This Privacy Policy (the “Policy”) explains, in plain and clear language, how Trading with Africa, Inc., a Delaware corporation, and its affiliates and subsidiaries (“TWA”), collects, uses and distributes personal information. The Policy applies to any and all users (“You”) of any TWA software, website, mobile site, web application, mobile application, and any features, products, services or content contained thereon or related thereto (the “Platform”). By accessing or using the Platform in any manner, you accept and agree to be bound by the Policy, and to our collection and use of any information about, or provided by, you in accordance herewith. If you do not agree with or to this Policy, you are free to choose not to use the Platform.
By using the Platform, third parties, including, but not limited to, partners or agencies, may receive certain information about you. The Policy does not cover third parties, and TWA takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any use of information by such third parties, irrespective of how such parties may have received such information.
This Policy may help you understand what information we collect about You, how and why we collect and use such information, parties with whom we share such information, and your choices and rights in connection with our collection and use of such information.
#1 INFORMATION THAT WE COLLECT
TWA collects the following information about You (collectively, the “Information”):
Personal & Usage Information. By signing up for or on, and/or by using, the Platform, you authorize TWA to collect personal information about You, including, but not limited to: name; username; password; phone number (including mobile phone number); email address; mailing address; billing information; partners; associations; locations; products posted, advertised, bid on, negotiated over, or purchased using the Platform; all searches conducted through the Platform; all pages or websites visited through the Platform; names and contact information of people whom you invite to use the Platform; responses to surveys; customer service requests; and any information that you post on the Platform.
Payment Information. TWA does not collect or store payment information (“Payment Information”), including your credit card type or number, expiration date, security code or address associated therewith. The Payment Information may be collected and stored by a third-party payment processor, and the collection, use and storage thereof is governed by such payment processor’s terms of use and privacy policies. As such, TWA does not control, and, therefore, to the extent possible under applicable law, assumes no responsibility or liability for, the Payment Information or the security, use (including misuse), or disclosure thereof.
Third-Party Information. TWA may receive, collect and store information, including account information, from third parties, including websites, applications, platforms, or individuals, which we may combine with other information that we collect about you.
Device Information & IP Address Information. TWA may collect, either through its own or through third-party software, certain information when you use or visit the Platform, including, but not limited to, your device type (i.e., mobile phone, tablet, computer) and ID, your Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser, operating system, referring website (if any), your activity on the Platform, and time and place of use.
#2 HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION
TWA may use your Information for the following purposes:
Provide Services. To provide you with access to products, services and features that the Platform offers, including, but not limited to, the ability to advertise needs; market, bid on, negotiate over and purchase products; generate reports; place and receive bids; manage preferences; and sign agreements.
Customize Your Experience. TWA may use the Information to customize and/or improve your experience of the Platform.
Communicate. TWA may use the Information to send you communications in the form of emails or other notifications. Such communications may consist of administrative notifications, including, but not limited to, account confirmation emails, password recovery emails, and notifications concerning your account or activity in connection with your use of the Platform; email updates, including, but not limited to, offers, special promotions, recommendations, TWA news, updates to our terms of service or privacy policy, new product or feature announcements and special events; special offers or promotions; and customer service communications, including responding to your request and inquiries, and sending surveys.
Understand & Improve Platform. TWA may combine the Information with information that we collect from other users to generate aggregate data that we use to: monitor, analyze and better understand how, where, when and why our users are using the Platform, including which features, products or services they like and do not like; improve the Platform; and enhance users’ experiences of the Platform and its products, features and services.
Ensure Safety & Compliance with Law. TWA may use the Information to protect users or others from dangerous, fraudulent, prohibited or unlawful activity, and comply with all applicable laws and regulations.
#3 WHY WE USE YOUR INFORMATION
If our use of your Personal Data (which shall have meaning ascribed to such term in the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (“GDPR”)) is governed by the GDPR, then we will process your Personal Data only when:
#4 PARTIES WITH WHICH WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION
TWA shares your information as follows:
Parties with Whom You Share Your Information. If you use TWA to create, publish or share content publicly, including through third-party platforms, then such information will be shared with other TWA users, users of such third-party platforms or others who are able to access such content. In such cases, this Privacy Policy shall not govern the use and disclosure of the information that you shared, and the use and disclosure of such information shall be governed by the privacy policies of such third-party platforms or such other platforms on which the information that you have shared publicly has been shared. TWA takes no responsibility, and assumes no liability, for information that you have shared publicly on the Platform or on third-party platforms.
Platform Users. TWA may share certain information about you or your products with other users of the Platform in order to facilitate your use of the Platform, including allowing you to market your products; search and view products, as well as buyers and sellers; and bid on, negotiate over and purchase products.
Payment Processors. Your use of certain services on the platform requires you to submit, and TWA to share with third-party payment processors and other third parties (together, the “Payment-Related Parties”), Payment Information, which Payment-Related Parties may collect and store. By submitting Payment Information, you agree to the sharing of the Information, including Payment Information, with the Payment-Related Parties, and to their collection and storage thereof, and you understand and agree that the Payment-Related Parties may collect and store the Payment Information in accordance with their privacy policies.
Service Providers. TWA may share the Information with service providers, including third-party vendors and service providers, as part of the conduct of our business, including, but not limited to, work on product design and development, hosting, data analytics, security, sales, marketing, advertising, customer service, and legal representation.
Upon Financing, Liquidation or Dissolution Event. TWA may share the Information in the connection with a financing event, the transfer or possible transfer of all or a portion of TWA’s business or assets in the context of a merger or acquisition, or upon the dissolution or bankruptcy of TWA.
Government Authorities. TWA may share your information with governmental authorities, including agencies or courts, in response to subpoenas, warrants or court orders; to establish, protect, defend or exercise the rights, interests or safety of TWA, its shareholders, board members, officers, employees, consultants, contractors, users, other third parties or the public at large; or as we believe, in good faith, is required by law.
Prevent Illegal or Inappropriate Activity. TWA may share your information if and when we believe it is necessary or appropriate in order to prevent, investigate or defend against any illegal, suspected illegal, fraudulent, abusive or inappropriate activities; or to ensure adherence to this Policy, TWA’s Terms of Service, and/or other agreements to which TWA is a party.
Third Parties. TWA may share the Information with third parties to assist with their marketing efforts, and may, in its sole discretion, share aggregate and/or anonymous data with third parties. TWA is not responsible, and assumes no liability, for the actions of such third partiers, and such third parties are only authorized to use the Information in accordance with those purposes that have been authorized by TWA.
#5 COOKIES
In consideration of your ability to use the Platform, you agree to the following:
Accounts. You are required to have a username (email address) and password to create a user account on the Platform (a “User Account”).
Account Login and Registration. With respect to your User Account, you represent and agree that you shall:
Updates. You agree that you shall keep TWA informed of any change to your e-mail address or telephone number. We require this information to maintain communications with you and so that you can receive any disclosures from TWA in a timely fashion.
#6 YOUR CHOICES
Email. TWA may, from time to time, send you emails for a variety of purposes, including, but not limited to, marketing or promotions. If you do not want to receive such emails, you may unsubscribe from our emails using the “Unsubscribe” link contained in such emails. You shall not have the option of unsubscribing from emails related to the use or administration of your account, including, but not limited to, password recovery emails or cancellation confirmation emails, without cancelling your account entirely.
Cookies. You may opt out of the use of new Cookies, disable Cookies and delete Cookies by changing the settings on your browsers on your computer(s). You may opt out of the use of Cookies on your mobile device by changing your device’s settings. Please note that rejecting cookies may limit your ability to use various features of our website.
Removal. You may, in your sole and absolute discretion, cease using the Platform altogether.
#7 YOUR RIGHTS
EU & UK Residents
If and where GDPR applies to you, you have certain rights in connection with processing of data about you. Those rights, and a description, thereof, are as follows:
Access to Personal Data. You have the right to request confirmation that your data is being processed, and to receive a copy of the personal data that we have collected and are processing about you.
Request Correction to Personal Data. You have the right to request that we correct any inaccurate or incomplete Personal Data about you.
Request Erasure of Your Personal Data. You have the right to request that we delete your Personal Data when we have no good reason for us to continue to process it. You have the further right to request that we delete your Personal Data after you have exercised your right to object to our processing of your Personal Data.
Request Restriction of Processing. You have the right to request that we restrict our processing of your Personal Data under certain circumstances, particularly to establish the accuracy of your Personal Data or the basis for processing your Personal Data.
Data Portability. You have the right to request to receive Personal Data that you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to another party. This right applies only to automated data that you provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
Object to Our Processing of Your Personal Data. You have the right to object to our processing of your Personal Data if we are processing your Personal Data on the basis of a legitimate interest to do so and, in your particular situation, you desire to object to such processing of your Personal Data. In such cases, unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for processing your Personal Data or the processing of such data is required for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims, we shall no longer process your Personal Data. Where your Personal Data is processed for direct marketing purposes, you shall also have the right to object to its processing concerning you and, upon such objection, we shall no longer process your data for direct marketing purposes.
Not be Subject to Automated Decision Making. You have the right not to be subject to decisions based solely on automated decision-making if the decision would have a legal, or similar, impact on you.
How Long We Retain Information About You
We retain your Information for as long as we need to in order to provide you with access to the Platform, or for other legitimate and important business and legal purposes, including, but not limited to, complying with our legal obligations, resolving disputes, enforcing our agreements and enhancing the Platform.
If you are subject to the GDPR, upon your request and our verification of your identity, we will delete or anonymize your Information so that it does not identify you, unless we are legally permitted to maintain the Information, including to resolve issues or disputes relating to your account, where we are obligated to retain the Information by law, where we must retain the Information for audit, tax or accounting purposes, or where doing so is necessary for our legitimate business interests.
How to Exercise Your Rights.
If you are an EU or UK resident and you and you wish to exercise any of your rights in this Section, simply contact us at info@tradingwithafrica.com. While we will respond to legitimate inquiries, we may require you to verify your identity in order to protect the privacy of your information.
Complaints.
If you are an EU or UK resident and you have any complaints about this Privacy Policy or any policies relating to our use of your Personal Data, simply contact us at info@tradingwithafrica.com. If you wish to contact a Data Protection Authority, you may also complain to a data protection authority, a full list of which can be found here.
#8 ROLE AS DATA CONTROLLER AND DATA PROCESSOR
Depending on your use of the Platform, TWA may act as a data controller or a data processor.
If and when you create an account and/or post a product or products on the Platform (a “Seller”), TWA acts as a data controller with respect to the information that you provide in connection with your account and/or product(s), including, but not limited to, your name, email address, phone number, company name, company information and product information, as well as information concerning your use of the Platform.
TWA also acts as a data processor in order to allow the Seller to market its product(s), which includes, among other things, sending emails, messages, notifications, confirmations and processing payments, to allow the Seller to understand interest in and responses to its product(s). In such cases, TWA only provides certain tools to Sellers that they may use in their conduct of the marketing of their product(s), and does not control the nature, accuracy or completeness of information provided. Therefore, in such cases, questions or concerns that buyers have should be conveyed to the Seller.
#9 EXTERNAL LINKS
The Platform may contain hyperlinks to websites, applications and resources provided by third parties, and not owned by TWA. Such hyperlinks are provided to you for informational purposes only, and the Policy does not govern your use of such third party websites, applications and resources. You enter those websites, applications and resources solely at your own risk and you hereby acknowledge that TWA has no control over, accepts no responsibility whatsoever for, and shall not be liable for privacy or other policies contained in those websites, applications or resources. If you access the Platform using a device powered by Apple Inc., Google, Inc., Microsoft Corporation or any other entity, your use of such devices is subject to such entities’ privacy policies, if any.
#10 CHILDREN
We do not knowingly collect any personal data from children under the age of eighteen (18) (the “Minimum Age”) and specifically request that persons under the Minimum Age not use the Platform. If we discover that a person under the Minimum Age has used the Platform in violation of our Terms, then we may take steps to delete that person’s data, including that person’s account on the Platform.
#11 TRANSFERS OF INFORMATION ACROSS INTERNATIONAL BORDERS
TWA may transfer information that it collects about you across international borders to parties located in countries other than your country of domicile or residence. Such parties may be located in countries in which privacy laws or regulations differ from or are less protective of your personal information than the laws and regulations of your country of domicile or residence. By using the Platform, you hereby consent to the transfer of information about you across international borders and to such parties.
#12 CHANGES TO PRIVACY POLICY
TWA may change or update the Policy in its sole and absolute discretion from time-to-time. You agree that you will periodically review the Policy. TWA shall notify you of material changes to the Policy by sending an email to you to the email address that you entered when registering on the Platform or by placing a prominent notice on the TWA website. Any updates to the Policy shall come into effect once made. By using the Platform, you accept and agree to such version of the Policy as is in effect at the time of your use of the Platform. If you do not agree to the Policy or to any revised version thereof, your sole recourse is to immediately discontinue your use of the Platform.
#13 HOW YOU CAN CONTACT US
If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy or anything else relating to the Platform, please contact info@tradingwithafrica.com.
