must be clear, open and honest.
2. Purpose limitation
Data can only be used for specific purposes.
3. Data minimisation
Only collecting the smallest amount of data needed.
4. Accuracy
It is up to the company to ensure that the data is accurate.
5. Storage limitation
The company must have a standard time period after which it will anonymise any data that they are not actively using.
6. Integrity and confidentiality (security)
The company must ensure the integrity and confidentiality of all data collected.
7. Accountability
There must be appropriate measures and records in place as proof of compliance.

Users of FM Solar services, such as a newsletter can opt out by unsubscribing at the bottom of the newsletter itself, or by emailing info@fmsolar.co.za with UNSUBSCRIBE ME as the subject.

COOKIES
Cookies acknowledgement statement:
Cookies are small text files that exist on most websites. These are generally used to improve user experience, but they may contain personal information.

Cookies disclosure statement:
– Items in a digital shopping cart
As an online retailer, we use cookies to keep track of the items in your shopping cart. Without cookies, every time you clicked a new link on the site, your shopping cart would reset to zero.

– CMS logins or blog commenting capabilities:
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser. When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

– Retargeting ads to social media and installation of tracking pixels:
We use cookies to show personalised campaigns to (potential) customers who have already interacted with our site.

Cookies intent for use:
Cookies are used to carry information as a means to identify a given user. We use cookies to improve user experience and to store the shopping cart as you navigate between sessions on our website. We also use it to show personalised campaigns to (potential) customers. We do not use them to spam customers.

Instructions for disabling cookies:
Open Chrome on your device. Under More click Privacy and security. Block cookies.

RIGHTS YOU HAVE OVER YOUR DATA

If you have an account on this site or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

POPI ACT
POPI Act is essentially the South African Data Protection Bill or Data Protection Act.
The POPI Act is in line with current international laws on privacy.
‘Processing’ includes the ‘collection, recording, organisation, storage, updating or modification, retrieval, consultation, use, dissemination by means of transmission, distribution or making available in any other form, merging, linking, as well as blocking, erasure or destruction of personal information.’

The POPI Act contains 8 principles:
– Processing of information is limited. This means that personal information must be obtained in a lawful and fair manner.
– Information must only be used for the specified purpose for which it was originally obtained.
– The POPI Act restricts further processing of personal information beyond its original scope.
– The quality of the personal information must be retained by taking reasonable steps to ensure that it is complete and accurate.
– There should be a degree of openness by the person who is processing the information.
– There should be security safeguards against loss, damage, destruction, and unauthorised/unlawful access in place.
– The data subject should be able to access personal information that the company has on them and the ability to change or correct the information.
– The company is accountable to these principles

YOUR DATA
Sharing data:
If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Opt-Out:
If you would like to opt out, please contact us at info@fmsolar.co.za

Retaining data:
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so that we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

COMMENTS
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://fmsolar.co.za/privacy-policy/ After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

If you post comments through third-party platforms (such as Facebook), and you submit information voluntarily, privacy protection laws apply to those exchanges.

MEDIA
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites will behave in exactly the same manner as visiting the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

SUMMARY
Public activities may be included in our RSS feeds, APIs and other distribution formats. Your public activities may appear on other feeds, websites or blogs as a result.
We offer you opportunities to engage in public activities on FMSolar.co.za and other FM Solar activities. “Public activities” are any actions you take on FMSolar.co.za and related third parties that are designed to be visible to other users. These include comments, message boards, recommendations, reviews, ratings and any other items that you submit.
Any information that you disclose in public activities, including any image, photo or video becomes public. It may be used by FM Solar for online and offline promotional or commercial use.

We may require additional information at other times. The terms of this Privacy Policy are also valid for those instances.

WHO WE ARE
Our website address is https://fmsolar.co.za
Domicilium: 9G Sandown, West Beach, Cape Town, South Africa, 7441