Privacy Policy

This is the privacy statement of the South African Society of Occupational Medicine (SASOM). In this document, “we” or “us” refer to SASOM.

SASOM is an Affiliate Association of the South African Medical Association.

Our registered office is at 349 Dr van der Merwe Road, Montana, Pretoria, Gauteng, 0182, South Africa.

This is a statement has been created because we value our users and recognise their right to keep personal information private. This statement will disclose our policy about all information that we record about you. It covers both information that could identify you and information that could not.

We are extremely concerned to protect your privacy and confidentiality. We understand that all users of our web site are quite rightly concerned to know that their data will not be used for any purpose unintended by them and will not accidentally fall into the hands of a third party. Our policy is both specific and strict. It complies with the South African law [and with the laws of all jurisdictions of which we are aware].

Except as set out below, we do not share, or sell, or disclose to a third party, any personally identifiable information collected at this site.

Here is a list of the information we collect from you, either through our web site or because you give it to us in some other way, and why it is necessary to collect it:

Business and personal information

This includes basic identification and contact information, such as your name and contact details and also includes all information given to us during your business and ours, such as information you give us in your capacity as our member. We undertake to preserve the confidentiality of the information and of the terms of our relationship. It is not used for any other purpose. We expect you to reciprocate this policy.

This information is used:

• to provide you with services;
• for verifying your identity for security purposes;
• for marketing our services;
• We keep information, which forms part of our business record for a minimum of five years.

Your domain name and email address

This information is recognised by our servers and the pages that you visit are recorded. We shall not under any circumstances, divulge your email address to any person, either generally or specifically. This information is used:

• to correspond with you or deal with you as you expect;
• in a collective way not referable to any particular individual, for the purpose of quality control and improvement of our site;
• to send you news about services;
• to tell you about other of our services or services of sister websites.

Credit Card Details

Credit Card details are only sorted for the processing of payment and will be deleted once payment is processed.

Information you post on our website

Information you send to us by posting to a forum or blog or in your advertisement, is stored on our servers. We do not specifically use that information except to allow it to be read, but you will see in our terms and conditions that we reserve a right to use it in any way we decide.

Website usage information

We may use software embedded in our website (such as JavaScript) to collect information about pages you view and how you have reached them, what you do when you visit a page, the length of time you remain on the page, and how we perform in providing content to you. We do not presently associate such information with an identifiable person.

Storage & Security of Personal Information

SASOM takes all reasonable steps to ensure the security of our system. SASOM allows you to access your information at any time to keep it accurate and up to date. Any information which we hold for you is stored on secure servers that are protected in controlled facilities.
In addition, our employees and the contractors who provide services related to our information systems are obliged to respect the confidentiality of any personal information held by SASOM. However, SASOM will not be held responsible for events arising from unauthorised access of your personal information. You can also play an important role in keeping your personal information secure, by maintaining the confidentiality of any password and accounts used on the SASOM site.

Third party advertising

Third parties may advertise on our web site. In doing so, those parties, or other companies working for them may use technology that automatically collects your IP address when they send an advertisement that appears on our site to your browser. They may also use other technology such as cookies or JavaScript to personalise the content of, and to measure the performance of their adverts. We do not have control over these technologies or the data that these parties obtain. Accordingly, this privacy notice does not cover the information practices of these third parties.

Content you provide to us with a view to be used by third party

If you provide information to us with a view to it being read, copied, downloaded or used by other people, we accept no responsibility for what that third party may do with it. It is up to you to satisfy yourself about the privacy level of every person who might see your information.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer’s hard drive through your web browser when you visit any web site. They are widely used to make web sites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

Like all other users of cookies, we may request the return of information from your computer when your browser requests a web page from our server. Cookies enable our web server to identify you to us, and to track your actions and the pages you visit while you use our website. The cookies we use may last for a single visit to our site (they are deleted from your computer when you close your browser) or may remain on your computer until you delete them or until a defined period of time has passed.

Although your browser software enables you to disable cookies, we recommend that you allow the use of cookies to take advantage of the features of our website that rely on their use. If you prevent their use, you will not be able to use all the functionality of our website. Here are the ways we use cookies:

to record whether you have accepted the use of cookies on our web site. This is solely to comply with the law. If you have chosen not to accept cookies, we will not use cookies for your visit, but unfortunately, our site will not work well for you.

• to allow essential parts of our web site to operate for you.
• to operate our content management system.
• to operate the online notification form – the form that you use to contact us for any reason. This cookie is set on your arrival at our web site and deleted when you close your browser.
• to enhance security on our contact form. It is set for use only through the contact form. This cookie is deleted when you close your browser.
• to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to improve your experience of our site and enable us to increase sales. This cookie collects information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from, and the pages they visited.
• to record that a user has viewed a webcast. It collects information in an anonymous form. This cookie expires when you close your browser.
• to record your activity during a web cast. An example is as to whether you have asked a question or provided an opinion by ticking a box. This information is retained so that we can serve your information to you when you return to the site. This cookie will record an anonymous ID for each user, but it will not use the information for any other purpose. This cookie will last for three months, when it will delete automatically.
• to store your personal information so that you do not have to provide it afresh when you visit the site next time. This cookie will last for 90 days.

Affiliate information

This is information given to us by you in your capacity as an affiliate of us or a member. Such information is retained for official use only. We undertake to preserve the confidentiality of the information and of the terms of our relationship. It is not used for any other purpose. We expect any affiliate to agree to reciprocate this policy.

Disclosure to Government and their agencies

We are subject to the law. We may be required to give information to legal authorities if they so request.

Compliance with the law

This confidentiality policy has been compiled to comply with the law of every jurisdiction in which the Society functions.

Data may be “processed” outside South Africa

Our web site is hosted in South Africa. We do not use outsourced services in countries outside South Africa.

Privacy & Site Changes

From time to time, SASOM may review and update its privacy statement. Revised versions will be updated on the website.