Your privacy is critically important to us. At Puritech, we have a few fundamental principles:
- We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
- We store personal information for only as long as we have a reason to keep it.
- We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information on your website is shared publicly (or kept private), indexed by search engines, and permanently deleted.
- We help protect you from overreaching government demands for your personal information.
- We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.
Below is our Privacy Policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles.
Who We Are and What This Policy Covers
Howdy! We are the folks behind a variety of products and services designed to allow anyone — from bloggers to photographers, small business owners, and enterprises — to take full advantage of the power and promise of the open web. Our mission is to democratize publishing and commerce so that anyone with a story can tell it, and anyone can turn their great idea into a livelihood. We believe in powering the open Internet with code that is open source and is proud to say that the vast majority of our work is available under the General Public License (“GPL”). Unlike most other services, because our GPL code is public, you can actually download and take a look at that code to see how it works.
This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use:
- Our websites (including hovertech.co.za, puricom.co.za, vontron.co.za, ro.puritech.co.za, water-coolers.puritech.co.za, reverseosmosis.co.za, and mineral-water-pots.puritech.co.za);
- Our other Puritech products, services, and features are available on or through our websites; and
- Other users’ websites that use our Services, while you are logged in to your account with us.
This Privacy Policy also applies to information we collect when you apply for a job at Automattic.
Throughout this Privacy Policy, we’ll refer to our websites, mobile applications, and other products and services collectively as “Services.” And if you’d like to learn more about which Automattic company is the controller of information about you, take a look at the section below on Controllers and Responsible Companies.
Please note that this Privacy Policy does not apply to any of our products or services, like Tumblr, that have a separate privacy policy.
Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.
Security
While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. We monitor our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.
Choices
You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:
- Limit the information that you provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services — for example, premium themes that carry an additional charge — may not be accessible.
- Limit access to information on your mobile device: Your mobile device operating system should provide you with the option to discontinue our ability to collect stored information or location information via our mobile apps. If you choose to limit this, you may not be able to use certain features, like geotagging for photographs.
- Opt-out of marketing communications: You may opt-out of receiving promotional communications from us. Just follow the instructions in those communications or let us know. If you opt-out of promotional communications, we may still send you other communications, like those about your account and legal notices.
- Set your browser to reject cookies: At this time, Puritech does not respond to “do not track” signals across all of our Services. However, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using Puritech’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of Automattic’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
- Opt-out of our internal analytics program: You can do this through your user settings. By opting out, you will stop sharing information with our analytics tool about events or actions that happen after the opt-out, while you’re logged in to your Puritech. co.za account. For more information, please see our Cookie Policy.
- Close your account: While we’d be very sad to see you go, you can close your account if you no longer want to use our Services. Please keep in mind that we may continue to retain your information after closing your account, as described in How Long We Keep Information above — for example, when that information is reasonably needed to comply with (or demonstrate our compliance with) legal obligations such as law enforcement requests, or reasonably needed for our legitimate business interests.
Your Rights
If you are located in certain parts of the world, including California and countries that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the “GDPR”), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.
European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
If you are located in a country that falls under the scope of the GDPR, data protection laws give you certain rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:
- Request access to your personal data;
- Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
- Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
- Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
- Request the portability of your personal data.
You also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.
California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) requires us to provide California residents with some additional information about the categories of personal information we collect and share, where we get that personal information, and how and why we use it.
The CCPA also requires us to provide a list of the “categories” of personal information we collect, as that term is defined in the law, so, here it is. In the last 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information from California residents, depending on the Services used:
- Identifiers (like your name, contact information, and device and online identifiers);
- Commercial information (your billing information and purchase history, for example);
- Characteristics protected by law (for example, you might provide your gender as part of a research survey for us);
- Internet or other electronic network activity information (such as your usage of our Services, like the actions you take as an administrator of a Puritech.co.za site);
- Geolocation data (such as your location based on your IP address);
- Audio, electronic, visual, or similar information (such as your profile picture, if you uploaded one);
- Professional or employment-related information (for example, your company and team information if you are a Happy Tools user or information you provide in a job application); and
- Inferences we make (such as the likelihood of retention or attrition).
You can find more information about what we collect and sources of that information in the Information We Collect section above.
We collect personal information for the business and commercial purposes described in the How and Why We Use Information section. And we share this information with the categories of third parties described in the Sharing Information section.
If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the CCPA, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the right to:
- Request to know the categories of personal information we collect, the categories of business or commercial purpose for collecting and using it, the categories of sources from which the information came, the categories of third parties we share it with, and the specific pieces of information we collect about you;
- Request deletion of personal information we collect or maintain;
- Opt-out of any sale of personal information; and
- Not receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your rights under the CCPA.
The CCPA & Personalized Advertising in Our Ads Program
Our mission is to democratize publishing and commerce, and that means making our Services accessible to as many people as possible. We show ads on some of our users’ sites as well as some of our own sites, and the revenue these ads generate lets us offer free access to some of our Services so that money doesn’t become an obstacle to having a voice. Our ads program also allows our users to earn revenue to support and grow their own sites. As part of our advertising program, we and our users do use cookies to share certain device identifiers and information about your browsing activities with our advertising partners, and those advertising partners may use that information to show you personalized ads on some of our users’ sites and some of our own.
The personal information we share includes online identifiers; internet or other network or device activity (such as cookie information, other device identifiers, and IP address); and geolocation data (approximate location information from your IP address). These disclosures may be considered a “sale” of the information under the CCPA. We do not sell (or share) information through our ads program that identifies you personally, like your name or contact information. Contacting Us About These Rights
Controllers and Responsible Companies
Puritech’s Services are worldwide. Different Puritech companies are the controller (or co-controllers) of personal information, which means that they are the company responsible for processing that information, based on the particular service and the location of the individual using our Services.
Depending on the Services you use, more than one company may be the controller of your personal data. Generally, the “controller” is the Puritech company that entered into the contract with you under the Terms of Service for the product or service you use. In addition, Puritech, our SA-based company, is the controller for some of the processing activities across all of our Services worldwide.
The chart below explains the current controllers for processing your personal information. We use the term “Designated Countries” to refer to Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, and all countries located on the African continent.
If you reside in the Designated Countries: |
Puritech Water Treatment Block I, Storit Building, 46 Landmarks Avenue Samrand Centurion
Puritech is also the controller for some of the processing activities related to Services provided by Hovertech.
|
How to Reach Us
If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the Your Rights section above, please contact us through our web form or via email. These are the fastest ways to get a response to your inquiry, but you can also contact us by telephone at 27 12 657 1010.
Other Things You Should Know (Keep Reading!)
Ads and Analytics Services Provided by Others
Ads appearing on any of our Services may be delivered by advertising networks. Other parties may also provide analytics services via our Services. These ad networks and analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about your use of our Services and across other websites and online services. These technologies allow these third parties to recognize your device to compile information about you or others who use your device. This information allows us and other companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver ads that may be more targeted to your interests. Please note this Privacy Policy only covers the collection of information by Puritech and does not cover the collection of information by any third-party advertisers or analytics providers.
Third-Party Software and Services
If you’d like to use third-party plugins or embeds, WooCommerce Payments (powered by Stripe), WooCommerce extensions that enable services provided by third parties, or other third-party software or services, please keep in mind that interacting with them may mean providing information about yourself (or your site visitors) to those third parties. For example, some third-party services may request or require access to your (yours, your visitors’, or customers’) data via a pixel or cookie. Please note that if you use the third-party service or grant access, your data will be handled in accordance with the third party’s privacy policy and practices. We don’t own or control these third parties, and they have their own rules about information collection, use, and sharing, which you should review before using the software or services.
Visitors to Our Users’ Websites
We also process information about visitors to our users’ websites, on behalf of our users and in accordance with our user agreements. Please note that our processing of that information on behalf of our users for their websites isn’t covered by this Privacy Policy. We encourage our users to post a privacy policy that accurately describes their practices on data collection, use, and sharing of personal information.
Users control the content posted on their sites, so any disputes regarding content on a user’s site should be made directly to the site owner, through their “contact us” page, at an email address they provide, or by leaving a comment on the site.
Privacy Policy Changes
Although most changes are likely to be minor, Puritech may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. Puritech encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (like adding a statement to our homepage or the Puritech.co.za/blog, or sending you a notification through email or your dashboard). Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy