TLSCONTACT South Africa (PTY) LTD., a company registered under number 2013/202802/07, with registered address located at 1st Floor Menlyn Corner Building, 87 Frikkie de Beer Street, Menlyn, Pretoria, Gauteng 0063, South Africa and its worldwide affiliated companies (hereinafter “TLScontact”, “we”, “us”, “our”) are committed to protecting the privacy and security of the customers who use TLScontact websites and services (hereinafter “Customers”, “you”, “your”). The purpose of this privacy notice (hereinafter the “Privacy Notice”) is to explain how and why we use your personal information to ensure you remain informed and in control of your information.
TLScontact processes your personal information in compliance with the applicable legal requirements.
This Privacy Notice applies to all TLScontact services and by using our services you acknowledge having been informed that TLScontact collects, uses and discloses your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Notice.
Any questions you have in relation to this Privacy Notice or how we use your personal information should be sent to our Information Protection Officer at the following email address:
TLScontact Information Officer:
Email:
DP@tlscontact.com
Address:
Information Officer
1st Floor, Menlyn Corner Building,
Frikkie de Beer Street,
Menlyn, 0063, Pretoria.
TLScontact is a pioneering company specialising in providing Customer relationship management. Our core business is to operate visa application centres on behalf of government authorities (“our Clients”, “Diplomatic mission”).
TLScontact is part of the Teleperformance Group, the worldwide leader in outsourced omnichannel customer experience management, providing excellent customer experience at every opportunity, serving governments and companies.
Your personal information (i.e. any information allowing to identify you directly or indirectly) is collected on the behalf of our clients (i.e. hereinafter the “Clients”) for the provision of a visa service and/or immigration service, and to perform administrative and non-judgmental tasks related to the aforementioned services (see Section 1 of this Privacy Notice). Your personal information may also be collected by TLScontact on its own behalf for the provision of specific services in general related to the aforementioned services), for its business needs and/or to ensure the security of its premises, employees and visitors (see Section 2 of this Privacy Notice).
Our Clients are responsible parties and TLScontact may either act as a responsible party or an operator depending on the nature of the services/processing concerned. When TLScontact acts as an operator, it collects and processes personal information only on behalf and under the instructions of its Clients.
1.1. How do we collect your personal information?
We obtain personal information about you when you use our services to apply for instance for a visa.
Representatives may submit personal information about you on your behalf. We will always verify and validate any individuals claiming to be your representative before accepting any information about you.
1.2. What do we collect?
We will only collect personal information required by our Clients to submit a visa application or provide a related service. The type and categories of personal information that we collect is dependent on what visa/service you are applying for.
We collect in particular, as an example, the following categories of personal information:
This list may vary depending on a Client’s requirements and the services you request from us.
If you want to know more information on the personal information collected for your visa/immigration service, please contact the relevant Diplomatic Mission for more information.
Failure to provide certain information could prevent you from completing your visa application.
1.3. Why and how is your personal information used?
We will never sell your personal information or use it in any way without your direct knowledge. We will only use your personal information on behalf of our Client and according to its instructions in order to process the specific service that you require relating to the visa application.
We may use your personal information for instance to:
Such information processing are based on the execution of the contract between TLScontact and its Client and on the compliance with legal obligations.
For more information regarding the purposes of the information processing we implement on behalf of our Client, please contact the relevant Diplomatic Mission.
1.4. How long we store personal information?
We keep your personal information in accordance with our legal obligations and with our Client’s instructions. Most of the time we do not maintain any personal information once the visa application process is over. We will hold your personal information on our systems only for as long as is necessary to provide the service.
For more information about how long the Client keeps your personal information, please contact the relevant Diplomatic Mission.
1.5. Who has access to your personal information?
TLScontact and Teleperformance group of companies
We may share your personal information with companies belonging to TLScontact or to Teleperformance group where it is necessary to process your requests and to provide you with the relevant services.
Government Authorities and Diplomatic Missions
When applying for a visa or other related service, your personal information will be sent to our Client, i.e. the foreign Diplomatic Mission that represents the country you are applying to and that acts as the responsible party. This Diplomatic Mission may share your personal information with for example an applicable governmental, regulatory, or enforcement authority for the prevention of crime or terrorism. We cannot control or direct how your personal information is used after transferring it to the relevant Diplomatic Mission since it acts as the responsible party. We strongly recommend you read their privacy notices too (including the information provided in the visa application forms).
Third parties for legal reasons
We may share personal information with third parties to comply with legal obligations and respond to requests from government agencies, including law enforcement and other public authorities, which may include such authorities outside your country of residence.
Third party service providers working on our behalf
We may pass your personal information to our third-party service providers, subcontractors and other associated organizations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to deliver your documents to you by courier). We will only disclose personal information that is necessary to deliver the services concerned. Before sharing any personal information we make sure that all service providers are contractually obliged to and can prove that your personal information:
Other Third parties
We work with third-party product providers to provide you the best customer experience. For example, a third-party provider need to process your personal information to allow the payments of the services you have requested and to meet the applicable legal requirements.
1.6. Overseas transfer of your personal information
Due to the nature of our business, your personal information may be transferred beyond the borders of your Country. By applying for a visa or other related service your personal information will be transferred to the country or with the Government Authority you are applying to. We will never transfer your personal information in an unsafe or unsecure way.
If we transfer your personal information from the Republic of South Africa to other countries in which applicable laws do not offer the same level of information privacy and protection, we take measures to provide an adequate level of information privacy and protection by using our Binding Corporate rules or by entering into a binding agreement which provides an adequate level of protection with the information recipient.
Through the implementation of our Binding Corporate Rules you can rest assured that your personal information is protected when transferred internationally within Teleperformance Group.
2.1. How do we collect your personal information?
We obtain personal information about you when you use our services in relation to your visa application, , when you come to our Visa Application Centre (VAC) as a visitor and/or when you use some of our additional services.
2.2. What do we collect?
We will use, store or otherwise process any of your personal information in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Notice, including but not limited to:
When we collect personal information through forms, including but not limited to electronic forms, we will indicate the mandatory fields via asterisks. Failure to provide the information marked with an asterisk could prevent you from accessing a service of ours.
2.3. How is your personal information used?
We will never sell your personal information or use it in any way without your direct knowledge.
We may use your personal information for example to:
To process your personal information lawfully we need to rely on one or more valid legal grounds. The grounds we may rely upon are for example:
2.4. How long we store personal information?
We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We generally keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purpose for which the personal information is processed (i.e. for the duration of the provision of the service, during your presence in our premises, for maximum 1 month regarding CCTV images and for 1 year from the last contact with you regarding marketing communications, where applicable and permitted by the local legislation). We may however be required to hold some types of personal information longer to fulfil our statutory obligations or in accordance with the applicable statute of limitations.
2.5. Who has access to your personal information?
TLScontact group or Teleperformance group of companies
We may share your personal information with companies belonging to the TLScontact group or to Teleperformance group where for instance it is necessary to process your requests, to provide you with the relevant services or to request your feedback on our services.
Third parties for legal reasons
We will share personal information with third parties:
Third party service providers working on our behalf
We may pass your personal information to our third-party service providers, subcontractors and other associated organizations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf. We will only disclose personal information that is necessary to deliver the service. Before sharing any personal information we make sure that all service providers are contractually obliged to and can prove that your personal information:
2.6. Overseas transfer of your personal information
Due to the nature of our business, your personal information may be transferred beyond the borders of your Country. By applying for a visa or other related service your personal information will be transferred to the country or with the Government Authority you are applying to. We will never transfer your personal information in an unsafe or unsecure way.
2.7. Use of cookies
Our website is no different from other websites and uses cookies to function properly and make your browsing experience easier. For example, cookies can help the website remember you and during your next visit you won’t have to choose your preferred language again.
Our websites also use Google Analytics, a service which transmits website traffic information to Google servers. Google Analytics does not identify individual users or associate your IP address with any other information held by Google. We use reports provided by Google Analytics to help us understand website traffic and webpage usage.
You can turn off cookies for our website through the settings page on your browser.
We want to ensure you remain in control of your personal information. Part of this is making sure you understand your rights, which are as follows:
To exercise your rights to your personal information, all you need to do is contact us directly or through the Feedback and Complaints page, fill in the short request form and choose the “Personal Information Request” category in the “Reason for contact” field. You can also exercise theses rights by contacting the Diplomatic Mission when such rights relate to the visa/immigration application.
All requests are free of charge.
When the request is submitted to TLScontact, we will send you a confirmation of acknowledging your request and will process or hand over your request to our Client without undue delay.
We or our Client may contact you to clarify your request, seek additional information or to verify your identity before processing.
If you feel that your right have been impacted, please contact our Information Officer.
You also have the right to complain to the Information Regulator (https://www.justice.gov.za/inforeg/).
“Profiling” means any form of automated processing of personal information consisting of the use of personal information to evaluate certain personal aspects relating to a natural person, in particular to analyze or predict aspects concerning that natural person’s performance at work, economic situation, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behavior, location or movements.
To offer you personalized services we use profiling with the information that you have provided to us, such as the age or location. We consider that we have a legitimate interest to conduct this profiling because the processing of these data is beneficial to you because it allows you to improve your user experience and access to our additional services in accordance with your characteristics.
The aforementioned Data Controllers (our Clients i.e. Diplomatic Missions) may use profiling as well.
For more information about potential use of profiling by the Client, please contact the relevant Diplomatic Mission.
Our website may contain links to other websites. We are not responsible for the content or functionality of any of those external websites.
If an external website requests personal information from you (e.g. in connection with an order for goods or services), the information you provide will not be covered by this Privacy Notice. We suggest you read the privacy notice of any website before providing any personal information.
When purchasing goods or services from any of the businesses that our site links to, you will be entering into a contract with them (agreeing to their terms and conditions) and not with TLScontact.
We will amend this Privacy notice from time to time to ensure it remains up-to-date and accurately reflects how and why we use your personal information. The current version of our Privacy notice will always be posted on our website. In case of material changes we will inform you by any appropriate means.
Privacy Notice last updated 27 April 2022