031 904 1314/1676 | 082 824 2203 info@pillailaw.co.za

Vasanthie Pillai and Associates Privacy Policy

AND PAIA MANUAL DETAILS

Effective 30th June 2021

This document details the policies and procedures of Vasanthie Pillai and Associates (hereinafter referred to as “the practice”) on the collection, use, treatment and disclosure of your personal information or personally identifiable information and forms part of the practice’s terms and conditions.

IF you do not agree with any terms of this privacy policy, please cease your access with our website and our social media accounts immediately and request to have any information processed by way of communication destroyed.

1. Introduction

This privacy policy statement sets out the practice’s information gathering and dissemination practices in that it describes what information we process, how it is collected, why we process it and the reason for processing it. Essentially, it governs the processing of personal information provided to the practice.

Please note that, due to legal and other developments, the practice may amend these terms and conditions from time to time. It is your duty to remain appraised of the current version of this Privacy Policy. The date indicated in the heading of this Privacy Policy is the effective date that governs the browsing and use of this Privacy Policy from that date until the next revision of this Privacy Policy becomes effective.

This policy does not apply to businesses that the practice does not own or control nor to any individual that is not under the practice’s supervision or control.

Your personal information will be processed based on the terms and conditions as agreed in our Fee and Mandate Agreement, this document and any other policies of the practice.

By continuing to browse or provide us with personal information in accordance with this Privacy Statement or a subsequent revised Privacy Policy which may override this policy, you implicitly consent to these terms and conditions and this constitutes your agreement to observe this Privacy Policy, including any revisions hereof

2. Processing of Personal Information

2.1. What types of personal information do we process?

The types of personal information that we may process includes information necessary for our legitimate business interest and the categories of personal information defined in the Protection of Personal Information Act (hereinafter referred to as “POPIA”) and will only be processed should you enter the information yourself, utilise the website features to provide us with information or contact our offices through either our website, our social media platforms or electronic mail i.e. e-mail, telephone or WhatsApp.

Any and all information we process is necessary for our legitimate business interests and/or compliance with the law and is only processed with your consent. We use this personal information provided by yourself to us through our website and/or through communication via our social media platforms and other contact/communication methods for the purposes for which your provide it, to administer and improve our website and services and to communicate with yourselves.

Please ensure that your personal information is updated.

2.2. When and why will we process your personal information?

If you enquire about our services, we may process your personal information for the purposes of responding to your enquiry, rendering legal services on your behalf and marketing our services to you. In addition to enquiries and legal services, if you subscribe to our newsletters, emailed marketing communications and follow us on our social media platforms, we may process information which is done so for our legitimate purposes of marketing our services which including sending you invitations to events, seminars, webinars and other communications referring to the practice and its services.  All of the above are done so by way of consent and at no point do we process information pertaining to the above to your detriment.

We process any of the personal information identified in this policy and as required by any laws when you communicate with us which includes your name, contact details and content of your communication which is done to ensure that our records are up to date and we can properly administer our services and are able to respond to enquiries and is done so on the basis of our legitimate legal interests and in compliance with applicable legislations.

We process personal information in relation to our partners and employees which is done so on the basis of our legitimate legal interests and allows for efficient managing of our contracts, dealing with benefits and to comply with applicable laws such as employment tax amongst other things.

We process any of the personal information identified in this policy to investigate assess, establish, exercise or defend legal claims by or against us in any forum which is done so on the basis of our legitimate legal interests which allows us to protect and enforce our rights or the rights of others and the proper administration and protection of our practice.

We process any of the personal information described in this policy and your health information when necessary to comply with the law due to the pandemic we have found ourselves in and when necessary to cooperate with any investigation by any regulatory authority or law enforcement agency.

In general, you are able to visit the website and our social media platforms (i.e. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube) without revealing who you are or any information about yourself.

a. Website

When visiting our website, our web servers will collect information (standard information that your browser sends to every website visited) for statistical purposes, such as the number of visits, the pages viewed, which website you came from before clicking into the website, the key words used to find our site, your IP-address, the browser type and language, access time, etc. We do not collect any other personal information pertaining to yourself when you use our website and further do not use any of the abovementioned information to identify any person as it is solely used for improving the practice’s sites and services.

By using our website, you acknowledge and consent that all personal information processed by us may be stored by us and can be used when responding to enquiries or to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes, and enforce our legal agreements and policies, protect and defend the rights of the practice, prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with the service and protect the personal safety of users of the service or the public.

Our website may contain links to other sites whose information practices differ from ours. We do not claim responsibility for the privacy practises of third-party sites and we encourage you to be aware when you leave our site and to take reasonable precautions when sharing your personal information on third party websites and consult the other websites’ privacy notices and policies as we have no control over information that is submitted to or collected by these third party sites. The access to other websites and pages through our website is done so at your own risk and the practice shall not bear any liability for any processing of information that may be done without your consent or not to your liking by the third party websites and pages linked.

We may also use technologies, such as cookies, to collect information about the pages you view, the links you click and other actions you take on our sites and services. 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 and irrespective of such, you have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if preferred.

Our website service providers may also use cookies to track your activity when you use our website. These “Third Party Cookies” belong to and are managed by our website’s service providers. We do not control these providers and they have their own privacy policies which is independent of ours.

b. Social Media Platforms

Our social media platforms are used to communicate with the public about the practice and its services.  We do not simply begin processing information on these pages without communication from yourself. Information shall be collected in instances whereby through your account, you send us an enquiry, fill out forms or subscribe/follow to one of our social media presences.  However with that being said, you do not have to provide us with any personal information when communicating with us on our social media platforms but if you do so, we may use and store said information to respond to you or otherwise deal with your communication and/or requests.

Kindly note that the social media platform itself may collect your personal information for its own purposes such as tracking your visited pages as they work with unique algorithms to display to yourself other social media accounts which you have interacted with or which they suggest you interact with. This processing is beyond our control and consent to same can be provided and/or revoked as per their privacy policies which are independent of ours and the information we process.

c. Correspondences and Communications

When providing you with services, we may also utilise SMSs (Short Message Service), MMSs (Multimedia Message Service), WhatsApp and e-mails to communicate with yourself. You are under no obligation to provide us with any personal information using these services however if you do provide information, we may use, store and process that information in relation to our services. If you provide us with information in terms of these services, we do so with your consent and only use it to for the purposes it was provided for such as concluding and performing a contract for our services and for our and your legitimate legal interests.

2.3. Processing of Information by Third- Party websites

We do not require or request information about you or your business from third parties, nor do we sell, rent or disclose your personal or business’ details to any individual, a third party, business, government entity or outside parties or anyone else. However, we might have to disclose personal information in limited circumstances such as a response to a valid subpoena, court order, or other legal process or when necessary to establish or exercise our legal rights, defend against legal action or where you request us to do so.

We disclose personal information to regulators and law enforcement agencies where required by law and where we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary to identify, contact or stop someone who may breach our privacy policy and/or who may cause harm to or interfere with our rights, safety or interests as well as those of anyone else including other users of our website or our social media accounts.

Further, we may disclose personal information to professional advisors and/or advocates when necessary so that we can obtain their advice or to establish, exercise or defend our and our client’s rights including in relations to claims by or against us or our clients in any legal proceedings in any forum including that of negotiations.

We may also disclose information to our agents or data processors or other contractors acting on our behalf and at our direction, subject to appropriate confidentiality, privacy and information security commitments provided by the receiving party. Kindly note that the same pertains to the purposes that the information was collected for and for our and our client’s legitimate legal interest.

2.4. Processing of Information of Minors

In order to respect the privacy of minors, the practice does not knowingly collect, maintain or process Personal Information submitted online via our website and our communication via our social media platforms by anyone under the age of 18. The extent at which the practice shall collect Personal Information on minors is in the context of the abovementioned and with the appropriate consent or as otherwise permitted under applicable laws.

3. Purpose of Processing of Personal Information

The Practice processes personal information where it is in our legitimate interest to do so for the following purposes:

  • To contact you and respond to your requests and/or enquiries
  • To contact you regarding legal or law firm developments that may be of interest to you if you request same
  • To personalize your visit and use of our Internet Services and to assist you while you use those services
  • To carry out, monitor and analyse our business or website operations
  • To ensure your records are kept up to date
  • To provide you with legal services and to administer the matters instructed on
  • To enter into or carry out contracts
  • To provide communication and invitations to our events, seminars and webinars
  • To investigate assess, establish, exercise or defend legal claims by or against us and for our clients; and for audits as well as to obtain expert advice;
  • To manage and protect our practice against risks and deal with related disputes
  • To comply with applicable laws, regulations, guidance or professional obligations that we may be subject to
  • To protect your life or other vital interests or those of any other person.

4. Information Officer

The Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 and Section 51(1)(B) of the Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000 (PAIA), prescribes the appointment of an Information Officer.

The Information Officer oversees the functions and responsibilities of a body in terms of Section 55 of the Protection of Personal Information Act.  In compliance with same, Haseena Shaik-Abdulla is the Information Officer of this Practice and Kievan Padayachee is the Deputy Information Officer.

All requests for information or the processing of information in terms of PAIA and POPIA as well as a request for our PAIA manual must be addressed to the Information Officer whose details are as follows:

Name: Haseena Shaik-Abdulla

Email: info@pillailaw.co.za, haseena@pillailaw.co.za

Tel: (031) 904 1676

Fax: 086 652 1416

5. Confidentiality, Security and Retention of Personal Information

Consistent with our professional obligations, it has always been the policy of our firm to protect clients’ legal interests and by doing so we exercise the utmost discretion regarding the information our clients entrust to us.

The practice takes reasonable measures to ensure the security and integrity of information submitted to or collected by this website and/or our social media platforms as well as correspondences and communications, but cannot under any circumstances be held liable for any loss or other damage sustained by you as a result of unlawful access to or dissemination of any personal information by a third party as the internet is never completely safe. Even though we attempt to ensure your information is as safe as possible, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you submit via the internet and you do so at your own risk.

We do our utmost best to protect your information once we receive it and have your information stored safely as physical and electronic files only accessible when needed by the administrative staff.  Our staff know and understand the importance of keeping your information safe and are required to follow privacy and security policies and are given training to do so. Unauthorized sharing of information will be avoided.

We are continuously implementing and updating administrative, technical and physical security to help protect your information against unauthorized access, loss, destruction or alteration.

We may retain information provided by you, including personal information, for as long as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, or to achieve the purposes for which the information was originally collected. We shall destroy or delete any personal information that is no longer needed by the practice for the purpose that it was initially collected or subsequently processed for.

 

6. Contact

If you have any queries or concerns about this privacy policy for the practice or if at any time you decide that we should no longer hold any of your personal data or wish to change the use for of such data or should you wish to update your personal information with us, then we can be contacted as follows: