Privacy policy

Introduction

Bloomable ("us", "we", or "our") operates the virtual marketplace available at https://bloomablestore.myshopify.com(the "Site"). The right to privacy and this privacy "Policy" is important to us.  We are committed to taking steps to protect your privacy when we process your “     Personal      Information” as defined in the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 ("POPIA") and we implement business practices that comply with POPIA. 

The terms of this Policy will prevail if there is any conflict between these policy terms and any other terms in an agreement between us. We may change the terms of this Policy and will always process Personal Information in accordance with the latest version.

Bloomable processes information as a responsible party when we process Personal Information for the purposes of managing our relationship and offering our services to you. 

This Policy applies to all processing of Personal Information as defined in POPIA and as it relates to our users, customers, potential customers, visitors of the website, social media sites or virtual marketplace, or in the case of our corporate clients, their clients or other data subjects receiving products from them through our services, in which case we act as their operator. When we act as an operator, we act on the instructions of our corporate client, who will be the responsible party in respect of the Personal Information that they have instructed us to process to render the services.  

The policy informs you of our practices regarding the collection, use and disclosure of Personal Information and also explains certain rights you have.      

     

Collecting Your Information      

While using our Site, we may ask you to provide us with certain Personal Information that can be used to contact or identify you, including but not limited to, your name or company name, email address, postal address and phone number. We may also collect the following categories of personal information in so far as it is required by our operational requirements:

  • -Personal Information and contact details of the recipient of the product ordered through our services;

    -User information: Personal Information included in correspondence, transaction documents, use of the services or other materials that we process in the course of providing the services. This may include recordings of telephone calls and any Personal Information that may be included in those recordings;     

    -Consent records: if we base our processing of information on consent, we will   store a record of the consent you have provided;

    -Payment details: payment method used, payment amount, payment date;     

    -Views, opinions and ratings of products and vendors.

We may collect Personal Information from the following sources:

    • -directly from you when you provide it to us, such as when you register an account, sign up to use our services as a Customer, contact us or through the course of our relationship with you;

      -from our Customers, including our corporate clients,  where they provide us with your information if you are the recipient of the product ordered through our virtual marketplace;

      -from couriers who deliver products ordered through the virtual marketplace to you;

      -from your web browser when you visit our website, subject to the settings of your web browser;     

      -through analytical services or analytical tools supplied by third parties;

      -from public sources where you have made your Personal Information public, such as on social media or online platforms;      

      -from your use of our services or use of any features or resources available on or through our services;      

      -from third parties when you interact with them through our services or interact with us through their services,  and

      -from third parties with whom we hold trusted relationships where the third party is in law entitled to share your information with us or you have given consent for the information to be shared.               

Using  Your Information

We mainly use Personal Information that we collect to provide our services. In addition to this we may use the information for one or more of the following purposes:

  • -to provide information to you that you request from us relating to our products or services;     

    -to provide information to you relating to other products that may be of interest to you. Such additional information will only be provided where you have consented to receive such information;     

    -to inform you of any changes to our website, services or goods and products;     

    -to perform in terms of our agreement with you or with the Vendor;

    -to monitor and analyse our business to ensure that it is operating properly, for financial management and for business-development purposes;

    -to contact you by email to inform you about our services, however, you can opt-out of such communications; 

    -to form a view of you as an individual/juristic person and to identify, develop or improve our services and other services that may interest our Customers;

    -to carry out market research and surveys, business and statistical analysis and necessary audits;

    -for fraud prevention;

    -to perform other administrative and operational tasks like testing our processes and systems and ensuring that our security measures are appropriate and adequate;

    -to comply with our regulatory, legal or other obligations.

In addition to the above purposes, we may use your Personal Information for other purposes if the law allows for it, if you consent to it, or if it is in the public interest to do so. All purposes for the processing of your Personal Information will be legal in terms of POPIA.

If you have previously purchased goods or services from us or registered for our service, we may provide you with details of similar goods or services, or other goods and services, that you may be interested in.


Direct marketing in general

We may process your Personal Information to contact you to provide you with information regarding our services and products if you are a Customer of Bloomable, or have created an account with us. 

You may unsubscribe from direct marketing communications at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link that we include in every direct marketing communication or by contacting us and requesting us to do so.   After you unsubscribe, we will not send you any direct marketing communications, but we will continue to contact you when necessary in connection with the services or in connection with our business. 

We will not sell your Personal Information. 

 

Use of Cookies      

Cookies provide information regarding the computer used by a visitor. We may use cookies where appropriate to gather information about your computer in order to assist us in improving our website.

We may gather information about your general internet use by using the cookie. Where used, these cookies are downloaded to your computer and stored on the computer’s hard drive. Such information will not identify you personally. It is statistical data. This statistical data does not identify any personal details whatsoever.

 

Online Advertising We Use

We use Google AdWords Remarketing to advertise triggers across the Internet. AdWords remarketing will display relevant advertisements tailored to you based on what parts of the Bloomable website you have viewed by placing a cookie on your machine.

This Cookie does not in any way identify you as an individual, but merely recognizes you as the person who visited the particular page, to show advertisements relating to that page. Google AdWords Remarketing allows us to tailor our marketing to better suit your needs and only display advertisements that are relevant to you.    

Remarketing


Bloomable also uses 3rd party vendor re-marketing tracking cookies, including the Google Adwords tracking cookie and Facebook Remarketing.

This means we will continue to show ads to you across the internet, specifically on the Google Content Network (GCN).

As always we respect your privacy and are not collecting any identifiable information through the use of Google’s or any other 3rd party remarketing system.

The third-party vendors, including Google, whose services we use – will place cookies on web browsers in order to serve advertisements based on past visits to our website.

Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user’s prior visits to a website. This allows us to make special offers and continue to market our services to those who have shown interest in our service.

In addition to using cookies and related technologies as described above, we also may permit certain third party companies to help us tailor advertising that we think may be of interest to users and to collect and use other data about user activities on our websites or Services (e.g., to allow them to tailor ads on third-party services).

These companies may deliver advertisements that might also place cookies and otherwise track user behaviour. For example, we may use Google’s “remarketing” service to target our advertisements to you based on your prior use of the Site when you visit on other sites in Google’s content network.


Remarketing Services

This website uses remarking services such as Google AdWords and Facebook remarketing service to advertise on third party websites (including Google) to previous visitors to our site.

It could mean that we advertise to previous visitors who haven’t completed a task on our Site, for example using the contact form to make an inquiry.

This could be in the form of an advertisement on the Google search results page or a site in the Google Display Network.

Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on someone’s past visits to this website. Of course, any data collected will be used in accordance with our own privacy policy and Google’s privacy policy.     

Disclosure Of Personal Information To Third Parties

We will keep your Personal Information confidential and only share it with others in terms of this Policy, or if you consent to it, or if the law allows or requires from us to share it. We may disclose your Personal Information to:

    • -our business partners or third party service providers in order to provide you with our services, including for example third parties offering data storage service, third party payment processors,  software licensors or partners, specialised sub-contractors, couriers or delivery companies, etc. in accordance with written agreements with those third parties;

      -legal and regulatory authorities, at their request, or for the purposes of reporting any breach of POPIA or other applicable laws;

      -accountants, auditors, lawyers and other external professional advisors where applicable in terms of written agreements with them;

      -any relevant party to the extent necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal rights, criminal offences, threats to public security, etc.;

      -any relevant third party in the event that we sell or transfer all or any portion of our business or assets; and

      -any relevant third party provider where we use third party advertising, plugins, services or content in our services as referred to above.

If we engage third party service providers (operators) to process your Personal Information, the operators will be appointed in terms of a written agreement which will require the third party operators to only process Personal Information on our written instructions, use appropriate measures to ensure the confidentiality and security of your Personal Information and comply with any other requirements set out in the agreement and required by POPIA. 

International Transfers of Personal Information

In accordance with POPIA, we may transfer your Personal Information to recipients in other countries. If required to transfer cross border for business purposes, such as data storage, we will only transfer Personal Information to third parties in countries with adequate data protection laws or do so in terms of a written agreement with the recipient which imposes data protection requirements on that party as required by POPIA. 

Security 

In addition to the security measures referenced in our terms of service, we have implemented appropriate technical and organisational security measures designed to protect Personal Information against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, disclosure, access and other unlawful or unauthorised forms of processing. These measures are in accordance with POPIA.

The internet is an open and often vulnerable system and the transfer of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will implement all reasonable measures to protect Personal Information, we cannot guarantee the security of your Personal Information transferred to us using the internet. Therefore, you acknowledge and agree that any transfer of Personal Information via the internet is at your own risk and you are responsible for ensuring that any Personal Information that you send is sent securely.

Your Legal Rights

You have certain rights in relation to your Personal Information. As available and except as limited under POPIA or other applicable laws, you have the following rights in respect of your Personal Information:

    • -Right of access – the right to be informed of and request access to the Personal Information that we process about you;

      -Right to rectification – you may request that your Personal Information be amended or updated where it is inaccurate or incomplete;

      -Right to erasure – the right to request that we delete your Personal Information, subject to applicable limitations and exceptions;

      -Right to restrict processing – you may request that we temporarily or permanently stop processing your Personal Information;

      -Right to object – 

      -you may object generally to us processing your Personal Information; and

      -to your Personal Information being processed for direct marketing purposes;

      -Right not to be subject to automated decision-making – where a decision that has a legal or other significant effect is based solely on automated decision making, including profiling, you may request that your Personal Information not be processed in that manner.

Note that where we process Personal Information as an operator for our corporate client, these rights will be applied against them and we will fully co-operate with any request relating to these rights.

Where you have provided consent for us to process your Personal Information, you may also withdraw your consent where our processing is based on your consent. However, we may continue to process your Personal Information if another legal justification exists for the processing.

If you want to enforce any of these rights, you can send an email to care@bloomable.co.za     .


Links On Our Website 

Our website may include links to third party websites which do not fall under our supervision. We cannot accept any responsibility for your privacy or the content of these third party sites, but we display these links in order to make it easier for you to find information about specific subjects. Your use of and reliance on these links is at your own risk.

Children's Information And Special Personal Information

We do not intentionally collect or use children's Personal Information. If we do collect Personal Information of children, it will be as a result of the service that we provide to our Customers. Our Customer may only provide us with children’s Personal Information if they have the consent of the parent or guardian of the child.  

Similarly, we do not intentionally collect or process “special” Personal Information and will only do so on the instructions of our Customer, for example if a message from the Customer to the recipient of the product references any medical condition. 

Retention Of Information

We take every reasonable step to ensure that your Personal Information is only processed for the minimum period necessary for the purposes set out in this Policy.

We retain Personal Information in accordance with POPIA or for our legitimate business purposes. We will only retain your Personal Information for the purposes explicitly set out in this Policy. We may keep Personal Information indefinitely in a de-identified format for statistical purposes, which may include for example statistics of how you use the services. 

 Security Breach

We will report any security breach to the applicable regulatory authority in terms of POPIA and to the individuals or companies whose Personal Information is involved in the breach as required. If your Personal Information as the recipient of the product is affected by a security breach, we will also inform our corporate client about the breach. If you want to report any concerns about our privacy practices or if you suspect any breach regarding your Personal Information, kindly notify us by sending an email to care@bloomable.co.za

Lodging A Complaint

If you want to raise any objection or have any queries about our privacy practices, you can contact our information officer at care@bloomable.co.za. 

You also have the right to formally lodge a complaint to the Information Regulator in terms of POPIA as follows:


Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us.