Kudough – Privacy Policy

This Privacy Notice explains how we use and share your personal information.

Kudough Credit Solutions ("Kudough") is a credit bureau, registered with the National Credit Regulator (“the NCR”) under reference no: NCRCB29.

We strive to ensure your privacy is protected and in doing so will make every effort to ensure that the following principles are followed when processing your Personal Information. Your information will be:

• used in a lawful, fair, and transparent manner.
• collected for lawful purposes and only used in processing activities that are compatible with the lawful purposes.
• limited to what is necessary for achieving lawful purposes.
• accurate and up to date; and
• protected from unauthorised access, use or disclosure.

This Privacy Notice outlines how we collect, use, process, disclose, transfer, and retain your personal information.

We comply with the National Credit Act, 34 of 2005 and the Regulations thereto, as amended from time to time ("the NCA"), the Protection of Personal Information Act, 4 of 2013 ("POPIA"), governing your right to keep your personal information private.

We may process your personal information as part of our function to assist you in obtaining credit responsibly and protect you against reckless lending.

In this Privacy Notice, "Consumer Credit Information" means consumer credit information defined in Section 70 of the NCA.

Our legal basis for handling your personal information.

The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) allows personal information usage where necessary for legitimate purposes without undue adverse impact. Our processing activities are based on the compliance with an obligation imposed by law condition and on the legitimate interest’s condition.

How we use personal information.

Kudough limits the use and disclosure of personal information to the terms of the National Credit Act 34 of 2005 (NCA), Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA) or any other applicable laws.

Credit reporting: We receive consumer credit information in credit reports from the primary credit bureaus TransUnion Credit Bureau, Experian, Xpert Decision Services and VCCB, and provide this to you, together with an add-on service [insert the additional service your business provides].

Legal and regulatory:  If you lodge a complaint about how we have used your personal information, we may provide this information to you or a regulator on request.  However, for the most part, any complaints or enquiries from you or a regulator about how we’ve used your personal information, will be dealt with by the primary credit bureau from whom we received your consumer credit information.

General Use.

• administer your account and relationship with us and to communicate with you by telephone, mail, email, text (SMS) message, instant messaging, or other electronic means.
• verify your identity as part of our identity authentication process (we will use the credit card or bank account information only for the purposes of verifying your identity (and to prevent, detect and prosecute fraud and crime and comply with legal or regulatory requirements) and will not retain it).
• provide you with the information, products, and services that you request from us and share your information with our partners and/or third parties in order to deliver the service or products.
• provide you with information about other products and services we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased and share your information with our partners in order to deliver the service or product.
• provide you with information about products or services we feel may interest you or be best for you, where you have consented to receive such information and share your information with our partners and/or third parties to provide further insights.
• your data may be shared with product providers to validate if you are an existing customer (which may affect whether you can be accepted for one of their products) or for fraud prevention purposes. The product provider does not have permission to use these data for any other purpose including marketing.
• notify you about changes to our services.
• ensure that content from our website is presented in the most effective manner for you and your device.
• aggregate it on an anonymous basis with other data for data analytical and reporting purposes; and
• undertake analysis and profiling of your credit information (and any other data provided by you or on your behalf or which we collect on your behalf) in order to identify and inform you of credit products (including personal loans and credit cards) that we consider are likely to interest you or be suited to your credit circumstances, where you have consented to receive such information and to share your information with partners and/or third parties in order in order to provide the service or product .

The kinds of personal information we use.

Information in the credit reports we provide to you, includes:

• Identifying information, such as first name, surname, ID number, physical and postal address, contact numbers, marital status, spouse details, and current employer and occupation.
• An account history or payment profile is a 24-month record of all accounts with credit or service providers and a history of how you pay these accounts.
• Enquiries include a list of credit or service providers allowed by you or permitted in terms of the NCA to receive your credit report.
• Public records include publicly available information as permitted by law, such as judgments, administration orders, sequestrations, and rehabilitation.
• Default data is a record of any failure to pay money owed.
• Other includes any information permitted under the NCA.

Information we receive from other sources.

We may combine this information with information you give to us and information we collect about you. We may use this information and the combined information for the purposes set out above.

We may monitor or record telephone conversations or other communications between you and us. We will use these recordings or transcripts of them to check your instructions to us, analyse, assess, and improve our services to customers, for training and quality purposes and for the purposes of investigating any complaint you may make, or as evidence in any dispute or anticipated disputes between you and us.

Sources for information.

We may collect your personal information, or obtain information originating from the following sources:

• A primary credit bureau.
• An organ of state, a court or judicial officer.
• Any person who supplies goods, services, or utilities to consumers.
• A person providing long-term and short-term insurance.
• Entities involved in fraud investigation.
• Educational institutions.
• Debt collectors to whom a credit provider ceded or sold book debt.

Who your information may be shared with and/or disclosed to.

Disclosure of your data to others may be necessary to ensure the smooth provision to you of the products, services, and information you request. Your data may be disclosed to the other entities as described below.

We may share your personal information with any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company, and its subsidiaries.

We may share your information with our partners, third parties and/or other companies who advertise on our website.

We share your information with service partners who assist us deliver our services or products to you only if they have agreed to secure your information.

We may share your information with selected third parties including:

• Credit bureau, to obtain your credit score and credit report and to provide our services to you (please see “Credit Bureau” below for more detail).
• Fraud prevention agencies, to prevent crime and trace those responsible (please see “Fraud Prevention Agencies” below for more detail).
• Business partners, suppliers, and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with you and/or for the delivery of any service or product offered to you and/or accepted by you.
• Service providers we use (such as comparison sites and aggregators) for analysis and profiling of your credit information (and any other data provided by you or on your behalf) to identify and inform you of credit products (for example, personal loans and credit cards) that are likely to be suited to your credit circumstances through targeted advertising.
• Advertisers and advertising networks that require the data (in an aggregated format whereby individuals cannot be individually identified), to select and serve relevant adverts to you and others and to make sure their adverts reach their intended audience (for example, by telling them how many women or men have clicked on an advert); and
• Analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our website.

We may disclose your personal information to third parties if:

• We sell or buy any business or assets; in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
• Kudough Credit Solutions Proprietary Limited or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets; and
• we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our Terms and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Kudough Credit Solutions Proprietary Limited, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

How long we keep personal information.

How long we keep your information will depend on the purpose for which we use it. We will only retain your information for as long as is necessary for those purposes.

Please note that if you withdraw consent to the processing of your personal data, access to our website and the associated services will be suspended or terminated. We will keep an archived record of your personal data for a period of up to 7 years after termination (unless a longer period is prescribed by law) for the purposes of responding to legal disputes and legal or regulatory enquiries or investigations only but, will not use this data for any other purpose.

Your credit report.

It is important to know what your credit report looks like, so that you can apply for credit with confidence. It is also important to know which accounts are negatively affecting your credit score so that you can improve the payment of these accounts. When you request your own credit report you can see who has been making enquiries on your profile. This is important to make sure that you do not become a victim of fraud or identity theft.

Direct marketing and how you can change your preference.

We offer you the opportunity to receive information from us. We will normally send direct marketing by email if we have your email address but may choose to contact you via other methods such as telephone or SMS or mail.

If you would like us to stop sending direct marketing to you, we offer simple ways to do this. Whenever you receive direct marketing, you will be told how to unsubscribe.

If you consented to receive marketing communications when you registered for our website or services, you can contact us on 086 999 0952 to easily switch off all marketing emails or via the “Your Profile” section on the website.

Where we store your data:

All information you provide us with is stored on our secure servers.

The transmission of information via the internet may not always be completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our website; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access, loss, or damage.

Requesting a copy of your personal information

You have the right to:

• at any time request us to confirm whether we hold information about you.
• We will respond to such a request at no charge.
• You may request a copy of any personal data about you held by us, and details of any third parties who have or have had access to your information.

We will respond within a reasonable time.

Any access request may be subject to a fee prescribed by the applicable data protection law in order to meet our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you. If a fee is payable, you may request an estimate of the fee before requesting a copy of your personal information. We may require you to pay a deposit for all or part of the fee.

The request must be in writing and must contain the following:

• your name and postal address
• a telephone number where you can be reached.
• a photocopy of your passport or driving licence.
• your signature and the date of the request.
• signed authority from the individual whose data is required if you are applying on their behalf.

Please send your request to:

Data Protection Manager Kudough Credit Solutions Proprietary Limited, 2^nd Floor, Woodstock Studios, 2 Francis Street, Cape Town, South Africa, 8001

Third-party websites:

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers, and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Cookies Policy

Kudough uses cookies for a variety of purposes, including ensuring that our website functions as expected.

By using our website (through any device) you agree that this Cookies Policy, together with our Privacy Policy and Terms, applies to that use.

We are committed to protecting you and any information (anonymous or otherwise) that we collect about you online. This section tells you about how and why we use cookies, and how this allows us to improve our service.

If you wish to use our website but would like us not to set cookies in your browser, you can disable or remove the cookies. Details on how to do this are set out in section 5 below. Please note that disabling or removing the cookies we or our third-party service providers set may impact the functionality and security of our website and our ability to provide our services to you. Please note that you will not be able to use our website or the associated services if you do not accept our use of cookies.

We reserve the right to make changes to our Cookies Policy. Any changes we may make to our Cookies Policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by email. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our Cookies Policy. Your continued use of our website is taken as your agreement to any such changes.

About cookies

Cookies are files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to the device you use when you visit a website. Your web browser (such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari) then sends these cookies back to our website [or application] on each subsequent visit. Cookies do not contain any information that personally identifies you.

We and our reputable third-party service providers use the information we obtain about you through the use of cookies for the following purposes to:

• recognise your device(s) when you visit our website.
• temporarily store data as part of, for example, customer surveys.
• test new content and evaluate its effectiveness.
• remember if you’ve been informed of our Cookies Policy, Privacy Policy, and other Terms.
• track you as you navigate our website (including tracking page usage and paths used by visitors through our website.
• improve our website’s usability.
• allow you to share pages with social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter / to support social media components, like Facebook or Twitter (where our website uses a plugin from these third-party platforms).
• analyse use of our website (including for statistical analysis, sales, and marketing research). To stop us setting these cookies you will need to set up your browser to reject all cookies (see further below).

We may also combine this web usage data with other information we have collected about you. We store this information so that we have a better and more specific understanding of the way users are using our website, and their preferences and interests, for the purposes set out above.

Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies, depending on how long they are used.

Persistent cookies remain on your device after you have closed your browser and allow a website to remember your actions and preferences. They are activated each time you visit the website where the cookie was generated. Sometimes persistent cookies are used by websites to provide targeted advertising based on the browsing history of the device. They are stored by the browser and remain valid until their set expiry date (unless deleted by the user before the expiry date).

Session cookies only last for the duration of your visit and are deleted when you close your browser. They facilitate tasks such as allowing a website to identify that a user of a particular device is navigating from page to page, supporting website security or basic functionality.

Many of the cookies we use are session cookies. For example, they help us to ensure the security of your session and can also keep you signed in to your Kudough account while you move between pages.

More about the cookies we use.

Whether a cookie is a first- or third-party cookie depends on which website the cookie comes from. First party cookies are those set by or on behalf of the website visited. All other cookies are third party cookies. We use both first party and third-party cookies. You can read more about them below. Third party cookies: In some cases, some of these cookies are managed for us by third parties, but we don’t allow the third party to use the cookies for any purpose other than those listed above. Strictly necessary cookies

These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website such as your Kudough account.

Performance cookies. 

These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.

Functionality cookies.

These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).

Analytics cookies. 

In order to keep our products and services easy to use and up-to-date, we use web analytics services to help us understand how people use our website. For example, we can see which parts of our services are most popular, identify when errors occur and test different versions of a page or feature to see which one works best. These web analytics services may be designed and operated by other companies on our behalf. They do this using small invisible images known as “web beacons” or “tracking pixels” that may be included in the digital products and services on our website. These are used for example to count the number of times something has been seen. These web beacons are anonymous and do not contain or collect any information that identifies you.

Cookies we use.

Below is a full list of the cookies we use together with a description of what they are used for, and whether they are ‘first’ or ‘third’ party. Where a cookie is a third-party cookie, please visit the providers’ website for more information.

Turning cookies off

In all modern browsers you may elect to reject cookies and/or enable do not track features, and we provide instructions on how to do this below. Please note however that by doing so parts of our website may no longer function as expected. For example, if you delete cookies any preferences they record will be lost. This includes for example where you have opted out from cookies, as this requires an opt-out cookie to be set.

If your concerns are based around third party cookies, then we recommend you just reject those cookies, rather than all cookies so that we can still provide you with the functionality you expect.

If you do wish to stop your browser from accepting cookies, see the following pages:

Mozilla Firefox: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-and-disable-cookies-website-preferences

Google Chrome: https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95647&p=cpn_cookies

Internet Explorer: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/block-or-allow-cookies

Safari: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5042

How to lodge a complaint / dispute your credit report.

If you believe and have evidence that any of the information on your credit report does not belong to you or has been inaccurately reflected, you have a right to dispute your credit report. 

The dispute process is as follows:

• Contact any one of the primary credit bureaus listed in 9 below and provide them with the requested information.
• Once the information has been received and accepted by the credit bureau, you will be notified that you have lodged a dispute.
• An investigation will then take place. The credit or data provider is given the opportunity to respond to your dispute by providing evidence that the information on your credit profile is correct.
• If the information is found to be valid, the information will be kept on your credit profile. However, if the information is not denied by the credit provider or the credit provider agrees that the information is incorrect, the incorrect information will be removed from your credit profile within 20 business days.
• If you are not satisfied with the process at the credit bureau you are welcome to seek the assistance of the National Credit Regulator in the resolution of your dispute.

Should you have a dispute relating to POPIA, in the first instance, you are required to lodge this dispute with a primary credit bureau.  Details of the Information Officers for each primary credit bureau are detailed on the CBA Website: www.cba.co.za.  If your dispute has not been satisfactorily concluded, please follow the process set out on the CBA website under the POPIA tab. 

The details of our Information Officer are set out below:

Information Officer Name: Chris van Rensburg

Registration number: 250/2021-2022/IRRTT

Changes to our privacy policy

Any changes we may make to our Privacy Policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by email. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our Privacy Policy.

Contact us:

If you have any questions about this Policy, please contact us on info@kudough.co.za

Date Updated: 1 June 2023