PRIVACY POLICY



SECTION 1 - WHAT DO WE DO WITH YOUR INFORMATION?

When you purchase something from our store, as part of the buying and selling process, we collect the personal information you give us such as your name, address and email address.

When you browse our store, we also automatically receive your computer’s internet protocol (IP) address in order to provide us with information that helps us learn about your browser and operating system.

Email marketing: With your permission, we may send you emails about our store, new products and other updates.

We undertake to respect your privacy and will take all reasonable measures to protect it, as is detailed below.

We will –
  • treat your personal information as strictly confidential;
  • take appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure that your personal information is kept secure and is protected against unauthorised or unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction or damage, alteration, disclosure or access;
  • provide you with access to your personal information to view and/or update personal details;
  • promptly notify you if we become aware of any unauthorised use, disclosure or processing of your personal information;
  • provide you with reasonable evidence of our compliance with our obligations under this policy on reasonable notice and request; 
  • upon your request, promptly return or destroy any and all of your personal information in our possession or control; and
  • not retain your personal information longer than the period for which it was originally needed, unless we are required by law to do so, or you consent to us retaining such information for a longer period.





SECTION 2 - CONSENT

When you provide us with personal information to complete a transaction, verify your credit card, place an order, arrange for a delivery or return a purchase, we imply that you consent to our collecting it and using it for that specific reason only.

If we ask for your personal information for a secondary reason, like marketing, we will either ask you directly for your expressed consent, or provide you with an opportunity to say no.

This may include, but is not limited to:
  • your name and surname;
  • your email address;
  • your physical address;
  • your gender;
  • your mobile number; and
  • your date of birth.
  • Should your personal information change, please inform us and provide us with updates to your personal information as soon as reasonably possible to enable us to update your personal information.
  • You may choose to provide additional personal information to us, in which event you agree to provide accurate and current information, and not to impersonate or misrepresent any person or entity or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with anyone or anything.



How do I withdraw my consent?

If after you opt-in, you change your mind, you may withdraw your consent for us to contact you, for the continued collection, use or disclosure of your information, at anytime, by contacting us at info@gradeafrica.com


SECTION 3 - DISCLOSURE


We may disclose your personal information if we are required by law to do so or if you violate our Terms of Service.



SECTION 4 - SHOPIFY


Our store is hosted on Shopify Inc. They provide us with the online e-commerce platform that allows us to sell our products and services to you.

Your data is stored through Shopify’s data storage, databases and the general Shopify application. They store your data on a secure server behind a firewall.


Payment:

If you choose a direct payment gateway to complete your purchase, then Shopify stores your credit card data. It is encrypted through the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). Your purchase transaction data is stored only as long as is necessary to complete your purchase transaction. After that is complete, your purchase transaction information is deleted.

All direct payment gateways adhere to the standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council, which is a joint effort of brands like Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover.

PCI-DSS requirements help ensure the secure handling of credit card information by our store and its service providers.

For more insight, you may also want to read Shopify’s Terms of Service here or Privacy Statement here.



SECTION 5 - THIRD-PARTY SERVICES



In general, the third-party providers used by us will only collect, use and disclose your information to the extent necessary to allow them to perform the services they provide to us.

However, certain third-party service providers, such as payment gateways and other payment transaction processors, have their own privacy policies in respect to the information we are required to provide to them for your purchase-related transactions.

For these providers, we recommend that you read their privacy policies so you can understand the manner in which your personal information will be handled by these providers.

In particular, remember that certain providers may be located in or have facilities that are located in a different jurisdiction than either you or us. So if you elect to proceed with a transaction that involves the services of a third-party service provider, then your information may become subject to the laws of the jurisdiction(s) in which that service provider or its facilities are located.

Once you leave our store’s website or are redirected to a third-party website or application, you are no longer governed by this Privacy Policy or our website’s Terms of Service.


Grade Africa undertakes never to sell or make your personal information available to any third party other than as provided for in this policy, unless we are compelled to do so by law. In particular, in the event of a fraudulent online payment, Grade Africa reserves the right to disclose relevant personal information for criminal investigation purposes or in line with any other legal obligation for disclosure of the personal information which may be required of it.
Whilst we will do all things reasonably necessary to protect your rights of privacy, we cannot guarantee or accept any liability whatsoever for unauthorised or unlawful disclosures of your personal information, whilst in our possession, made by third parties who are not subject to our control, unless such disclosure is as a result of our gross negligence.
If you disclose your personal information to a third party, such as an entity which operates a website linked to this Website or anyone other than Grade Africa, Grade Africa SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE, HOWSOEVER ARISING, SUFFERED BY YOU AS A RESULT OF THE DISCLOSURE OF SUCH INFORMATION TO THE THIRD PARTY. This is because we do not regulate or control how that third party uses your personal information.

Links:

When you click on links on our store, they may direct you away from our site. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites and encourage you to read their privacy statements.



SECTION 6 - SECURITY


To protect your personal information, we take reasonable precautions and follow industry best practices to make sure it is not inappropriately lost, misused, accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed.

If you provide us with your credit card information, the information is encrypted using secure socket layer technology (SSL) and stored with a AES-256 encryption. Although no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure, we follow all PCI-DSS requirements and implement additional generally accepted industry standards.

COOKIES

This Website makes use of “cookies” to automatically collect information and data through the standard operation of the Internet servers. “Cookies” are small text files a website can use (and which we may use) to recognise repeat users, facilitate the user’s on-going access to and use of a website and allow a website to track usage behaviour and compile aggregate data that will allow the website operator to improve the functionality of the website and its content. The type of information collected by cookies is not used to personally identify you. If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows you to deny or accept the cookie feature. Please note that cookies may be necessary to provide you with certain features available on our Website, and thus if you disable the cookies on your browser you may not be able to use those features, and your access to our Website will therefore be limited. If you do accept a “cookie”, you thereby consent to our use of any personal information collected by us using that cookie.

Here is a list of cookies that we use. We’ve listed them here so you can choose if you want to opt-out of cookies or not.

_session_id, unique token, sessional, Allows Shopify to store information about your session (referrer, landing page, etc).

_shopify_visit, no data held, Persistent for 30 minutes from the last visit, Used by our website provider’s internal stats tracker to record the number of visits

_shopify_uniq, no data held, expires midnight (relative to the visitor) of the next day, Counts the number of visits to a store by a single customer.

cart, unique token, persistent for 2 weeks, Stores information about the contents of your cart.

_secure_session_id, unique token, sessional

storefront_digest, unique token, indefinite If the shop has a password, this is used to determine if the current visitor has access.




SECTION 7 - AGE OF CONSENT


By using this site, you represent that you are at least the age of majority/full legal capacity in your state or province of residence, or that you are the age of majority/full legal capacity in your state or province of residence and you have given us your consent to allow any of your minor dependents to use this site.



SECTION 8 - CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY


We reserve the right to modify this privacy policy at any time, so please review it frequently. Changes and clarifications will take effect immediately upon their posting on the website. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here that it has been updated, so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we use and/or disclose it.

If our store is acquired or merged with another company, your information may be transferred to the new owners so that we may continue to sell products to you.



SECTION 9 - SITE SECURITY INFORMATION


At Grade Africa, the security of our customers is of utmost importance. Our network administrator thrives to deliver a highly secure environment for all transactions made through our website. When choosing who to team up with to bring the best form of security to our website.

What is SSL? SSL (or Secure Sockets Layer) is the protocol used to allow secure communications to take place between your web browser and our web server. Our SSL certificate provides your web browser with identification information about our web server, and establishes an encrypted connection allowing for safe transaction and data exchange. All of this happens in a fraction of a second!

How do I confirm that I am secure? Below are a few ways of checking that your connection to our website is secure. Please note that some icons will be different, depending on which web browser you are using.

– Have a look at the URL. What is this? A URL (or Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of the website. In this case, the URL is https://www.gradeafrica.com . Notice that https:// is different to many other websites http:// – the additional “s” stands for secure.

– Look out for green padlocks and the green address bars at the top of your browser. This indicates a secure connection to the server. Again, these characteristics will differ from browser to browser, e.g. Google Chrome: green padlock, Mozilla Firefox: green address bar and Internet Explorer: gold padlock and green address bar.

Happy Secure Shopping!


QUESTIONS AND CONTACT INFORMATION


If you would like to: access, correct, amend or delete any personal information we have about you, register a complaint, or simply want more information contact us at info@gradeafrica.com