Privacy Policy

Information We Collect

BOWestAfrica may collect information you provide when creating an account, purchasing membership, registering for an event, requesting a service, making a purchase, joining the newsletter, or updating your profile. This can include your name, email, phone, organization, industry, country, member preferences, and information needed to complete a transaction.

How We Use Information

We use this information to operate your account and membership, process orders and registrations, provide requested services, manage the network and projects, send account-related notices, and improve the BOWestAfrica experience.

Printed Membership Cards and Shipping

For Gold and Diamond members who request their included printed card, BOWestAfrica collects and uses confirmed fulfilment details such as name, shipping address, country, postal code and phone only to produce, ship, track and administer card delivery. These details are restricted to authorized administrators who need them for fulfilment.

Payments and WooCommerce

Orders are managed through WooCommerce and payments through the payment gateways enabled on the site. The BOWestAfrica theme does not store full card numbers or readable passwords. Payment providers may process information under their own privacy practices.

Network, Events and Member Content

Information you choose to make visible in the Network may be viewed by authorized members. Event registrations, connections, opportunities, requests and member activity are used to provide the relevant features and for moderation or security.

Global Tools and External Services

Currency and weather tools use external public-data services. When you use these tools, your browser communicates directly with those providers and may transmit ordinary technical data such as your IP address. Weather tools also transmit the city you search for.

Cookies and Preferences

The site may use cookies or browser storage for sessions, EN/FR language preference, interface state, WooCommerce cart functions and other necessary features. Enabled third-party services may also use their own technologies.

Retention and Security

We retain information for as long as needed to provide services, meet transaction-related obligations, resolve disputes and protect the site. Administrative access to member data is limited to authorized users.

Your Choices and Rights

You can update several details from your member profile. You may also request access to or erasure of eligible personal data. Some transaction, membership, event or project records may need to be retained for administrative, security or legal reasons.

Contact Us

For privacy questions or requests, use the BOWestAfrica Contact page or the official contact address displayed on the site.

Additional WordPress Policy Content

Who we are

Suggested text: Our website address is: http://bowestafrica.com.

Comments

Suggested text: When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

Suggested text: If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Cookies

Suggested text: If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select "Remember Me", your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Suggested text: Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Who we share your data with

Suggested text: If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.

How long we retain your data

Suggested text: If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

Suggested text: If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where your data is sent

Suggested text: Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.