Bridge of the POPI Act.

To Whom it may Concern,

I’m writing this email on behalf of my Mother-in-Law and from a place of discomfort and disappointment.

My Mother-in-Law started receiving calls from a number that she’s unfami**** with and decided to ignore these calls. At some point she ended up answering the call only to find that it was a male voice that she didn’t know and started asking her questions regarding the car that she traded in with Toyota Menlyn in 2021. The person on the other end of the line asked her to come with him for a change of ownership of the car and a re-print of the car papers as he allegedly lost the original documents.

My Mother-in-Law contacted Toyota Menlyn to find out as to why she was receiving calls from a total stranger in this regard and she was told to contact Johan (Manager of Used Cars), unfortunately he was unavailable and they promised to pass the message for him to call her back. She waited for his call but the call didn’t come and decided that I should try to find out what was happening. I called Toyota on 19/05/2023 and asked to speak to Johan and he was dismissive saying that he has a client in his office and can’t speak to me, to my irritation I asked him to put me through to someone who might assist as a person who needs urgent assistance in this regard. He ended up hanging up on me when I asked him to put me through to someone who might be able to assist me. I contacted the Customer service Toyota Menlyn and spoke to Amanda September who advised that my mother-in-law’s details are still in the system of which it was not supposed to be the case, and to my surprise I asked her about the Protection of Personal Information and she also confirmed that it was against the regulation for the company to give out such information to anyone for any purpose for that matter. Amanda September said she’ll forward the matter to head office for further investigation and she’ll contact me back after 30 minutes.

An hour and a half later I called her back only for her to tell me that she hasn’t received any feedback but all she knows is that the car was sold from one the Toyota branches in Centurion, and the person investigating is still trying to gather information as to who was the sales person that sold the car. She said she’ll be in contact the minute she gets all the information and I’ll also be contacted by the person investigating the matter.

This situation has led to a very difficult couple of days for my mother-in-law as she’s constantly thinking that she might be followed and maybe this person might come to her house. She feels that her life is in danger and this has caused a lot of emotional distress, anxiety, depression and nightmares at times, we are talking about a 73-year-old lady who’s staying with her 2 grandchildren(Girls) and know for a fact that she wouldn’t even be able to protect herself should this person show up to her house. I’m assuming that he also has the address if he managed to get the contact without any proper channels followed to protect her information.

We request an enquiry for this matter.

NB: We intend to report this to the Information regulator as this is a serious breach/violation of personal information