Privacy policy
This Privacy Policy describes how Peethum Holdings (Pty) Ltd t/a Light Empire with the site www.lightempire.co.za (the “Site” or “we”) collects, uses, and discloses your Personal Information when you visit or make a purchase from the Site.
Contact
After reviewing this policy, if you have additional questions, want more information about our privacy practices, or would like to make a complaint, please contact us by e-mail at support@lightempire.co.za or by mail using the details provided below:
Collecting Personal Information
When you visit the Site, we collect certain information about your device, your interaction with the Site, and information necessary to process your purchases. We may also collect additional information if you contact us for customer support. In this Privacy Policy, we refer to any information about an identifiable individual (including the information below) as “Personal Information”.
See the list below for more information about what Personal Information we collect and why.
- Device information
- Purpose of collection: to load the Site accurately for you, and to perform analytics on Site usage to optimize our Site.
- Source of collection: Collected automatically when you access our Site using cookies, log files, web beacons, tags, or pixels.
- Disclosure for a business purpose: shared with our processor Shopify, payment processors and fulfilment partners.
- Personal Information collected: version of web browser, IP address, time zone, cookie information, what sites or products you view, search terms, and how you interact with the Site
- Order information
- Purpose of collection: to provide products or services to you to fulfill our contract, to process your payment information, arrange for shipping, arrange for customs clearance and provide you with invoices and/or order confirmations, communicate with you, screen our orders for potential risk or fraud, and when in line with the preferences you have shared with us, provide you with information or advertising relating to our products or services.
- Source of collection: collected from you.
- Disclosure for a business purpose: shared with our processor Shopify, payment processors PayFast and our suppliers and their distribution partners to ensure orders are fulfilled.
- Personal Information collected: name, identity number or passport number, billing address, shipping address, payment information (including credit card numbers, Bank account information for EFT Payments, email address, and phone number.
- Customer support information
- Purpose of collection: to provide customers with support on any queries to Light Empire
- Source of collection: collected from you
- Disclosure for a business purpose: to ensure that we provide you with the right level of service and to share this information with our payment processor or fulfilment partners or any other party depending on the support required.
- Personal Information collected: Customer query, and as needed: name, billing address, shipping address, payment information (including credit card numbers, Bank account information for EFT Payments, email address, and phone number.
Minors
The Site is not intended for individuals under the age of 18. We do not intentionally collect Personal Information from children. If you are the parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with Personal Information, please contact us at the address above to request deletion.
Sharing Personal Information
We share your Personal Information with service providers to help us provide our services and fulfill our contracts with you, as described above. For example:
- We use Shopify to power our online store. You can read more about how Shopify uses your Personal Information here: https://www.shopify.com/legal/privacy.
- We may share your Personal Information to comply with applicable laws and regulations, to respond to a subpoena, search warrant or other lawful request for information we receive, or to otherwise protect our rights.
- We use PayFast to process your payments. You can read more about PayFast's privacy process on https://www.payfast.co.za/privacy-policy/
- We will share your personal information with our fulfilment partners which includes suppliers, their couriers to ensure that our contract is fulfilled with you.
Behavioural Advertising
As described above, we use your Personal Information to provide you with targeted advertisements or marketing communications we believe may be of interest to you. For example:
- We use Google Analytics to help us understand how our customers use the Site. You can read more about how Google uses your Personal Information here: https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/. You can also opt-out of Google Analytics here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
- We share information about your use of the Site, your purchases, and your interaction with our ads on other websites with our advertising partners. We collect and share some of this information directly with our advertising partners, and in some cases through the use of cookies or other similar technologies (which you may consent to, depending on your location).
- We use Shopify Audiences to help us show ads on other websites with our advertising partners to buyers who made purchases with other Shopify merchants and who may also be interested in what we have to offer. We also share information about your use of the Site, your purchases, and the email address associated with your purchases with Shopify Audiences, through which other Shopify merchants may make offers you may be interested in.
- We may share information for marketing related purposes and advertise on our website based on your behaviour.
- For more information about how targeted advertising works, you can visit the Network Advertising Initiative’s (“NAI”) educational page at https://www.networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising/how-does-it-work.
You can opt out of targeted advertising by:
Additionally, you can opt out of some of these services by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out portal at: https://optout.aboutads.info/.
Using Personal Information
We use your personal Information to provide our services to you, which includes: offering products for sale, processing payments, shipping and fulfillment of your order, and keeping you up to date on new products, services, and offers.
Lawful basis
Pursuant to the POPI Act, if, we process your personal information under the following lawful bases:
- It is legally obliged to do so;
- A contract or agreement with you requires us to keep it;
- .You have consented to us keeping it;
- .We reasonably require it to achieve the purpose set out in the terms of transaction or contract with you;
- .We require it for legitimate business purposes; or
- There is ongoing litigation, investigation, tax or other regulatory queries relating to the Personal Information.
Retention
When you place an order through the Site, we will retain your Personal Information for our records unless and until you ask us to erase this information. For more information on your right of erasure, please see the ‘Your rights’ section below.
Automatic decision-making
We do engage in fully automated decision-making that has a legal or otherwise significant effect using customer data.
Our processor Shopify uses limited automated decision-making to prevent fraud that does not have a legal or otherwise significant effect on you.
Services that include elements of automated decision-making include:
- Temporary blacklist of IP addresses associated with repeated failed transactions. This blacklist persists for a small number of hours.
- Temporary blacklist of credit cards associated with blacklisted IP addresses. This blacklist persists for a small number of days.
Your rights
- As a data subject you have a legal right in terms of POPIA to:
- Request access to your Personal Information we hold;
- Request correction and/or deletion of the Personal Information we hold of yours;
- Request the restriction of or object to the processing of your Personal Information;
- Withdraw your consent to the processing of your Personal Information;
- Withdraw your consent to receiving marketing messages from us; and
- Complain to the Information Regulator as set out below.
- Important to note with regards to your rights is the following:
- a) We will require adequate proof of identification from you prior to responding to you (which we will do within a reasonable time);
- b) We will correct or delete information unless we are required or entitled to keep such information under applicable laws, in which case we will inform you.
- c) If we believe information does not require correction, we will provide you with credible reasoning for such.
Cookies
A cookie is a small amount of information that’s downloaded to your computer or device when you visit our Site. We use a number of different cookies, including functional, performance, advertising, and social media or content cookies. Cookies make your browsing experience better by allowing the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as login and region selection). This means you don’t have to re-enter this information each time you return to the site or browse from one page to another. Cookies also provide information on how people use the website, for instance whether it’s their first time visiting or if they are a frequent visitor.To view the cookies used, please visit the Shopify website to view a comprehensive list.
The length of time that a cookie remains on your computer or mobile device depends on whether it is a “persistent” or “session” cookie. Session cookies last until you stop browsing and persistent cookies last until they expire or are deleted. Most of the cookies we use are persistent and will expire between 30 minutes and two years from the date they are downloaded to your device.
You can control and manage cookies in various ways. Please keep in mind that removing or blocking cookies can negatively impact your user experience and parts of our website may no longer be fully accessible.
Most browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can choose whether or not to accept cookies through your browser controls, often found in your browser’s “Tools” or “Preferences” menu. For more information on how to modify your browser settings or how to block, manage or filter cookies can be found in your browser’s help file or through such sites as: www.allaboutcookies.org.
Additionally, please note that blocking cookies may not completely prevent how we share information with third parties such as our advertising partners. To exercise your rights or opt-out of certain uses of your information by these parties, please follow the instructions in the “Behavioural Advertising” section above.
Do Not Track
Please note that because there is no consistent industry understanding of how to respond to “Do Not Track” signals, we do not alter our data collection and usage practices when we detect such a signal from your browser.
Changes
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons.
Complaints
As noted above, if you would like to make a complaint, please contact us by e-mail or by mail using the details provided under “Contact” above where we can address your concerns and also share information for any escalations to the Information Regulator.
Last updated: June 2023