1. INTRODUCTION

We understand that your privacy and the security of your personal information is extremely important. This policy sets out what we do with your personal information, what we do to keep it secure, from where and how we collect it, as well as your rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you.

This policy applies if you interact with us including by email, telephone, newsletters, Tipping Points and other webinars, our Uhuru app, our Oppenheimer Research Conference app (or any other app developed or rolled out by us) or otherwise by using our website. This policy also applies to you if you are a delegate, attendee (in-person or via livestream) sponsor, speaker, press and/or media personnel at our events, including the annual Oppenheimer Research Conference held in Johannesburg. We also use cookies to help give you the best experience on our website. Our cookies policy is available on our website.

If you do not want to read all the detail, here are the things we think that you need to know: We share your personal information with third parties where it is necessary to perform our functions. We use a number of third parties to process your personal information on our behalf linked to the purposes for which we collected your personal information. You have a number of rights over your personal information and the different ways in which you can exercise those rights are set out in this notice under paragraph 8. We do send direct marketing when necessary and if permitted. We do this to make you aware of events we are planning, or of other information we think would be of interest to you. If you would like us to stop, you can request us to stop and opt-out of receiving our marketing communication. 

2. WHO ARE WE

When we say “we” or “us” in this policy, we are referring to Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation, a division of Opp Gen Services SA (Pty) Ltd.

3. WHAT SORTS OF PERSONAL INFORMATION DO WE HOLD?

We will collect, hold and use the following personal information: information that you provide to us such as your name, address, identification number, date of birth, sex, race, marital status, telephone number, data obtained from camera footage, email address, and any feedback you give to us, including by phone, email, or when you communicate with us via social media or otherwise; information about the functions we perform; your profile with us, including your email address and chosen password (if applicable); your contact details and details of the emails and other electronic communications you receive from us, and how you interact with them. For example, whether the communication has been opened, if you have clicked on any links within that communication and the device that you used. We do this because we want to make sure that our communications are useful to you, so if you don’t open them or do not click on any links in them, we know we need to improve our services.

4. OUR LEGAL BASIS FOR PROCESSING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Whenever we process your personal information, we have to have something called a “legal basis” for what we do. The different legal bases we rely on are:

Consent - You have told us you are happy for us to process your personal information for a specific purpose.

Legitimate interests - The processing is necessary for us to conduct our business, but not where our interests are overridden by your interests or rights.

Legal obligation - We are required to process your personal information by law.

5. HOW DO WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

We may use your information in the following ways –

To perform our functions - we need to use your personal information to perform our functions.

Contacting you - we use your personal information to contact you.

Marketing and advertising - we use your personal information to provide relevant marketing communications (including by email, phone, SMS, WhatsApp or online advertising), relating to our functions, and those of our third-party partners or affiliates. As part of this, online advertising may be displayed on our website. This should be in-line with your interests.

Content creation - we may use your personal information, particularly data from camera footage collected when you attend our events, for purposes of creating press releases, press clippings and advertisements. This means that images and/or video recordings captured by our cameras at our events could be used in materials to promote and/or inform the public about our future events.

6. PERSONAL INFORMATION SHARING

We may share information about you with companies or third parties affiliated to us, partners or agents, companies who are engaged to perform services for or on our behalf, media, science communicators, law enforcement agencies, regulatory organisations, courts or other public entities if we are required by law to do so, emergency services and with any entity or forum wherein we may protect ourselves against fraud or exercise our rights. To the extent that our applications and services are underpinned by a third-party service provider, the personal information provided by you will also be processed by such third-party service provider. We will however ensure that service providers are legally bound by privacy obligations in order to protect your privacy rights. Where applicable your attention will be drawn to the third-party service providers' data protection policies.

7. KEEPING YOU INFORMED ABOUT OUR OFFERINGS AND EVENTS

We would like to tell you about the events and information sharing opportunities we arrange, and other matters related to what we do that we think you might be interested in. Where we have consent or it is in our legitimate interests to do so, we may do this by email, text message, WhatsApp, phone, through online advertising or by any other electronic means. We will not send you marketing messages if you tell us not to. If you wish to amend your marketing preferences, you can do so by clicking the unsubscribe link in any email notification, replying "Stop" to any SMS, or by emailing our Deputy Information Officer: Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation Division at rendani.nenguda@opp-gen.com. It can take a little while for all marketing to stop once you either withdraw your consent or tell us you’d like to opt out of marketing. This is because some marketing may have been identified as relevant to your interests and may already be in transit, meaning it cannot be immediately stopped.

8. YOUR RIGHTS

You have a number of rights under data protection legislation which, in certain circumstances, you may be able to exercise in relation to the personal information we process about you. These include the right to access a copy of the personal information we hold about you, the right to correction of inaccurate personal information we hold about you, the right to restrict our use of your personal information, the right to be forgotten and the right to object to our use of your personal information. Where we rely on consent as the legal basis on which we process your personal information, you may also withdraw that consent at any time.

9. AUTOMATED DECISION MAKING AND PROFILING

We do not use any purely automated processing processes to bring about a decision.

10. HOW LONG WILL WE KEEP YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION FOR?

We will keep your personal information for the purposes set out in this privacy policy and in accordance with the law and relevant regulations. We will never retain your personal information for longer than is necessary.

11. SECURITY

We take protecting your personal information very seriously and are continuously developing our security systems and processes. Some of the controls we have in place are we limit physical access to our buildings and user access to our systems to only those that we believe are entitled to be there, we use technology controls for our information systems, such as firewalls, user verification, strong data encryption, and separation of roles, systems and data, systems are proactively monitored through a “detect and respond” information security function, we utilise industry standards to support the maintenance of a robust information security management system and we enforce a “need to know” policy, for access to any data or systems.

12. CONTACT US

If you would like to exercise one of your rights as set out in the “Your Rights" section above, or you have a question or a complaint about this policy, or the way your personal information is processed, please contact our Deputy Information Officer: Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation Division at rendani.nenguda@opp-gen.com. Please note that we will need to verify your identity before we can fulfil any of your rights under data protection law. This helps us to protect the personal information against fraudulent requests. You may also refer to our PAIA and POPIA Manual for details which available upon request to our Information Officer and on our website.

13. INFORMATION REGULATOR (SOUTH AFRICA)

The Information Regulator (South Africa) is an independent body established in terms of section 39 of POPIA. The Information Regulator is empowered to monitor and enforce compliance by public and private bodies with the provisions of the POPIA Act. They may be accessed at JD House, 27 Stiemens Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2001, Contact: enquiries@inforegulator.org.za or Complaints: POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za (in respect of POPIA complaints) and PAIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za (in respect of PAIA complaints).

14. POLICY REVISION

This privacy policy is subject to review and amendment without prior notice. However, we undertake to ensure that any amendments hereto are communicated on our publicly available platforms such as our website, for the benefit of the general public and any other persons whom may be affected by this policy.