Privacy Policy

The Pet Directory is committed to safeguarding your privacy. If you need to contact the site administrators please do so via the Contact Us page. If you have any questions or problems regarding the use of your Personal Data and we will gladly assist you. If you would like to find out what information we store about you, you can find a privacy tool located in your user profile or at the following link Here. If you do not have an account with us or are not logged in you can use the same link as logged in users Here. If you have not supplied us with an email address or checked any consent boxes regarding personal data, then rest assured we only store anonymized data or none at all if you have not commented, created an account, sent us a suggestion/contact request via one of our forms or signed up to our newsletter.

By using this site and/or our services(commenting, rating ads, placing ads, registering or using a form on our site), you consent to the Processing of your Personal Data as described in this Privacy Policy.

Table of Contents

  1. Definitions used in this Policy
  2. Data protection principles we follow
  3. What rights do you have regarding your Personal Data
  4. What Personal Data we gather about you
  5. How we use your Personal Data
  6. Who else has access to your Personal Data
  7. How we secure your data
  8. Information about cookies
  9. Contact information

Definitions

Personal Data – any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.
Processing – any operation or set of operations which is performed on Personal Data or on sets of Personal Data.
Data subject – a natural person whose Personal Data is being Processed.
Child – a natural person under 18 years of age (in accordance with South African law).
We/us (either capitalized or not) – The Pet Directory.

Data Protection Principles

We promise to follow the following data protection principles:

  • Processing is lawful, fair, transparent. Our Processing activities have lawful grounds. We always consider your rights before Processing Personal Data. We will provide you information regarding Processing upon request.
  • Processing is limited to the purpose. Our Processing activities fit the purpose for which Personal Data was gathered.
  • Processing is done with minimal data. We only gather and Process the minimal amount of Personal Data required for any purpose.
  • Processing is limited with a time period. We will not store your personal data for longer than needed.
  • We will do our best to ensure the accuracy of data.
  • We will do our best to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of data.

Data Subject’s rights

The Data Subject has the following rights:

  1. Right to information – meaning you have to right to know whether your Personal Data is being processed; what data is gathered, from where it is obtained and why and by whom it is processed.
  2. Right to access – meaning you have the right to access the data collected from/about you. This includes your right to request and obtain a copy of your Personal Data gathered.
  3. Right to rectification – meaning you have the right to request or conduct (via your account dashboard), rectification or erasure of your Personal Data that is inaccurate or incomplete.
  4. Right to erasure – meaning in certain circumstances you can request for your Personal Data to be erased from our records.
  5. Right to restrict processing – meaning where certain conditions apply, you have the right to restrict the Processing of your Personal Data.
  6. Right to object to processing – meaning in certain cases you have the right to object to Processing of your Personal Data, for example in the case of direct marketing.
  7. Right to object to automated Processing – meaning you have the right to object to automated Processing, including profiling; and not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated Processing. This right you can exercise whenever there is an outcome of the profiling that produces legal effects concerning or significantly affecting you.
  8. Right to data portability – you have the right to obtain your Personal Data in a machine-readable format or if it is feasible, as a direct transfer from one Processor to another.
  9. Right to lodge a complaint – in the event that we refuse your request under the Rights of Access, we will provide you with a reason as to why. If you are not satisfied with the way your request has been handled please contact us.
  10. Right for the help of supervisory authority – meaning you have the right for the help of a supervisory authority and the right for other legal remedies such as claiming damages.
  11. Right to withdraw consent – you have the right withdraw any given consent for Processing of your Personal Data.

Data we gather

Information you have provided us with

This might be your e-mail address, name, billing address, home address and more. We try to store as little information about users as possible and only store what data is absolutely necessary for the site to function correctly for you.
This information can be your email address, name, location or any other information you provide to us for your account or to fill in for advertisements you make. Information stored simply required for ads or what we call non typical such as your Facebook account or any similar information is not processed by us. We only process names and email addresses for the purpose of running the site.

Information automatically collected about you
This includes information that is automatically stored by cookies and other session tools. For example, your IP address. This information is used to improve both your own as well as the customer experiences of others on the platform. When you use our services (posting an ad or commenting) or look at the contents of our website, your activities may be logged for analytics as well as to ensure the protection of other users.

Publicly available information
We might gather information about you that is publicly available.

How we use your Personal Data

We use your Personal Data in order to:

  • provide our service to you. This includes for example registering your account; providing you with other services that you have requested; providing you with promotional items at your request and communicating with you in relation to those products and services; communicating and interacting with you; and notifying you of changes to any services.
  • enhance your customer experience;
  • fulfill an obligation under law or contract;

We use your Personal Data on legitimate grounds and/or with your Consent.

On the grounds of entering into a contract or fulfilling contractual obligations, we Process your Personal Data for the following purposes:

  • to identify you;
  • to provide you the service that this site offers;
  • to communicate either for sales or invoicing;

On the ground of legitimate interest, we Process your Personal Data for the following purposes:

  • to send you personalized a newsletter if you have registered for it;
  • to administer users to ensure that the site is kept clean of users who abuse the rules;
  • to allow you to use the services of the site. These services being, being able to post, update, relist, promote ads and comment.

With your consent we Process your Personal Data for the following purposes:

  • to send you newsletters and campaign offers (from us only and in the event you have signed up for the newsletter);

We Process your Personal Data in order to fulfill obligation rising from law and/or use your Personal Data for options provided by law. We reserve the right to anonymise Personal Data gathered and to use any such data. We will use data outside the scope of this Policy only when it is anonymised. We save any information gathered about you through our site or correspondence for as long as needed for accounting purposes or other obligations deriving from law, but not usually longer than what is necessary regarding the law.

We might process your Personal Data for additional purposes that are not mentioned here, but are compatible with the original purpose for which the data was gathered. To do this, we will ensure that:

  • the link between purposes, context and nature of Personal Data is suitable for further Processing;
  • the further Processing would not harm your interests and
  • there would be appropriate safeguard for Processing.

We will inform you of any further Processing and purposes.

Who else can access your Personal Data

We do not share your Personal Data with anyone. Your email data may be provided to mailchimp in order to provide you with our newsletter service if you have registered for it. We in no way share your personal information with anyone else outside this website and our administrators.

Our business partners:

  •  We are a single entity and we do not have business partners. We do as part of other sites work with animal rescue groups. However they are not business partners and we do not share information with them.

Connected third parties:

  • We have no connected third parties.

We only disclose your Personal Data to third parties or public officials only when we are legally obliged to do so.

How we secure your data

We do our best to keep your Personal Data safe.  We use safe protocols for communication and transferring data (such as HTTPS). We use anonymising and pseudonymising where suitable. We monitor our systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks. Receiving warnings in real time where there is a potential threat. We are well secured on several fronts both through our server provider as well as through the security implementations on our site which are always kept up to date.

Even though we try our best we can not guarantee the security of information. However, we promise to notify suitable authorities of data breaches. We will also notify you if there is a threat to your rights or interests. This notification will likely be on the site itself, via an email to your registered email address or both. We will do everything we reasonably can to prevent security breaches and to assist authorities should any breaches occur.

If you have an account with us, note that you have to keep your username and password secret or only share it with those you trust. We cannot protect you in the event you or someone you have shared your username and password with leaks the information.
In the event you are concerned your password has been leaked, then you can request a password reset through your accounts Edit Profile page.

Children

We do not intend to collect or knowingly collect information from children. We do not target children with our services. If you are a parent that has discovered your child has used our site without permission and has left personal information about themselves or others, you may request to have that information removed via our contact form or use the available tool to remove the user data.

Cookies and other technologies we use

We use cookies and/or similar technologies to analyse customer behaviour, administer the website, track users’ movements, and to collect information about users. This is done in order to personalise and enhance your experience with us.

A cookie is a tiny text file stored on your computer. Cookies store information that is used to help make sites work. Only we can access the cookies created by our website. You can control your cookies at the browser level. Choosing to disable cookies may hinder your use of certain functions.

We use cookies for the following purposes:

  • Necessary cookies – these cookies are required for you to be able to use some important features on our website, such as logging in. These cookies don’t collect any personal information.
  • Functionality cookies – these cookies provide functionality that makes using our service more convenient and makes providing more personalised features possible. For example, they might remember your name and e-mail in comment forms so you don’t have to re-enter this information next time when commenting.
  • Analytics cookies – these cookies are used to track the use and performance of our website and services
  • Advertising cookies – We do not conduct nor do we plan to conduct any advertising other than what is meant to be on the site. You will not see Google or any other ads from external sources.

You can remove cookies stored in your computer via your browser settings. Alternatively, you can control some 3rd party cookies by using a privacy enhancement platform such as optout.aboutads.info or youronlinechoices.com. For more information about cookies, visit allaboutcookies.org.

We use Google Analytics to measure traffic on our website. Google has their own Privacy Policy which you can review here. If you’d like to opt out of tracking by Google Analytics, visit the Google Analytics opt-out page.

Contact Information

contact@thepetdirectory.co.za

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to make change to this Privacy Policy.
Last modification was made:  This is the first release of this documentation. Released on the 14th of September 2018.