Privacy Statement

We are committed to the privacy and confidentiality of information provided to us. This Privacy Statement provides information to help you understand how we collect, use and share your personal information and our privacy practices with regard to any personal information collected by us from you directly and/or through the Website or the use of our products and services.

Personal information means any information which uniquely identifies you, and includes information such as your name, email address, telephone number, MSISDN, biometric information and password, as well as any other personal data collected.

By visiting this Website and communicating electronically with us, you consent to the processing and transfer of your personal information as set out in this Privacy Statement below:

We are Vodacom (Pty)Ltd - a leading African communications company providing a wide range of communication services, including mobile voice, messaging, data, financial and converged services.

Vodacom (Pty) Ltd refers to all companies forming part of the Vodacom Group of Companies, including subsidiaries and companies in which Vodacom Group, or one of its subsidiaries, has a controlling stake.

• “we / us / our / ours” means Vodacom
•  “third party” means someone who is not you or us
• “Vodacom” means Vodacom Group Limited and/or Vodacom (Pty) Ltd,a private company duly incorporated in accordance with the laws of the Republic of South Africa.
• “Vodafone” means Vodafone Group Plc and any company or other organisation in which Vodafone Group Plc owns more than 15% of the share capital

Our Company registration number is 1993/003367/07 for Vodacom (Pty) Ltd and 1993/005461/06 for Vodacom Group Limited respectively. The address of the Vodacom Head office is 082, Vodacom Boulevard, Noordwyk, Midrand, 1685.

Your opinion matters to us – if you have any questions about our privacy statement, your rights or your privacy settings please click here to submit your query and a member of our dedicated team will respond to you.

At Vodacom, we are committed to respecting your privacy. We take privacy, security and complying with applicable data protection and privacy laws seriously.

Here are Vodacom’s core privacy commitments. We aim to put these commitments at the heart of everything we do.

We are committed to informed and limited collection of essential personal information.

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, and how you have interacted with Vodacom even if you aren’t a customer, or what we have obtained from a third party with permission to share it with us.

We can get your personal information when you:

• Buy a product or service from us (including buying products online, over the phone and in a retail store or other retail outlet).
• Register for a specific product or service (such as registering your name and address details for a Pay as You Go phone or setting up an email account with us)
• Subscribe to newsletters, alerts or other services from us.
• Ask us for more information about a product or service, or contact us with a question or complaint. 
• Take part in a competition, prize draw or survey.
• Use our network and other Vodacom products or services.
•  Visit or browse our website or other Vodacom Group websites.

With your permission or consent and/or as permitted by law, we may also collect information about you from other organisations or third parties, if this is appropriate and allowed by law. These include fraud-prevention agencies, business directories, and credit reference agencies. 

The information we collect about you depends on the Vodacom and Vodafone products and services you use, and subscribe to. It includes (but is not limited to) the following:

•  Your name, date of birth, home language, address, account information and email address.
• Your preferences for particular products, services or lifestyle activities when you tell us what they are – or when we assume what they are, depending on how you use our products and services.
•  Your contact with us – such as a note or recording of a call you make to one of our contact centres, an email or letter you send to us or other records of any contact you have with us.
•  Your account information – such as phone number, handset type, handset model, whether you are a prepaid or post-paid customer, dates of payment owed and received, TopUp information, the subscription services you use or any other information related to your account.
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• We’ll also get information on how you use our products and services, such as:
• The phone numbers that you call or send messages to (or the phone numbers that you receive calls and messages from).
• The date, time and length of the calls and messages you send or receive through our network, and your approximate location at the time these communications take place.
• The level of service you receive – for example, network faults and other network events which may affect our network services.
•  Your website browsing information (which includes information about the websites you visit), and about how you use our Website or other Vodacom Group websites on your mobile devices or a PC.
• The date, time and length of your internet browsing, and your approximate location at the time of browsing. 

We may use and analyse your information to:

• Process the goods and services you’ve bought from us, and keep you updated with your order progress.
•  Keep you informed generally about new products and services (unless you choose not to receive our marketing messages).
• Provide the relevant service or product to you. This includes services that use information about where you are when using your mobile equipment (location information) and to contact you with messages about changes to the service or product.
• Contact you with offers or promotions based on how you use our products and services. These include your calling and messaging activities, location information and browsing information (unless you choose not to receive these messages).
•  Bill you for using our products or services, or to take the appropriate amount of credit from you.
• To administer this Website and help us improve our services.
•  Respond to any questions or concerns you may have about using our network, products or services.
•  At your option, we will let you know about other companies' products and services we think may interest you (including offers and discounts we’ve specially negotiated for our customers).
• Protect our network and manage the volume of calls, texts and other use of our network. For example, we identify peak periods of use so we can try and ensure the network can handle the volume at those times.
•  Understand how you use our network, products and services. That way, we can develop more interesting and relevant products and services, as well as personalising the products and services we offer you.
•  Carry out research and statistical analysis including to monitor how customers use our network, products and services on an anonymous or personal basis.
• Prevent and detect fraud or other crimes, recover debts or trace those who owe us money.
• Provide aggregated reports to third parties (such reports do not contain any information which may identify you as an individual).
• Training purposes.

 The information we use will include your approximate location, based on the nearest mobile cell site. As a result, this will change as you move around with your mobile phone.

We make use of technologies that enable us to identify your telephone number (MSISDN) if you are accessing some of our websites or apps. This “MSISDN Lookup” capability is only used by us and our trusted partners and is intended to make it easier for you to make use of our services.

We’ll store your information for as long as we have to by law. If there’s no legal requirement, we’ll only store it for as long as we need it.

We may share information about you with:

• Companies in the Vodacom and Vodafone Group (Vodafone Group Plc and any company or other organisation in which Vodafone Group Plc owns more than 15% of the share capital).
• Partners or agents involved in delivering the products and services you’ve ordered or used.
• Partners or agents that conduct network performance and customer satisfaction surveys and any other surveys related to the products or services provided to you.
• Companies who are engaged to perform services for, on behalf of Vodacom (Pty) Ltd including Vodafone Limited, or other Vodafone Group companies.
• Where applicable, credit reference, fraud prevention or business scoring agencies, or other credit scoring agencies.
• Debt collection agencies or other debt recovery organisations.
• Law enforcement agencies, regulatory organisations, courts or other public authorities if we have to, or are authorised to by law.
• Emergency services (if you make an emergency call), including your approximate location.
• We’ll release information if it’s reasonable for the purpose of protecting us against fraud, defending our rights or property, or to protect the interests of our customers.
• If we’re reorganised or sold to another organisation, we may transfer any personal information we hold about you to that organisation.
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At your option, and only with your consent, we may also share your information with partner organisations we’ve chosen carefully, so they can contact you about their products and services.

We may share, transfer or disclose the information in our databases and server logs to comply with a legal requirement, for the administration of justice, interacting with anti-fraud databases, to protect your vital interests, to protect the security or integrity of our databases or this website, to take precautions against legal liability, or in the event of our flotation on a stock exchange, sale, merger, reorganisation, dissolution, disposal of all or part of our assets or similar event. We will inform you of any such transfer or disclosure if we are required to do so by law.

Where appropriate, before disclosing personal information to a third party, we contractually require the third party to take adequate precautions to protect that data and to comply with applicable law.

In the event of a merger/acquisition or company reorganisation, your personal information may be part of the transferred assets and are likely to be disclosed to the new company. 

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.

We may also need to transfer your information to other Vodafone or Vodacom 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 Vodafone Operating Companies outside South Africa including the European Economic Area (EEA) or India and/or if you use our services and products while visiting countries outside South Africa. Countries in the EEA are considered to have adequate data protection laws. Other countries outside the EEA may not have 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.

We are committed to implementing leading data security safeguards.

We have specialised security teams who constantly review and improve our measures to protect your personal information from unauthorised access, accidental loss, disclosure or destruction.

If we have a contract with another organisation to provide us with services or a service on our behalf to process your personal information, we will ensure that your information is protected and that they only process your information in the way we have authorised them to. These organisations will not be entitled to use your personal information for their own purposes. If necessary, our security teams will check them to make sure they meet the security requirements we have set.

Communications over the internet (such as emails) are not secure unless they have 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’s beyond our control.

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

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. 

We have specialised security teams who constantly review and improve our measures to protect your personal information from unauthorised access, accidental loss, disclosure or destruction. 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 unauthorised third party, e.g. as a result of an illegal activity.

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, so please 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.

Our website may contain hyperlinks to websites that are not operated by us. These hyperlinks are provided for your reference and convenience only and do not imply any endorsement of the activities of these third party websites or any association with their operators. We do not control these websites and are not responsible for their data or privacy practices. We urge you to review any privacy statement posted on any site you visit before using the site or providing any personal information about yourself and others.

The laws of South Africa will govern any dispute or claim arising out of or relating to your use of this website.

At Vodacom, we are committed to processing personal information honestly, ethically, with integrity, and always consistent with applicable laws and our values. Below we set out details on how you can exercise your rights. Please note, under certain circumstances these rights may be limited if we still have lawful grounds to process your personal information.

Right to correct personal information

Having provided adequate proof of identity, you have the right to have information held about you corrected if it is not accurate. In order to request a correction, you may contact our customer service team by clicking here.

Right to access personal information

You have the right to make a request for a copy of the personal information that Vodacom holds about you. Having provided adequate proof of identity, you have the right to request Vodacom to con¿rm, free of charge, whether or not the responsible party holds personal information about the data subject and request from a responsible party the record or a description of the personal information about the data subject held by the responsible party. For further information on your right to access your personal information, please see our access to information page.

Right to Opt-Out

If you no longer want to receive marketing messages from us, please contact our customer services team and you’ll be ‘opted out’. Kindly contact our customer services team to make opt-out request.

If you choose to unsubscribe or opt out, we will hold your contact details on file marked so that we do not contact you again. This is so that we do not contact you if your details are subsequently provided to us by a third party.

Right to object to use of personal information

In certain circumstances, you have the right, to object to Vodacom processing your personal information. Please use our please click here to contact us and a member of our dedicated team will respond to you.

How to lodge a complaint

Should you believe that Vodacom has used your personal information contrary to applicable law, you undertake to first attempt to resolve any concerns with Vodacom directly. Kindly click here to contact us and a member of our dedicated team will contact you. If you are not satisfied with such process, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator, once the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 is in force.