Breach of confidentiality

ood Day

I trust that you are well,

South Africa recently suffered its largest data leak to date with, conservatively, an estimated 30 million South Africans’ personal information becoming publicly available. My Markams account is presently in arreas and my account was handed over to VeriCredit. VeriCredit sent me an sms confirming my account information, status and balance of my account. To my shock the same sms was sent to my Ex girlfriend without my permission or consent. Under South Africa’s current laws, people are often left without a practical way to enforce their rights, usually common in corporations that dually abuse the consumers rights in confidentiality in personal information, placing the consumer in serious risk in identity theft, ***** etc.

Under POPI, the collection, processing and publication of personal information will be stringently regulated, including the manner in which personal information must be safeguarded. This is because POPI prescribes specific requirements as to how personal information may be stored and transferred among other things ,When a person fails to adhere to these new rules, they could suffer significant penalties. POPI does not require that personal information be made public in order for liability to arise. Similarly, a person does not have to intentionally breach another’s right to privacy in order to be liable – POPI imposes liability in the event of either an intentional or negligent non-compliance.

Clearly most corporations will not adhere to POPI imposed and will continue breaching confidentiality on the consumers private information. Clearly Markhams and VeriCredit has no respect to clients personal information and will continue violating my rights.

I contacted VeriCredit regarding the above matter and spoke to a consultant by the name of Boitumelo who promised me that her senior or manager will call me, last week, till this day I was never contacted. This truly shows and proves the behavior of cooperates institutions and their lack of professionalism and their commitment on POPI.

I will take legal action for breaching our agreement related to breach of confidentiality and will share this with all media platforms hopefully my concerns will be heard and taken seriously.

Have a lovely day