Privacy policy

At Dropstore, we want you to know exactly how and when we collect and use information that can specifically identify you, such as your name, mailing address, phone number, and email address.

We do not require that you provide, nor do we collect, any personal information if you are just browsing the Site. We may offer on the Site non-transactional and transaction based services (‘Service(s)’) in which, subject to applicable terms and availability, you may participate. In order to provide you with the Services you request, Dropstore may require that you first provide certain personal information, which we determine is reasonably necessary in order for us to fulfill your request. If you indicate an interest in participating in a Service, we will identify what specific personal information you must provide prior to collecting such information. Any personal information which we collect from you will only be used for the purposes identified in this privacy policy, the Dropstore terms and conditions and as may otherwise be indicated at the time the information is collected. To update, modify or delete any personal information you provide to us with respect to a Service you may access your account with Dropstore, make the changes on https://www.dropstore.co.za and submit the same to https://www.dropstore.co.za.

Dropstore will not disclose your personal information to any third party unless:

it is necessary in order to provide you with a particular Service you have requested it is required of Dropstore in order to comply with a legal process (e.g., court order, subpoena, law enforcement request) Dropstore determines, in its sole discretion, that disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property, and safety of Dropstore, its subsidiaries, affiliates, co-brand partners or other parties under contract with Dropstore, our users, or others; or you have provided such data through a partner’s private-level shopping web site hosted by Dropstore, in which case Dropstore may provide your personal data to that partner (Dropstore is not responsible for its partners’ privacy policies or their use, storage and processing of data collected on their web sites). In addition, Dropstore may transmit information to a merchant, in the event that a merchant disputes on the grounds that a transaction never took place between the user and the merchant and/or an order was never made by the user in each case for the applicable product(s)/service(s).

In certain instances, Dropstore may request that you provide secondary information (e.g., demographic information), which we may use, for example, to learn more about our customers and to develop and improve our services. We may compile your personal information with that collected from other customers to create aggregate data. Aggregate data is information about groups of customers and, once compiled, will in no way identify you as an individual. We may disclose aggregate data to our business affiliates, merchants, advertisers, and other parties.

Our web servers collect from Site visitor’s statistical information regarding what pages are visited, the date and time of the visits, how long it took a user to download a page, and the TCP/IP address of the user. These automated server functions do not collect this information in a manner intended to identify your individual use of the Site, nor do we use this information for any such purpose. This information is collected to assist us in maintaining a high quality site, as well as, providing necessary traffic information to our advertisers. We currently contract with several online partners to help manage and optimize our Internet business and communications. We use the services of a marketing company to help us measure the effectiveness of our advertising and how visitors use our site. To do this, we use Web beacons and cookies provided by our marketing company on this site. The type of information we collect includes the product codes and prices for merchandise that visitors purchase, and the pages visited. By supplementing our records, this information helps us learn things like what pages are most attractive to our visitors, which of our products most interest our customers, and what kinds of offers our customers like to see.

PoPI ACT

Although our marketing company logs the information coming from our site on our behalf, we control how that data may and may not be used according to the PoPI Act (The Protection of Personal Information Act). The purpose of the PoPI Act is to ensure that all South African institutions conduct themselves in a responsible manner when collecting, processing, storing and sharing another entity’s personal information by holding them accountable should they abuse or compromise your personal information in any way. The PoPI legislation basically considers your personal information to be “precious goods” and therefore aims to bestow upon you, as the owner of your personal information, certain rights of protection and the ability to exercise control over:

when and how you choose to share your information (requires your consent) the type and extent of information you choose to share (must be collected for valid reasons) transparency and accountability on how your data will be used (limited to the purpose) and notification if/when the data is compromised providing you with access to your own information as well as the right to have your data removed and/or destroyed should you so wish who has access to your information, i.e. there must be adequate measures and controls in place to track access and prevent unauthorised people, even within the same company, from accessing your information how and where your information is stored (there must be adequate measures and controls in place to safeguard your information to protect it from theft, or being compromised) the integrity and continued accuracy of your information (i.e. your information must be captured correctly and once collected, the institution is responsible to maintain it) If you do not agree that Dropstore can market to you and you do not want to assist or help us learn how to improve our site, products, offers and marketing strategy, you can “opt-out” of this website analysis tool by unchecking the market research checkbox in the user account.

COOKIE INFORMATION

The Site contains cookie technology, which collects non-personal information about you which is used to customize the Site for your future use. In conjunction with our in-house advertising, we use third-party advertising companies to place customized advertisements on the pages you view on the Site. Our third-party advertising companies also separately place or recognize a cookie file on your browser in the course of delivering advertisements to the Site. These companies may use non-personal information collected by the cookies about your visits to the Site and other web sites in order to provide you with advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. You can prevent the use of cookies on your computer by adjusting the privacy settings in your browser.

The Site contains links to web sites of third parties. Dropstore is not responsible for the actions of these third parties, including their privacy practices and any content posted on their web sites. We encourage you to review their privacy policies to learn more about what, why and how they collect and use personal information. Dropstore adheres to industry recognized standards to secure any personal information in our possession, and to secure it from unauthorized access and tampering. However, as is true with all online actions, it is possible that third parties may unlawfully intercept transmissions of personal information, or other users of the Site may misuse or abuse your personal information that they may collect from the Site.

Dropstore uses third-party advertising companies to serve our ads on the Site. These third-party advertising companies employ cookie and 1×1 pixel .gifs or web beacons to measure and improve the effectiveness of ads for their clients. To do so, these companies may use anonymous information about your visits to our website and other websites, but will not collect any information which can personally identify you or can be linked to you. This information can include: date/time of banner ad shown, the banner ad that was shown, their cookie, and the IP address. This information can also be used for online preference marketing purposes.

COPYRIGHTS AND TRADEMARKS

All content, graphics, format, design, the user interface and other copyrighted material on the Site (collectively, ‘materials’) are protected by copyright law and other intellectual property laws, and are owned by Dropstore and/or its merchants (as the case may be). The materials from the Site are only available for informational and non-commercial offline use, provided that: the materials are not modified in any way; all copyright and other proprietary notices and markings are retained and reproduced in their entirety on any copy made from any material on the Site; and Dropstore has, in its sole discretion, given its prior written approval to such use of the Site’s materials. Any requests to re-use the site’s materials should be sent to: info@dropstore.co.za.

Dropstore, dropstore.co.za and logo are registered trademarks of Dropstore and are trademarks of Dropstore. Any other product names, marks, symbols, trade names, company names and/or logos which appear within the Site are the property of their respective owners and appear through the courtesy of, and/or a license from, such owners. Such marks, in addition to the Dropstore trademarks, are protected by law, including without limitation its laws on trademark and unfair competition, and may also be protected by the laws in other countries.