Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

This is the privacy statement of EQUEST.co.za.  In this document, “EQUEST”, “Equest”, “equest”, the “Site”, “we” or “us” refer to EQUEST.co.za.

EQUEST is a SOLE PROPRIETORSHIP in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Our office is at AMR Office Park, 3 Concorde Road East, Bedfordview, Johannesburg, 2008, South Africa.

This is a statement to tell you our policy about all information that we record about you. It covers both information that could identify you and information that could not.

We take extreme care in protecting your privacy and confidentiality. We understand that all users of our web site are quite rightly concerned to know that their data will not be used for any purpose unintended by them, and will not accidentally fall into the hands of a third party. Our policy is both specific and strict. It complies with the South African law and with the laws of all jurisdictions of which we are aware. If you think our policy falls short of your expectations or that we are failing to abide by our policy, do please tell us.
We regret that if there are one or more points below with which you are not happy, your only recourse is to leave our web site.

Except as set out below, we do not share, or sell, or disclose to a third party, any personally identifiable information collected at this site.

When you visit the Site, you can browse without submitting any personal information about yourself. We will, however, receive and store some non-personally identifiable information about you, as described in this Privacy Policy. In order to participate in certain functionalities, you may be asked to provide personally identifiable information. Personally identifiable information is information that can identify you, including, for example, your name and / or your email address.

Automatically Collected Information.

Similar to other websites, we may collect some information automatically from you and store it in log files. This collection may include, but is not limited to: your domain name and host for Internet access, the Internet address of the site from which you came, the date and time of your access, your computer’s IP address and information about its operating system, browser, and host, the date and time you access the Service and the pages you visit. We collect this non-identifying information in order to help diagnose problems and to administer the Service. We also use it to help identify you and to gather broad demographic information. We may automatically collect information using various mechanisms, including but not limited to cookies and pixels.

A “cookie” is a small text file that is stored on a computer for record-keeping purposes. We use cookies for analysing trends, site administration, tracking user movement, and to gather demographic information from our base as a whole. Some cookies remain on your computer until you delete them. Others, like session ID cookies, expire when you close your browser. You may set your browser setting to attempt to reject cookies and you may still use the Service, however, certain features of the Service may not be available if your browser does not accept cookies. See “Do-Not Track Settings” below for more information on how use of the Service may or may not be affected by your browser settings. We do not control the use of cookies by third parties. Also see “Third Party Analytics Providers” below.

“Pixels” are tiny graphics with a unique identifier that are used to track the online movements of web users. Unlike cookies, which are stored on a computer’s hard drive, pixels are small graphics that are about the size of the period at the end of the sentence that are embedded invisibly on web pages or in HTML-based emails. Our third-party analytics providers may place pixels on the Site that track what other websites you visit (both before and after visiting the Site). Our third-party analytics providers use information obtained from pixels to help us improve our business and the Service. We do not control the use of pixels by third parties.

Third Party Analytics Providers.

We use third parties to help us operate and improve the Service. In doing so, we may share with these third parties non-personally identifiable information about users’ use of the Service. These third party providers also use cookies. We use third party analytics providers, such as Google Analytics, to provide us with general demographic and interest-level information about our users and to help create a better user experience. We do not control information collected by third parties and are not responsible for their use of that information.

Google Analytics uses cookies and pixels in order to collect demographic and interest-level information and usage information from users that visit the Service, including but not limited to information about the pages where users enter and exit the Service and what pages users view on the Service, time spent, browser, operating system, and IP address. Cookies and pixels allow Google to recognize a user when a user visits the Service and when the user visits other websites. Google uses the information it collects from the Service and other websites to share with us and other website operators information about users including, but not limited to, age range, gender, geographic regions, general interests, and details about devices used to visit websites and purchase items. We take reasonable measures to prevent linking of information we receive from Google with any of your personally identifiable information. For more information regarding Google’s use of cookies and collection and use of information see the Google Privacy Policy. To opt out of Google Analytics, please visit the Google Analytics Opt-Out Page to learn about opting out and installing the appropriate browser add-on.

“Do Not Track” Settings.

Because we track website usage information as described above, your selection of the “Do Not Track” option provided by your browser may not have any effect on our collection of certain information. The only way to completely “opt out” of the collection of information through cookies or other tracking technologies is to actively manage the settings on your browser to delete and disable cookies and other tracking/recording tools. However, getting a “Do Not Track” signal to work as you might want is difficult. Using browsers as an example, not all tracking technologies can be controlled by browsers; unique aspects of your browser might be recognizable even if you disable a tracking technology; not all settings will necessarily last or be effective; even if a setting is effective for one purpose, data still may be collected for another; and even if one website observes a “Do Not Track” signal, that website may not be able to control other websites.

Linked Sites.

The Site may contain links to third party websites (“Linked Sites”), including social media features such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter buttons. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of any Linked Sites and Linked Sites may collect personally identifiable information from you that is not subject to our control. The data collection practices of Linked Sites will be governed by that site’s privacy policy.

Here is a list of the information we collect from you, either through our web site or because you give it to us in some other way, and why it is necessary to collect it:

1. Business and personal information

This includes basic identification and contact information, such as your name and contact details and also includes all information given to us in the course of your business and ours, such as information you give us in your capacity as our client. We undertake to preserve the confidentiality of the information and of the terms of our relationship. It is not used for any other purpose. We expect you to reciprocate this policy.
This information is used:
1.1. to provide you with the services which you request;
1.2. for verifying your identity for security purposes;
1.3. for marketing our services and products;
1.4. information which does not identify any individual may be used in a general way by us or third parties, to provide class information, for example relating to demographics or usage of a particular page or service.
We keep information, which forms part of our business record for a minimum of six years. That is because we may need it in some way to support a claim or defence in court. That is also the period within which our tax collecting authorities may demand to know it.

2. Market place information

When we obtain information from you specifically to enable you to buy a service offered on our web site by some other person, we assume that in giving us your information, you are also giving us permission to pass it to the relevant person.

3. Your domain name and e-mail address

This information is recognised by our servers and the pages that you visit are recorded. We shall not under any circumstances, divulge your e-mail address to any person who is not an employee or contractor of ours and who does not need to know, either generally or specifically. This information is used:
3.1. to correspond with you or deal with you as you expect;
3.2. in a collective way not referable to any particular individual, for the purpose of quality control and improvement of our site;
3.3. to send you news about the services to which you have signed up;
3.4. to tell you about other of our services or services of our sister web sites.

4. Information you post on our website

Information you send to us by posting to a forum or blog or in your advertisement, is stored on our servers. We do not specifically use that information except to allow it to be read, but you will see in our terms and conditions that we reserve a right to use it in any way we may choose.

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so 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 also 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.

5. Website usage information

We may use software embedded in our website (such as JavaScript) to collect information about pages you view and how you have reached them, what you do when you visit a page, the length of time you remain on the page, and how we perform in providing content to you. We do not presently associate such information with an identifiable person.

6. Financial information relating to your credit cards

This information is never taken by us either through our website or otherwise. At the point of payment, you are transferred to a secure page on the website of PayPal or PayFast. That page may be dressed in our “livery”, but it is not controlled by us. Our staff and contractors never have access to it.

Accounts. Purchases and Payment Information:  If you create an account or purchase paid products or features of the Site, we request certain personally identifiable information from you on our payment form, including, but not limited to, name, email address, and delivery address. We use a third party payment processor (currently Payfast.co.za) to assist in securely processing your personally identifiable payment information, including recurring charges (if any). The credit card information that you provide is encrypted and transmitted directly to Payfast.co.za. We do not store your credit card information and do not control and are not responsible for Payfast.co.za or its collection or use of your information. You may find out more about how Payfast stores and uses your credit card information by accessing the Privacy Policy for Payfast.co.za. If it is available and you choose to use PayPal to make purchases through the Site, you will be directed to the PayPal website and provide your payment information directly to PayPal. PayPal’s privacy policy applies to the information you provide on the PayPal website.

7. Note on padlock symbols and other trust marks

We utilise Thawte Secure Certificates on the website.

8. Credit reference

To assist in combating fraud, we share information with credit reference agencies, so far as it relates to clients or customers who instruct their credit card issuer to cancel payment to us without having first provided an acceptable reason to us and given us the opportunity to refund their money.

9. Information we obtain from third parties

Although we do not disclose your personal information to any third party (except as set out in this notice), we do receive data which is indirectly made up from your personal information, from software services such as Google Analytics and others. No such information is identifiable to you.

10. Content you provide to us with a view to be used by third party

If you provide information to us with a view to it being read, copied, downloaded or used by other people, we accept no responsibility for what that third party may do with it. It is up to you to satisfy yourself about the privacy level of every person who might see your information. If it is available to all the World, you have no control whatever as to how it is used.

11. Cookies

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer’s hard drive through your web browser when you visit any web site. They are widely used to make web sites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

Like all other users of cookies, we may request the return of information from your computer when your browser requests a web page from our server.

Cookies enable our web server to identify you to us, and to track your actions and the pages you visit while you use our website. The cookies we use may last for a single visit to our site (they are deleted from your computer when you close your browser), or may remain on your computer until you delete them or until a defined period of time has passed.

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 generally last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, 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.

Although your browser software enables you to disable cookies, we recommend that you allow the use of cookies in order to take advantage of the features of our website that rely on their use. If you prevent their use, you will not be able to use all the functionality of our website. Here are the ways we use cookies:

11.1. to record whether you have accepted the use of cookies on our web site. This is solely to comply with the law. If you have chosen not to accept cookies, we will not use cookies for your visit, but unfortunately, our site will not work well for you.
11.2. to allow essential parts of our web site to operate for you.
11.3. to operate our content management system.
11.4. to operate the online notification form – the form that you use to contact us for any reason. This cookie is set on your arrival at our web site and deleted when you close your browser.
11.5. to enhance security on our contact form. It is set for use only through the contact form. This cookie is deleted when you close your browser.
11.6. to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to improve your experience of our site and enable us to grow the company. This cookie collects information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from, and the pages they visited.
11.7. to record that a user has viewed a webcast. It collects information in an anonymous form. This cookie expires when you close your browser.
11.8. to record your activity during a web cast. An example is as to whether you have asked a question or provided an opinion by ticking a box. This information is retained so that we can serve your information to you when you return to the site. This cookie will record an anonymous ID for each user, but it will not use the information for any other purpose. This cookie will last for three months, when it will delete automatically.
11.9. to store your personal information so that you do not have to provide it afresh when you visit the site next time. This cookie will last for 90 days.
11.10. to enable you to watch videos we have placed on YouTube. YouTube will not store personally identifiable cookie information when you use YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode.

12. Calling our help line

When you call our help line, we collect Calling Line Identification (CLI) information. We use this information to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our help line.

13. Sending a message to our support system

When you send a message, we collect the data you have given to us in that message in order to obtain confirmation that you are entitled to receive the information and to provide to you the information you need. We record your request and our reply in order to increase the efficiency of our business / organisation. We do not keep any personally identifiable information associated with your message, such as your name or email address.

14. Complaining

When we receive a complaint, we record all the information you have given to us. We use that information to resolve your complaint. If your complaint reasonably requires us to contact some other person, we may decide to give to that other person some of the information contained in your complaint. We do this as infrequently as possible, but it is a matter for our sole discretion as to whether we do give information, and, if we do, what that information is.
We may also compile statistics showing information obtained from this source to assess the level of service we provide, but not in a way that could identify you or any other person.

15. Job application and employment

If you send us information in connection with a job application, we may keep it for up to three years in case we decide to contact you at a later date.
If we employ you, we collect information about you and your work from time to time throughout the period of your employment. This information will be used only for purposes directly relevant to your employment. After your employment has ended, we will keep your file for six years before destroying or deleting it.

16. Affiliate information

This is information given to us by you in your capacity as an affiliate of us or a customer or client of ours. Such information is retained for business use only. We undertake to preserve the confidentiality of the information and of the terms of our relationship. It is not used for any other purpose. We expect any affiliate to agree to reciprocate this policy. As an exception to this, we have the right to disclose your first name and URL of your affiliate connection to other affiliates and to any other person or organisation, on and off site. The reason is solely to enable us to mention winners and others whose performance as an affiliate is in some way outstanding.

17. Use of site by children

We do not market to children, nor do we sell products or services for purchase by children. We do sell products and services for end use by children, but for purchase by adults. If you are under 18, you may use our site only with consent from a parent or guardian.

18. Disclosure to Government and their agencies

We are subject to the law like everyone else. We may be required to give information to legal authorities if they so request, if they have the proper authorisation such as a search warrant or court order.

19. Compliance with the law

This confidentiality policy has been compiled so as to comply with the law of every jurisdiction in which we aim to do business. If you think it fails to satisfy the law of your country, we should like to hear from you, but ultimately it is your choice as to whether you wish to use our website.

20. Review or update personally identifiable information

At any time you may review or update the personally identifiable information that we hold about you, by contacting us at the address below. To better safeguard your information, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections to your information.

21. Removal of your information

If you wish us to remove personally identifiable information from our web site, you may contact us at https://www.equest.co.za/contact/. To better safeguard your information, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections to your information.

22. Data may be “processed” outside South Africa

Our website is located and hosted in South Africa.  We also use outsourced services in countries outside South Africa from time to time in other aspects of our business. Specifically, we utilise technical centres based in the U.K., Holland and Austria.  Accordingly data obtained within South Africa may be “processed” outside South Africa and data obtained in any other country may be processed within or outside that country.

23. Comments, Questions and Answers

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://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

User Content.

The Service may allow you to post or submit comments, questions or answers or other information, such as in response to our blog or product content Questions and Answers section referred to as “User Content”. We may use User Content to improve the Service and we may save User Content or other content you post indefinitely.

What 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.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

What data breach procedures we have in place

In the event of a data breach, there will be a public disclosure of the breach, whether that’s to customers, shareholders, partners, or as required by South African law.

Information Disclosure

Affiliated Entities and Service Providers.

We may disclose your information, including personal information, to any affiliated entity or organisation, business partner, and to agents and service providers to help us operate the Service, improve our business or the Service, and to provide services to us for example for delivery purposes we will need to disclose your full name and delivery address. These third parties may include customer service providers, business or sales service providers, or providers that provide support for the Service.

Insolvency or Business Transition.

If we should ever file for bankruptcy or engage in a business transition such as a merger with another company, or if we purchase, sell, or reorganize all or part of our business or assets, we may disclose your information, including personal information, User Content, and user data or information, to prospective or actual purchasers in connection with one of these transactions.

When in our online store (we use WooCommerce)

This includes the basics around what personal data your store may be collecting, storing and sharing, as well as who may have access to that data.

We collect information about you during the checkout process on our store.

What we collect and store

While you visit our site, we’ll track:

Products you’ve viewed: we’ll use this to, for example, show you products you’ve recently viewed
Location, IP address and browser type: we’ll use this for purposes like estimating taxes and shipping
Shipping address: we’ll ask you to enter this so we can, for instance, estimate shipping before you place an order, and send you the order!
We’ll also use cookies to keep track of cart contents while you’re browsing our site.

When you purchase from us, we’ll ask you to provide information including your name, billing address, shipping address, email address, phone number, and optional account information like username and password. We’ll use this information for purposes, such as, to:

Send you information about your account and order
Respond to your requests, including refunds and complaints
Process payments and prevent fraud
Set up your account for our store
Comply with any legal obligations we have, such as calculating taxes
Improve our store offerings
Send you marketing messages, if you choose to receive them
If you create an account, we will store your name, address, email and phone number, which will be used to populate the checkout for future orders.

We generally store information about you for as long as we need the information for the purposes for which we collect and use it, and we are not legally required to continue to keep it.

We will also store comments or reviews, if you choose to leave them.

Who on our team has access

Members of our team have access to the information you provide us, Administrators and Shop Managers can access:

Order information like what was purchased, when it was purchased and where it should be sent, and
Customer information like your name, email address, and billing and shipping information.
Our team members have access to this information to help fulfill orders, process refunds and support you.

As we never ask for, process or have access to, or store your financial information when you are making a payment for a purchase, this information cannot be accessed by any of our team members.

Disclaimer.

Due to the complexity and open nature of the Internet, no transmission of data over the Internet can be 100% secure. There is always a risk that information collected by and/or displayed on the Service may be compromised or accessed notwithstanding the steps we take to secure your information. For example, a third party may unlawfully intercept or access transmissions or private communications, or other users of the Service may abuse or misuse your personal information. Accordingly, you agree that you are providing such information at your own risk.

If you have any question regarding the privacy policy, please contact us through the contact page.