User Privacy Notice
If you have an unresolved privacy or data use concern that we have not addressed satisfactorily, please contact us at r.rice@theworldgroup.co.bw or sanath@theworldgroup.co.bw

Scope
This privacy notice applies to our BMS online sales website (collectively “Services”) where this privacy notice is referenced, regardless of how you access or use them including through mobile devices.
We may amend this privacy notice at any time by posting the amended version on this site including the effective date of the amended version. We will announce any material changes to this privacy notice through email.
Personal information we collect

What is personal information?

Personal Information is information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. An identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier, or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.

We do not consider personal information to include information that has been aggregated so that it can no longer be used to identify a specific natural person, whether in combination with other information or otherwise.
We collect personal information from you when you use our Services.

Personal information you give us when you use our Services or register for an account with us

  • Identifying information such as your name, addresses, telephone numbers or email addresses when you register for an account with us
  • Bidding, buying, or selling information you provide during a transaction, or other transaction-based content that you generate or that is connected to your account as a result of a transaction you are involved in
  • Other content that you generate, or that is connected to your account (such as adding items to your basket, adding items to your Wish List.
  • Postage, billing and other information used to purchase or send an item, as well as, where postal services are provided through one of our programs, information required to clear customs (such as Tax ID or other identification numbers) and relevant postage information (such as tracking numbers and tracking updates)
  • You may also provide us other information through a web form, by updating or adding information to your account, through your participation in community discussions, member-to-member communications, chats, dispute resolution, or when you otherwise communicate with us regarding our Services
  • Additional information we are required or authorized by applicable national laws to collect and process in order to authenticate or identify you or to verify the information we have collected

Personal information we collect automatically when you use our Services or register for an account with us

  • We collect information about your interaction with our Services, your advertising preferences, and your communications with us. This is information we receive from devices (including mobile devices) you use when you access our Services. This information could include the following: Device ID or unique identifier, device type, ID for advertising, and computer IP address.
  •  Location information, including location information from your mobile device. Keep in mind that most mobile devices allow you to control or disable the use of location services by any application on your mobile device in the device’s settings menu
  • Computer and connection information such as statistics on your page views, traffic to and from the sites, referral URL, ad data, your IP address, your browsing history, and your web log information

Personal information we collect using cookies and similar technologies

  • We use cookies, web beacons, unique identifiers, and similar technologies to collect information about the pages you view, the links you click, and other actions you take when using our Services, within our advertising or email content

Personal information collected from other sources

  •  We supplement the personal information we collect directly with information collected from third parties and add it to your account information. For example, we collect and use demographic and other information that is publicly available in an applicable jurisdiction, additional contact information, credit check information, and information from credit bureaus, as allowed by applicable national laws
  • If you give us personal information about someone else, you must do so only with that person’s authorization. You should inform them how we collect, use, disclose, and retain their personal information according to our privacy notice

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information to provide and improve our Services, provide you with a personalized experience on our sites, contact you about your account and our Services, provide you customer service, provide you with personalized advertising and marketing, and to detect, prevent, mitigate and investigate fraudulent or illegal activities.

We use your personal information to fulfill a contract with you and provide you with our Services, to comply with our legal obligation, protect your vital interest, or as may be required for the public good. This includes:

  • To provide payment processing and account management, operate, measure and improve our Services, keep our Services safe, secure and operational, and customize site content that includes items and services that you may like in response to actions that you take
  • To contact you regarding your account, to troubleshoot problems with your account, to resolve a dispute, to collect fees or monies owed or as otherwise necessary to provide you customer service
  • When contacting you for such purposes as outlined above, we may contact you via email, telephone, SMS/text messages, postal mail, and via mobile push notifications
  • To provide other services requested by you as described when we collect the information
  • We use general location information to provide you with location based services (such as advertising, search results, and other personalized content)
  • To prevent, detect, mitigate, and investigate fraud, security breaches or other potentially prohibited or illegal activities
  • To enforce our User agreement this privacy notice, or other policies, and to monitor restrictions on offers to buy or sell outside of BMS and member-to-member communications for violations of our policies or applicable laws

We use your personal information to pursue our legitimate interests where your rights and freedoms do not outweigh these interests. We have implemented controls to balance our interests with your rights. This includes to:

  • Improve our Services, for example by reviewing information associated with stalled or crashed pages experienced by users allowing us to identify and fix problems and give you a better experience
  • Personalize, measure, and improve our advertising based on your advertising customization preferences
  • Contact you via email or postal mail in order to offer you coupons, discounts and special promotions, poll your opinions through surveys or questionnaires and inform you about our Services, as authorized by applicable law
  • Contact you about public policy matters, or other current events, related to your ability to use our Services. This could include an invitation to join a petition, letter writing, call or other sort of public policy related campaigns
  • Deliver targeted marketing, service updates, and promotional offers based on your communication preferences
  • Measure the performance of our email marketing campaigns (e.g. by analyzing open and click rates)
  • Measure sellers’ performance (e.g., by using shipment tracking information that sellers and shipping providers send or provide through BMS site)
  • Monitor and improve the information security of our site and mobile applications

With your consent, we may use your personal information to:

  • Provide you with marketing via telephone calls, SMS or text
  • Provide you with marketing from other BMS family members
  • Customize third party advertising you might see on third party websites
  • Use your precise geo-location to provide location-based services
  • Use your sensitive personal information to facilitate transactions in certain categories

You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

We may use technologies considered automated decision making or profiling. We will not make automated-decisions about you that would significantly affect you, unless such a decision is necessary as part of a contract we have with you, we have your consent, or we are required by law to use such technology.

Your choices about how we use your personal information

You have choices about how we use your personal information to communicate with you, to send you marketing information, how we provide you with customized and relevant advertising, and whether you want to stay signed into your account.

Ways you can access, control, and correct your personal information

We respect your right to access, correct, request deletion or request restriction of our usage of your personal information as required by applicable law. We also take steps to ensure that the personal information we collect is accurate and up to date.

  • You have the right to know what personal information we maintain about you
  • We will provide you with a copy of your personal information in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format on request
  • If your personal information is incorrect or incomplete, you have the right to ask us to update it
  • You have the right to object to our processing of your personal information
  • You can also ask us to delete or restrict how we use your personal information, but this right is determined by applicable law and may impact your access to some of our Services

Learn more: Ways you can access, control, and correct your personal information

Access, correction, and deletion of your personal information

You can see, review and change most of your personal information by signing in to your account. Please, update your personal information immediately if it changes or is inaccurate. Keep in mind, once you make a public posting, you may not be able to change or remove it.

We will honor any statutory right you might have to access, modify or erase your personal information. To request access and to find out whether any fees may apply, if permitted by applicable national laws, please contact us following the instructions in the Contact Us section below. Where you have a statutory right to request access or request the modification or erasure of your personal information, we can still withhold that access or decline to modify or erase your personal information in some cases in accordance with applicable national laws.

If you request that we stop processing some or all of your personal information or you withdraw (where applicable) your consent for our use or disclosure of your personal information for purposes set out in this privacy notice, we might not be able to provide you all of the Services and customer support offered to our users and authorized under this privacy notice and our User Agreement.
Upon your request, we will close your account and remove your personal information from view as soon as reasonably possible, based on your account activity and in accordance with applicable national laws.

How we might share your personal information

We may disclose your personal information to other members of the BMS corporate family or to third parties. This disclosure may be required for us to provide you access to our Services, to comply with our legal obligations, to enforce our User Agreement, to facilitate our marketing and advertising activities, or to prevent, detect, mitigate, and investigate fraudulent or illegal activities related to our Services. We attempt to minimize the amount of personal information we disclose to what is directly relevant and necessary to accomplish the specified purpose. We do not sell, rent, or otherwise disclose your personal information to third parties for their marketing and advertising purposes without your consent.

Learn more: How we might share your personal information

We may disclose your personal information to the following parties for the following purposes:

BMS family members, who may use it to:

  • Provide joint content and services (like registration, transactions, and customer support)
  • Help detect, investigate, mitigate and prevent potentially fraudulent and illegal acts, violations of our User Agreement, and data security breaches
  • Provide you personalized advertising
  • Improve their products, sites, applications, services, tools, and marketing communications
  • Members of our BMS family will use your personal information to send you marketing communications only if you have consented to receive such communications from them or if otherwise permitted by the law

Service Providers and financial institutions partners as follows:

  • Third party service providers who help us to provide our Services, payment processing services, assist us in providing customize advertising, to assist us with the prevention, detection, mitigation, and investigation of potentially illegal acts, violations of our User Agreement, fraud and/or security breaches, bill collection, affiliate and rewards programs, co-branded credit cards and other business operations
  • Third party financial institutions with whom we partner to offer financial products to you, for them to provide joint content and services (such as, registration, transactions and customer support). These third party financial institution partners will use your personal information to send you marketing communications only if you have requested their services

Law enforcement, legal proceedings, and as authorized by law

  • To comply with our legal requirements, enforce our User Agreement, respond to claims that a listing or other content violates the rights of others, or protect anyone’s rights, property or safety
  • To law enforcement or governmental agencies, or authorized third-parties, in response to a verified request or legal process relating to a criminal investigation or alleged or suspected illegal activity or any other activity that exposes us, you, or any other of our users to legal liability. We will only disclose information we deem relevant to the investigation or inquiry, such as name, city, state, postcode, telephone number, email address, User ID history, IP address, fraud complaints, bidding and listing history
  • To credit agencies or bureaus as authorized by applicable national laws (e.g. information on late or missed payments or other defaults on your account that may be reflected in your credit report or file)
  • To third parties involved in a legal proceeding, if they provide us with a subpoena, court order or substantially similar legal basis, or we otherwise believe in good faith that the disclosure of information is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm or financial loss or to report suspected illegal activity

Other BMS users as authorized by you or your use of our Services

  • When transacting with another user, the other user may request that we provide him/her with information about you necessary to complete the transaction, such as your name, account ID, email address, contact details, shipping and billing address, or other information from you needed to promote the reliability and security of the transaction
  • If a transaction fails, is put on hold, or is later invalidated, we may also provide the other user with details of the unsuccessful transaction
  • The other user receiving your information should only use it for purposes related to the transaction. Unless you have consented to receive marketing from them, they should not contact you for marketing purposes
  • Contacting users with unwanted or threatening messages is a violation of our User Agreement

Change of ownership

If we are subject to a merger or acquisition with/by another company, we may share information with them in accordance with our global privacy standards. Should such an event occur, we will require that the new combined entity follow this privacy notice with respect to your personal information. If we intend to handle your personal information for any purposes not covered in this privacy notice, you will receive prior notification of the processing of your personal information for the new purposes.

How long we keep your personal information

We retain your personal information for as long as necessary to provide the Services you have requested, or for other essential purposes such as complying with our legal obligations, resolving disputes, and enforcing our policies.

Cookies & Similar Technologies

When you visit or interact with our sites, services, applications, tools or messaging, we or our authorized service providers may use cookies and other similar technologies to help provide you with a better, faster, and safer experience, and for advertising and marketing purposes.

How do we protect your personal information?

We protect your personal information using technical and administrative security measures to reduce the risks of loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure and alteration. Some of the safeguards we use are firewalls and data encryption, physical access controls to our data centers, and information access authorization controls.

Contact Us

If you have a question or a complaint about this privacy notice, our global privacy standards, or our information handling practices, you can reach us at Plot No. 1895, Sam Nujoma Drive, Light Industrial Area, Francistown, P O Box 621 Francistown or email to us at; r.rice@theworldgroup.co.bw
Your right to file complaints with a data protection supervisory authority remains unaffected.