The information we collect about you and how we collect it can vary depending on the products and services that you use and subscribe to, how you have used the products and services, how you have interacted with Smartcall even if you aren’t a customer, or what we have obtained from a third party with permission to share it with us.

Smartcall will process your personal information based on:

• Smartcall’s legitimate business interests, for example, fraud prevention, prevention of tax evasion and financial crime, maintaining the security of our network and services, direct marketing, and the improvement of our services. Whenever we rely on this lawful basis to process your personal information, we assess our business interests to make sure they do not override your rights. Additionally, in some cases, you have the right to object to this processing.
• Protecting your legitimate interests – for example, providing notifications regarding network availability and performance in your area, notification of emergency services, and fraud prevention.
• Compliance with a mandatory legal obligation, including, for example, accounting and tax requirements, which are subject to strict internal policies, procedures, and your right to restrict usage of your personal information, which control the scope of legal assistance to be provided. We are also required to also process your personal information pursuant to legislation including but not limited to the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, 38 of 2001 (FICA), the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provisions of Communication-related Information Act 70 of 2002 (RICA), the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 2002 (ECTA), the Electronic Communications Act, 2005 (ECA), the Consumer Protection Act, 2008 (CPA), the Promotion of Access to Information Act, 2000 (PAIA), and the Cybercrimes Act, 2020.
• Consent you provide where Smartcall does not rely on another legal basis (referred to above). Consent may be withdrawn at any time. When you give your consent, you will be given details on how to change your mind or visit the ‘Your rights’ section of this privacy policy for more information.

We will collect your personal information when you, for example:

• Buy or use any of our products and services
• Use our network or other Smartcall products and services
• Register for a specific product or service
• Subscribe to newsletters, alerts, or other services from us
• Contact us through various channels, or ask for information about a product or service
• Take part in a competition, prize draw, or survey
• Visit or browse our website
• Have given permission to other companies to share information about you
• Where your information is publicly available
• Are the customer of a business that we acquire
• Visit our business premises

We are required to take all reasonably practicable steps to ensure your personal information is complete, accurate, not misleading and updated on a regular basis. To ensure this, we will always endeavor to obtain personal information from you directly. Where we are unable to do so, we will make use of verifiable independent third-party data sources who have the necessary authority to provide us with such information. We also collect information from certain organisations, where appropriate and to the extent, we have legal grounds to do so. These include fraud-prevention agencies, business directories, credit check reference/vetting agencies, billing calculating agencies and connected network providers.

We may also collect information about you on CCTV when you visit our premises or on other security cameras as part of our security and crime prevention measures.

Understanding what you want (the use of cookies)

We use cookies (small text files stored in your browser) and other techniques such as web beacons (small, clear picture files used to follow your movements on our website). This, in turn, helps us make our Website relevant to your interests and needs. They also help us find information once you have logged in or help us link your browsing information to you and your personal information, for example, when you choose to register for a service.  We may use a persistent cookie (a cookie that stays linked to your browser) to record your details so we can recognise you if you visit our Website again.

Cookies by themselves cannot be used to discover your identity. Cookies do not damage your computer. You can set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie. This enables you to decide if you want to accept it or not. If you choose not to accept cookies from our Website this may limit its functionalities or performance. For more details on how we use cookies and your rights in respect thereof, please refer to the “Our Cookies Policy” section which can be accessed here.

The types of information we may process are, where applicable:

• Your name, address, phone and/or mobile number, date of birth, gender, information about your property or household, and email address. Where you have provided us with the personal information of a third party (for example your spouse or family member), you guarantee that such third- party has given you consent to provide us with their personal information. Where you provide us with the personal information of a person under the age of 18 years (a minor), you confirm that you have the necessary legal authority or is legally competent, to provide their personal information to us.
• Your credit or debit card information, information about your bank account and other banking information. For example, you’ll have to give us this information when you open an account with us. We’ll collect the personal information necessary to process a payment whenever you make a purchase.
• Your traffic data. This is data we see as part of providing you with connectivity, like the numbers you call, the time and duration of the call or how you are using data.
• Your location data. This can be precise where it uses Global Positioning System (GPS) data or by identifying nearby mobile phone masts and Wi-Fi hotspots and you enable location-based services or features. It can also be less precise where, for example, a location is derived from your IP address or data such as a postcode or name of a town or city.
• Your correspondence with us, such as a note or recording of a call you make to one of our contact centers, a Live Chat, an email or letter sent, or other records of any contact with us.
• Your account information, such as dates of payment owed or received, subscriptions you use, account numbers or other information related to your account.
• Credential information – we’ll collect passwords, hints and similar security information used for authentication and access to accounts and services.
• Your preferences for particular products, services and lifestyle activities when you tell us what they are, or we assume what they are, based on how you use the products and services.
• See the ‘Cookies’ section for details on what we collect using cookies, web beacons and other technologies
• Your data sessions. We don’t keep a history of the sites you visit for a long period of time, as this is limited for a short period of time to enable the connection to be made and for billing purposes. To be able to provide detailed data we aggregate data used and report per category of usage.
• Photographs and images when attending any of our events or functions or accessing premises with surveillance cameras.
• Information we obtain from other sources, such as credit agencies, fraud prevention agencies, and other data providers. This includes demographic data and interest-based data.

We’ll also get information about how you use our products and services, such as:

• The level of service that you receive – for example, network or service faults and other events that may affect our network services or other services.
• Details of your use of the specific services or products, for example, every time you use your mobile phone, a record is kept. This includes the number you called or sent a text or picture message to, the length, date and time of that call, text or picture message and your approximate location at the time that the communication takes place (based on the location of the nearest cell tower that you sent that call or message from). The same is also recorded every time you receive an incoming call or message. We don’t, however, keep a record of the content of your calls or messages.
• Smartcall may send you personalised marketing or show you personalised advertising if you have given permissions for cookies and similar technologies to collect information such as categories of websites you have browsed on your mobile device or pc, for example, sports, music or news. You can opt-out of advertising on websites you browse through cookies management. In the case of marketing, see ‘To opt-out of marketing messages in the ‘Your rights’ section of this privacy policy.

We will use, process and analyse your personal information for the following purposes:

To provide you with your services

Processing your order and providing you with your products and services

• To process the products and services you’ve bought from us, install equipment at your property or deliver equipment to you, and keep you updated with the progress of your order.
• To provide the relevant product or service to you. This includes other services not included in your agreement with us (PayPal, for example), services that use information about where you are, and to contact you with messages about changes to the products or services.

Billing and customer care

• To bill you for using our products and services, or to take the appropriate amount of credit from you.
• Contact you if the billing information you provided us with is about to expire or we’re not able to take payment.
• To respond to any questions or concerns you may have about our network, products or services.

Service messages

• We will contact you with customer service messages to keep you updated with current information about the products and services you’ve taken. For example, changes to our terms and conditions or service interruptions.

Providing roaming services

• To improve your roaming experiences, to ensure that we’re meeting our commitments around fair use, to detect and resolve fraudulent use of our networks (and our partners’ roaming networks) and to solve technical issues if you are experiencing any.
• To understand how Smartcall is performing in providing roaming services, whether roaming services and related products are working as intended, or whether improvements are needed to make roaming better. Smartcall uses personal information such as your name, email address, password, mobile phone number and call records in order to do this. Smartcall creates aggregated and statistical management reports from this information that do not identify you individually. Smartcall may also take this personal information and de-identify it so that a more in-depth analysis of our roaming services can be undertaken. This helps Smartcall to develop its roaming services for customers without identifying users in an individual way.

 To improve our service

Improving and innovating our products and services

• We collect anonymous, de-identified or aggregate information in order to improve the service we offer to everyone. None of these analytics can identify you individually or link back to you in any way.
• We conduct surveys to understand various aspects of our interaction with you, the use of our services and products and the network.

Managing our networks and understanding network usage

• To protect our networks and manage the volumes of calls, texts and other uses of our networks. For example, we identify peak periods of use so we can try and ensure the networks can handle the volume at those times.
• To understand how you use our networks, products and services. That way we can seek to review and improve these, and develop more interesting and relevant products and services, as well as personalising our products and services.

Marketing and tailoring our service to you

Marketing

• As our customer, we will contact you to keep you informed about new and existing products and services, competitions, prize draws and other promotions and we may use your personal information to run those competitions, prize draw, events and promotions, only to the extent that you have not, at any stage, objected to receiving such marketing communications. We may also, with your consent, send you newsletters or white papers and occasionally invite you to participate in market research. We tailor these messages based on the products and services you’ve bought from us in the past and we will only provide you with marketing content regarding our own products and services that are similar to or related to the products and services previously provided to you.

Advertising online

• To deliver advertising that is relevant to you, you’ll also see targeted advertising online based on the use of cookies. This is known as interest-based advertising. It can be on websites belonging to the Smartcall Group, those of other organisations as well as other online media channels such as social media sites. We may also combine data collected via the cookies with other data we have collected. If you don’t want any information processed through the use of cookies, check the ‘Cookies’ section in this Privacy Portal. It explains how to control and opt-out of cookies.
• Remember that opting out of interest-based advertising doesn’t stop advertisements from being displayed – it’s just that they won’t be tailored to your interests.
• You will also see advertising on your social media, for example in your Facebook or Twitter feed. If you don’t want to receive this advertising, go to the relevant platform’s ad settings.

Research and analytics

We use a variety of analytics methods including what is commonly referred to as “Big data analytics”. Big data analytics are mathematically driven analysis techniques on large and varied data sets (that is why it is “big” data) to uncover hidden patterns and hitherto unrevealed trends. Smartcall Analytics is an end-to-end insight platform that offers responses to questions from businesses and public entities by analysing network data. It isn’t about individuals – it’s about overall patterns, rather than any one person. Smartcall Analytics doesn’t identify you or give anyone information that would enable them to contact you.

At Smartcall we take governance of big data analytics seriously. Our data scientists are required to adhere to a Code of Ethics. We have a strict use case process that requires that privacy and data protection law checks are carried out before any use case commences. We also have strict rules ensuring that personal information is protected at the appropriate stage in the process.

We use our analytics to, for example:

• Conduct market research and to carry out research and statistical analysis, including monitoring how customers use our networks, products and services;
• Frame our marketing campaigns and determine how we might personalise those;
• Provide reports to third parties (such reports don’t contain information that may identify you as an individual). These can be to third parties such as content providers, research companies and advertisers or as part of Smartcall analytics.

Credit checks, fraud prevention and security

We will sometimes need to profile you, for credit, fraud, and security purposes. When we conduct such profiling activities, we will do so in accordance with the provisions of the relevant legislation or lawful requirement.

Credit checks and ID

• We will also use your personal information for identity verification purposes, for access to your account and for general account management. We sometimes supplement the information we collect about you with information from other sources (for example, home affairs, the voters roll and credit reference agencies) to assess the accuracy of the information that we hold.

Fraud prevention and security

• We will process your personal and traffic data in order to protect against and detect fraud, to protect and detect misuse or damage to our networks, to recover debts or trace those who owe us money resulting from the use of our services.

Where applicable, we share information about you with:

• Companies in the Smartcall Group, located across the globe, including but not limited to in the European Economic Area (EEA), Egypt, India and the US, for reporting purposes and where they are involved in providing products and services that you have signed up for.
• Partners, suppliers, or agents involved in delivering the products and services you’ve ordered or used
• Companies who are engaged to perform services for, or on behalf of, Smartcall which companies may be located outside of the borders of South Africa.
• Credit reference, fraud-prevention or business-scoring agencies, or other credit scoring agencies
• Debt collection agencies or other debt-recovery organisations
• Law enforcement agencies, government bodies, regulatory organisations, courts or other public authorities if we have to, or are authorised to by law
• A third party or body where such disclosure is required to satisfy any applicable law, or other legal or regulatory requirements
• Emergency services (if you make an emergency call), including your approximate location
• Third parties for joint promotions with that third party. They’ll be responsible for their own compliance with applicable privacy laws
• Other third parties when you are signing up to their service and it is used by them for authentication and fraud-prevention purposes
• Third parties that we advertise with, in order to serve you advertisements online (e.g. Facebook, Google). You can opt-out of this by managing your account permissions. To do this see the ‘Your Rights’ section below.
• Third parties that we use to serve you marketing.

Fraud management and law enforcement

• We will release information if it’s reasonable for the purpose of protecting us against fraud, defending our rights or property, or protecting the interests of our customers.
• We also may need to release your information to comply with our legal obligation to respond to the authorities’ lawful demands. Your personal information shall only be provided when we in good faith believe we are obliged to do so in accordance with the law and pursuant to an exhaustive evaluation of all legal requirements.

Mergers and acquisitions

If we become involved in a proposed or actual merger, acquisition, or any form of sale of assets, we may use and disclose your personal information to third parties in connection with the evaluation of the transaction. Any acquiring company would have access to your personal information.

Third parties that we work with

Where you’ve purchased Smartcall products and services using a third party or partner organisation, we often need to exchange information with them as part of managing that relationship and your account – for example, to be able to identify your order and be able to pay them.

If we have a contract with a service provider or contractor to provide us with services or provide a service on our behalf, and they may have access to your personal information, we don’t authorise them to use or disclose your personal information except in connection with providing their services.  We ensure that all our service providers and contractors align to our policies and requirements.

We collect and combine the information in order to monitor your use of products and services, and that of our other customers, as well as to help us to improve the quality of our products and services.

Third-party products that you buy through your Smartcall account

Where you buy a third-party product or service through your Smartcall account (such as Charge to Bill service for mobile), the contract for it is with the party selling that product or service. Smartcall is only charging the amount directly to your bill as part of its arrangements with the seller (or with a third party authorised by the seller). As part of this, you’re agreeing that Smartcall may pass certain personal information to such parties to complete your purchase.

The seller’s terms and conditions and privacy and cookies policies will apply to how it uses your personal information – please read them carefully.

You may connect third party devices to your SIM, either manually via a SIM card or electronically through our OneNumber product. These include mobile phone devices or connected devices such as smart speakers or smartwatches.

When you connect your SIM to these devices those third parties may record your SIM details or your interaction with the network. The third-party device manufacturers will process your personal information in accordance with their privacy policies and we recommend that you read these before choosing to connect.

We may also need to transfer your information to Smartcall group companies or service providers in countries outside South Africa, in which case we will fully comply with applicable data protection legislation.  This may happen if our servers or suppliers and service providers are based outside South Africa, or if our services are hosted in systems or servers in Smartcall Operating Companies outside South Africa including the United Kingdom, European Economic Area (EEA) or India and/or if you use our services and products while visiting countries outside South Africa.  Countries in the United Kingdom and EEA are considered to have adequate data protection laws which are similar to those of South Africa, however, we will make sure that your information is protected and enter into appropriate agreements to achieve this.

If you are visiting this Website from a country other than South Africa the various communications will necessarily result in the transfer of information across international boundaries.

Where we transfer your personal information outside of the borders of South Africa, we will ensure that the third party recipient is subject to a law, binding corporate rules or binding agreement which provide an adequate level of protection for your personal information that are substantially similar to the data protection laws applicable to South Africa.

We may not retain your personal information any longer than is necessary for achieving the purpose for which your personal information was collected or subsequently processed, unless:

• The retention of your personal information is required or authorised by law
• We reasonably require your personal information for lawful purposes related to our function or activities
• The retention of your personal information is required by a contract that we enter into with you
• You or competent person consent to the retention of personal information relating to a child.

We have specialised security teams who constantly review, improve, and ensure the implementation of appropriate, reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your personal information from unauthorised access, accidental loss, disclosure, or destruction.  We are required in terms of PoPIA to notify you and the Information Regulator if any of your personal information has been compromised.

Communications over the internet (such as emails) aren’t secure unless they’ve been encrypted. Your communications may go through a number of countries before being delivered, as this is the nature of the internet.

We cannot accept responsibility for any unauthorised access or loss of personal information that is beyond our control.

We’ll never ask for your secure personal or account information by an unsolicited means of communication. You’re responsible for keeping your personal and account information secure and not sharing it with others.

Our website may provide links to third-party websites. We cannot be responsible for the security and content of such third-party websites. You are therefore required to make sure you read that company’s privacy and cookies policies before using or putting your personal information on their site.

The same applies to any third-party websites or content you connect to using our products and services.

You may choose to disclose your information in certain ways such as social plug-ins (including those offered by Google, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest) or using third-party services that allow you to post reviews or other information publicly, and a third party could use that information.

Social plug-ins and social applications are operated by the social network themselves and are subject to their own terms of use and privacy and cookies policies. You should make sure you’re familiar with these.

UNAUTHORISED THIRD PARTY ACCESS TO YOUR INFORMATION

Despite the security measures we have in place to protect your personal information, (firewalls, password access and encryption methods) you acknowledge that it may be accessed by an unauthorised third party, e.g. as a result of illegal activity.

In the unlikely event of such access, we will notify you, where possible, via email, SMS or using the address you have provided us with, within a reasonable time of us becoming aware of such occurrence.

Below we set out details on how you can exercise your rights. If you have a question or cannot find the answer, please contact our Customer Services team at 011 507 4789 or support@smartcall.co.za

Right to access personal information

You have the right to request a record or description of the personal information that Smartcall holds about you. This includes the right to request Smarcall to confirm, free of charge, whether or not we hold any personal information about you; as well as information about the categories of third parties who have, or have had, access to your personal information.

Right to correct personal information

You have the right to correct the information held about you if it’s not accurate, out-of-date, excessive, irrelevant, or misleading. If the information we hold about you is inaccurate or needs to be updated, please contact our Customer Services team at 011 507 4789 or support@smartcall.co.za

Right to object to use of personal information

You have the right, in certain circumstances, to object to Smartcall processing your personal information. In order for Smartcall to provide you with products and services, Smartcall is required to process your personal information and as such the provision of your personal information is mandatory and you may not object to the same in order to continue using our products or services.

To opt-out of marketing messages

If you no longer want to receive marketing messages from Smartcall, you can choose to opt-out at any time. If you’ve previously opted in to receive personalised content based on how and where you use our network, you can also opt-out at any time.

There are also various other ways to opt-out:

• Contact our customer services team at 011 507 4789 or support@smartcall.co.za
• Click the link at the end of a marketing email, text or picture message to unsubscribe from that channel
• Tell the customer care agent if you receive a marketing call
• Contact our customer care team for guidance

If you’re opted out of marketing, you may still receive service-related messages.

Please note: You may still receive marketing messages for up to 7 (seven) days after opting out while we update our records.

You may have received marketing from Smartcall even if you’re not a customer or have never had contact with us. This is a result of third-party marketing lists which Smartcall may acquire from time to time, stating that you have given permission to be contacted by other organisations. If you’ve registered with us to opt-out of marketing from Smartcall, you shouldn’t receive such communications. If you still do, we ask that you let us know immediately by contacting our customer care team on 011 507 4789 or support@smartcall.co.za. This will only stop marketing from us and not stop the third parties from sharing your personal information unless you contact them directly.

How to lodge a complaint

If you want to contact us about any of your rights or should you believe that Smartcall has used your personal information contrary to applicable law, you undertake to first attempt to resolve any concerns with Smartcall directly. Kindly contact our customer care team on 011 507 4789 or support@smartcall.co.za. We will do our best to help but if you are still unhappy, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator at:

The Information Regulator (South Africa)

JD House

27 Stiemens Street

Braamfontein

Johannesburg

2001

Email: inforeg@justice.gov.za

Complaints email: complaints.IR@justice.gov.za

Right to restrict the use of your personal information

If you feel that the personal information we hold on you is inaccurate, or you believe we shouldn’t be processing your personal information, please contact our Customer Services team on 011 507 4789 or support@smartcall.co.za to discuss your rights. In certain circumstances, for example where you contest the accuracy of your information, or where Smartcall no longer requires your information for achieving its purpose but must maintain it for purposes of proof, you have the right to ask us to restrict processing.

Right to deletion

Smartcall strives to only process and retains your personal information for as long as we need to. In certain circumstances, for example, where you indicate that your personal information is inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out of date, incomplete, misleading, or obtained unlawfully, you have the right to request that we erase your personal information that we hold. If you feel that we are retaining your personal information longer than we need, it is worth first checking that your contract with Smartcall has been terminated, which you can do with Customer Services on 011 507 4789 or support@smartcall.co.za.

First-Party Cookies

First-party cookies are cookies issued from the smartcall.co.za domain that are generally used to identify language and location preferences or render basic website functionality.

Third-Party Cookies

Third-party cookies originate from a domain that’s different to the website being visited. For example, when you visit our website, we may link to another company’s website – like our Facebook or Twitter account, or a video from our YouTube page. We don’t control how they use their cookies, so we suggest you check their website to see how they’re using them and how you can manage them.

Session Cookies

Session cookies are temporary cookies that are used to remember you during the course of your visit to the website, and they expire when you close the web browser.

Persistent Cookies

Persistent cookies are used to remember your preferences within the website and remain on your desktop or mobile device even after you close your browser or restart your device. We might use some of these cookies to analyse user behavior to establish visit patterns so that we can improve our website functionality for you and others who visit our website(s). These cookies also allow us to serve you with targeted offers and promotions and measure the effectiveness of our website functionality and offer and/or promotions.

You can opt-in or out of cookies – except strictly necessary cookies (these are used to help make our website work efficiently) at any time by clicking the cookie settings button (below) to control your cookies. You can select by category or individual cookie.

Go to Cookie Settings

Alternatively, you can enable or disable cookies in your browser. If you wish to restrict or block the cookies set by any website – including a Smartcall website – you can do this through the web browser settings for each web browser you use, on each device you use to access the internet.

Information on controlling and deleting cookies, including on a wide variety of browsers, is also available at allaboutcookies.org

In this Policy under the heading ‘What are Cookies’, we have also provided a few links for some of the more popular browsers – but check your particular browser and device for correct and up-to-date information.

Some services – Smartcall, for example – may not function or may have more limited functionality if your web browser blocks all cookies, including functional cookies. However, you can allow cookies from specific websites by making them “trusted websites” in your web browser.

If you don’t wish to accept cookies from one of our emails, you can choose not to download any images or click on any links. You can also set your browser to restrict cookies or to reject them entirely. These settings will apply to all cookies, whether included on websites or in emails. Depending on your email or browser settings, cookies in an email may sometimes be automatically accepted (for example, when you’ve added an email address to your address book or safe senders list). For more information, refer to your email browser or device instructions.