Privacy Policy

Last Updated on: June 28, 2024

General rules and definitions

"TP-LINK TECHNOLOGIES SOUTH AFRICA (PTY) LTD (“TPZA” “TP-Link” “we” “us” or “our”) takes your privacy seriously. We comply with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) No. 4 of 2013. We want you to understand what information we collect and how we use and share it. That’s why we encourage reading our Privacy Policy.". By using or accessing the web pages on which this Privacy Policy is posted (“Websites”) in any manner, including any features or services such as warranty service or technical support accessed through the Websites (together with the Websites, the “Services”), you accept and consent to the practices and policies outlined in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy incorporates herein the Terms of Use; both statements should be read in conjunction with each other. This Privacy Policy may change from time to time. Your continued engagement with our Services after such revisions indicates that you accept and consent to them, so please check the Privacy Policy periodically for updates.

Supplemental data protection information is available for specific countries and/or regions outside the United States where our partners (including affiliates) operate or provide TP-Link branded web pages or products. This Privacy Policy does not apply to such pages, or to your use or operation of products which you may purchase through the Websites or any associated services that you may access through pages linked from the Websites, including hardware, software, mobile applications, or cloud account services (collectively, the “Products”). Your use of the Products is governed by the applicable privacy policy made available to you when you download or access such Products, including on any page where you log in to a cloud account which may be linked from the Websites. For further information regarding our partners’ data protection practices in a specific country and/or region, please refer to the privacy policy tailored for that specific country and/or region via https://www.tp-link.com/choose-your-location/. You may consult the respective privacy policy for your country/region of residence or check the policy posted on the page you are viewing to read the data protection practices that apply.

Websites this policy covers

This Privacy Policy applies to the Websites, which provide various Services, including:

(1) the Websites and product information;

(2) warranty service, technical support, and community online services;

(3) newsletter subscriptions;

(4) the Business Partner Program; and

(5) online shopping, including the purchase and delivery of Products.

The Websites do not include pages linked from the Websites which are operated by our partners, as mentioned above. Some pages linked from the Websites may also be used together with, or in ways that integrate with, the Products (including software, hardware or mobile apps) or services from third parties, and will be governed by such parties’ privacy policies.

TP-Link is fully aware that how much the personal data is important to our users, and partners. We abide by applicable privacy laws and regulations to protect your precious personal data. With this privacy notice, you will understand what personal data we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, when and how we destroy it, and what measures we take to protect your personal data.

1. PERSONAL DATA WE COLLECT

We collect personal data for the provision of our Websites. The personal data we collect may be freely provided by you, received from other parties, or, in case of usage data, collected automatically when using our Websites.

1.1 PERSONAL DATA YOU PROVIDE TO US

When you contact us, including for warranty service or technical support, we collect information which is necessary to process the request, such as your name, address, phone number, email address, account name, or TP-Link ID. In addition, you can voluntarily provide additional information that you believe is necessary for processing the request.

When you register or place orders through our online stores, we collect information such as your name, address, phone numbers, email address, payment and transaction information and invoice details.

When you subscribe to our newsletter or provide information in response to our surveys or sweepstakes, we may collect your e-mail address, preferences, or information needed to participate.

When you use our community pages, we process your submitted User Content as defined in our Terms of Use), which may include, without limitation, text, links, images, video, and audio.

1.2 PERSONAL DATA WE COLLECT AUTOMATICALLY

When you browse our Websites, we automatically collect certain information, including through cookies as described further below, such as:

  • IP address of the requesting computer
  • State and country of the IP address
  • Date and time of access
  • Name and URL of the retrieved page
  • Information about websites from which you accessed our Websites (referrer URL)
  • Browser used and, if applicable, the operating system of your computer, as well as the name of your access provider
  • Activity including links you click and files you download, pages viewed and the order of those pages, and terms you use in searches on our Websites

1.3 PERSONAL DATA WE RECEIVE FROM OTHERS

We may receive data from other sources including, but not limited to, our authorized partners or service providers which you have integrated into the Products or our Services and/or voluntarily have provided with data, or others that we use to fulfill our obligations to you as a customer. You should carefully and diligently review the terms and conditions and privacy policies of products and services provided by such other parties, as we will consider your decision to use any such products or services with the Products or our Services to be a representation to us that you have consented to their terms and practices.

2. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA AND LEGAL BASIS

We use your personal information to operate, provide, develop, and improve the services that we offer. These purposes include:

  • Purchase and delivery of products and services. We use your personal information to take and handle orders, deliver products and services, process payments, and communicate with you about orders and products and services.
  • Provide, troubleshoot, and improve our Services and enable our partners to improve the Products. We use your personal information to provide functionality, analyze performance, fix errors, and improve the usability and effectiveness of our Services and to enable partners to improve the Products.
  • Recommendations and personalization. We and our partners use your personal information to recommend features, products, and services that might be of interest to you, identify your preferences, and personalize your experience with the Products and our Services.
  • Legal reasons. In certain cases, we collect and use your personal information to comply with applicable laws or to enforce our legal rights. For instance, we collect from the Partner Program users’ information regarding taxpayer identification number and bank account information for tax purposes.
  • Communicate with you. We and our partners may use your personal information to communicate with you in relation to the Products and our Services via different channels (e.g., by phone, email, livechat).
  • Marketing and advertising. We use your personal information to display interest-based ads for features, products, and services that might be of interest to you. We do not use information that directly identifies you to display interest-based ads.
  • Security, fraud prevention, and credit risks. We use personal information to prevent and detect fraud and abuse and for security purposes, including the security of our customers, partners, and others.

We process personal data relating to you if one of the following applies:

  • Necessary for entry into, or performance of, any contract(s) with you (Section 11(1)(b) of POPIA). This applies to: Section 1) For provision, management, and administration of Services; 2) For customer support; 5) For communication.
  • Necessary for the legitimate interests of us, where these are not overridden by your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms (Section 11(1)(f) of POPIA). This applies to7. For security risk management .

Note: Our legitimate interests include maintaining and administrating the Services, providing the Services to you, improving the content of our Services, ensuring your account is adequately protected as well as compliance with any contractual, legal or regulatory obligations under any applicable law.

  • Necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject (Section 11(1)(c) of POPIA). This applies to: 4. For compliance with legal obligations.
  • In limited circumstances and to the extent the legal bases for processing set out above do not apply, processed with your consent (Section 11(1)(a) of POPIA). This applies to: 3) For improvement and optimization of Services and user experience; 6) For marketing offers.

We will process your personal data for the purposes of providing Products and Services in compliance with applicable laws, as may be amended from time to time.

3. WHAT ABOUT COOKIES AND OTHER IDENTIFIERS

Cookies are small pieces of text used to store information on web browsers. Cookies are used to store and receive identifiers and other information on computers, phones, and other devices. Other technologies, including data that we store on your web browser or device, and identifiers associated with your device and other software, are used for similar purposes. In this policy, we refer to all of these technologies as “cookies”.

We use cookies, including those set by third-party services, to distinguish you from other users. This helps us deliver a better and more personalized service when you use our Services. It also allows us to improve our Services by enabling us to:

  • estimate our audience size and usage patterns;
  • store your preferences so we may customize our Services according to your individual interests;
  • speed up your searches;
  • recognize you when you return;
  • secure your data and our Services;
  • promote the products or services to you that you may be interested in; and
  • measure the performance of cooperating third-party sellers.

You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser or set them on the cookie bar at the top of the websites. However, if you select this setting, certain parts of our website may become inaccessible and certain features may not work correctly. Unless you adjust your browser settings to refuse cookies, our system will issue them. You can find more details through our Cookie Policy

4. HOW WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We may share your personal information internally and externally with suppliers, advisors, or partners for our legitimate business purposes, and only on a need-to-know basis. When sharing personal information, we implement appropriate checks and controls to confirm that the information can be shared in accordance with applicable laws. Here’s more detail about who we may share your information with and in what kinds of situations:

(1) With Our Authorized Partners: We may share your information with our authorized partners, including affiliates. We share information with our authorized partners to:

  • promote safety, security, and integrity and comply with applicable laws;
  • personalize offers, ads, and other sponsored or commercial content;
  • develop and provide features and integrations;
  • provide customer service and technical support; and
  • understand how customers use and interact with the Products and our Services.

(2) Service Providers: To assist in our business operations and better provide our Services (e.g., for software maintenance services, advertising technologies, e-mail services, delivery services, database management services, web analytics, and other services), we may share your information with service providers.

(3) Other Entities with Your Consent: You may choose to integrate certain third-party services with our Services. By doing so, you authorize us to transmit your personal information to third parties when you choose to integrate their services with our Services. Information collected by such third-party services is subject to their own terms and policies, all of which you should carefully and diligently review.

(4) Marketing and Advertising: We may provide user information to our third-party marketing service providers for our promotional and/or marketing practices. We may also disclose information that does not directly identify you to advertising and analytics providers to serve personalized ads for the Services and to better understand your use of the Services.

(5) Change of Control: We may be required to share your information as part of a merger, acquisition, asset sale, asset purchase, financing, bankruptcy, or other change of control.

(6) Responding to Legal Requests: We may share information where we have a good faith belief that such disclosure is necessary to (a) comply with an applicable law or legal process or (b) respond to actual or potential complaints or legal claims, like search warrants, court orders, production orders, or subpoenas. These requests come from third parties such as civil litigants, law enforcement, and other government authorities. Or (c) where otherwise necessary to protect our rights, interests, and/or property (including, without limitation, to enforce our agreements), or the rights, interests, and/or property of our agents, independent contractors, customers, and others.

5. SECURITY OF PERSONAL DATA

When you browse community or other websites, you may need to register a TP-Link ID to get all features.

We have implemented measures, including encryption and TLS technology, designed to secure your personal data from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure. In addition, we restrict the number of staff in charge with access to your personal data to the minimum level and frequently conduct training and education so that they comply with the confidentiality obligations with respect to your personal data.

While we strive to always protect the privacy of your account and personal data in our records, we cannot always guarantee it will be completely secure. The security of your personal data may be compromised by unauthorized entry, unauthorized use, hardware failure, software failure, and other factors at any time.

Your account’s privacy and security is protected by your password. In order to prevent unauthorized access to your account and personal data, you should select a strong password and protect it by limiting access to your computer, device, browser or application and by signing off after you have finished accessing your account. If you use a third-party service to sign into your account, you should protect that account accordingly as well.

While we strive to always protect the privacy of your account and personal data in our records, we cannot always guarantee it will be completely secure. The security of your personal data may be compromised by unauthorized entry, unauthorized use, hardware failure, software failure, and other factors at any time.

Here are some best practices to protect your TP-Link ID account:

  • Use complex passwords (a mixture of upper and lower letters, numbers, and symbols) when signing up.
  • Use a unique password different from other website accounts to avoid being involved in their accidental data breaches.
  • Change your passwords regularly.
  • Use 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) if possible.

6. HOW WE TRANSFER PERSONAL DATA

Generally, we will process your personal data in the country/region where we conduct business or provide our Services. However, as part of the Services offered to you, the personal data which you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside of South Africa (e.g., Singapore and the United States). To exemplify: this may happen if any of our servers are, from time to time, located in a country outside of South Africa. These countries may not have similar data protection laws as South Africa. We will, however, take all necessary measures to protect your personal data in accordance with applicable law.

In particular,

  • - If your personal data is transferred to countries/territories with an adequacy decision (e.g., Japan), the cross-border transfer is subject to the mechanism of an adequacy decision (Section 72(1)(a) of POPIA).
  • - If your personal data is trnsferred to other countries/territories, we will evaluate the level of protection afforded to personal data and take measures to ensure the protection of your data in accordance with the applicable law (Section 72(1)(b) of POPIA).

You can obtain copies of the applicable safeguards from us by sending a respective request to the contact details outlined below.

7. RETENTION OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA

Your data will be held in accordance with the Company’s retention policy, which is available on request via the email listed in Section 13 below. We only process and store your personal data for as long as required by the purposes for which they have been collected, until you object to the use of your personal data in cases where legitimate interest is the legal basis for processing (Section 11(1)(f) of POPIA) or until you withdraw your consent (Section 11(1)(a) of POPIA).

In general, we will store your personal data for 1 year after the termination of your Terms of Use with us, unless the retention of your personal data is necessary to meet legal or regulatory requirements, especially to comply with commercial and tax retention obligations, to resolve potential disputes, or to preserve evidence within the scope of the statutory limitation provisions. Should this be the case, we will retain the personal data concerned until the end of the respective statutory period.

Thereafter, your personal data will be securely deleted or destroyed. Personal data stored in an electronic file format will be erased by a technical tool which prevents the recovery of the information. Personal data printed in a paper record, print media, or a document is destroyed into scrap.

8. THIRD-PARTY LINKS

The Services may include links to third-party websites whose privacy practices may differ from ours. Your usage of any such websites is governed by the privacy policies of those websites and not this Privacy Policy. You should carefully review the privacy policy of any website you visit. We will consider your decision to use those third-party products and services with the Products or our Services to be a representation to us that you have consented to the third parties' terms and practices.

9. YOUR RIGHTS

As per the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), you have the right to request access to your personal information, request the correction, destruction or deletion of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal information, and request that your data be transferred to another service provider. You also have the right to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent. If you would like to exercise any of the following rights, please contact us privacy@tp-link.com. You can also request account information and data deletion at https://account-delete.tplinkcloud.com/. We will not do anything with your data not outlined in this Policy.

1)     Right of access

According to Section 23 of POPIA, you have the right to request access to information about your personal data that is processed by us.

2)     Right to rectification

According to Section 24 of POPIA, you have the right to request the correction of your personal data if it is inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or outdated.

3)     Right to erasure

According to POPIA, Section 5(6) and Section 24(1)(h), you have the right to request the deletion of your personal data from us under certain conditions, including when:

  • the purpose for which it was collected has been achieved;
  • we have unlawfully processed your personal data;
  • you have withdrawn your consent, provided there is no other legal basis for processing the data;
  • you have successfully objected to the data processing.
  • there is a legal obligation under South African law to delete the data; or
  • the personal data was collected in relation to the offer of information society services.

4)     Right to restriction of processing

to Section 22 of POPIA, you have the right to request us to limit the processing of your personal data under certain conditions, including:

  • when the accuracy of your personal data is contested.
  • if you prefer restricted processing instead of deletion, under circumstances where you have a valid right to request erasure.
  • when the data is no longer necessary for our purposes, but you require it for the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims; or
  • when the outcome of an objection to processing is still pending

5)     Right to data portability

According to Section 22(1)(c) and Section 23 of POPIA, you have the right to receive your personal data from us in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format, and to request us to transmit this data to another responsible party, under the following conditions:

  • The processing of the data is based on your consent or a contract; or
  • The processing is carried out by automated means.

6)     Right to object

According to Section 11(3) and Section 23(1)(a) of POPIA, you have the right to object to the processing of your personal data. If you object, we will cease processing your personal data unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override your interests, rights, and freedoms, or unless the processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims

7)     Right to withdraw your consent

According to Section 5(3) and Section 11(3) of POPIA, you have the right to withdraw consent given to us at any time. Consequently, we may no longer continue processing based on this consent in the future. The withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal. You may withdraw your consent at any time by:

 

  • Opting out of our email marketing messages by clicking the 'unsubscribe' link at the bottom of our emails.
  • Adjusting your browser settings to refuse some or all browser cookies, or to receive alerts when websites attempt to set or access cookies.
  • Opting out of data use by Google Analytics in supported browsers [provide link].
  • Opting out of interest-based advertising through mechanisms provided by the National Advertising Initiative and/or Digital Advertising Alliance [provide relevant links]. Participating companies may use opt-out cookies on your browser to recognize your choice; note that blocking or clearing cookies may affect recognition. If you use multiple computers or browsers, you may need to replicate your choices across them.

You may also send us an email at privacy@tp-link.com to request to exercise your rights described above regarding personal data that TPZA collects from the Websites. However, note that we cannot delete the email address used for administrative emails to you (e.g., emails about your transactions, policy changes, and confirmation emails) except by also deleting your user account. Also, any request to us will not affect data collected by our partners for purposes of activating and enabling use of the Products you have purchased, including your cloud account. To submit a request for a cloud account accessed through pages linked to the Websites, consult the privacy policy on the applicable page or email privacy@tp-link.com.

We may ask you to provide us with information necessary to reasonably verify your identity before responding to your request. Certain information may be exempt from such requests. For example, we may not accommodate a request to exercise certain rights if we believe doing so would violate any law or legal requirement or negatively impact the information's accuracy. If we deny your request in whole or in part, you may have the right to appeal the decision. In such circumstances, we will provide you with information regarding the appeal process.

10. CHILDREN’S PRIVACY

Our websites are not directed to, or intended for, children as defined by local legal requirements, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe that we have any such data, please notify us immediately using the contact information provided in the “Contact Us” section and we will delete it as quickly as possible.

11. UPDATES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY

This Privacy Policy may change from time to time, and we may notify you by updating the Privacy Policy’s effective date above. If there are material changes, we will place a prominent notice on this website or provide notice through other means. We encourage all users to occasionally refer to this Privacy Policy so that they can remain aware of our current practices. If you do not agree with the terms of the updated Privacy Policy, you must stop using the Services. Your continued use of the Services after any Privacy Policy changes means that you agree to the updated Privacy Policy.

12. CONTACT US

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please email us at privacy@tp-link.com.

TP-LINK TECHNOLOGIES SOUTH AFRICA (PTY) LTD

Address: 1st Floor, Block C, East, Central Park Offices, 400 16th Rd, Randjespark, Midrand, 1685