Who we are
Hertz Law is a virtual law firm serving clients nationwide in South Africa. The firm is duly registered with the KZN law society and the Legal Practice Council.
Our website address is: https://hertzlaw.co.za.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Comments
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
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. Uploading of media by users is currently disabled.
Contact forms
Cookies
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 have an account and you log in to this site, 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
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.
Analytics
We use Google and other analytics software to analyse website traffic. We use this to evaluate our marketing efforts and in no other way.
Who we share your data with
Your data is not shared with anyone. Our website is managed internally and no data is shared with third parties unless the user has opted in to third party sharing, which we do not control. The collected data is collated for analyses by management and retained for future reference.
How long we retain your data
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.
Information is backed up and is kept in accordance with record retention legislation in South Africa. Attorneys must keep records of clients for 7 years from the last transaction.
What rights you have over your data
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 we send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service, but is not transmitted for any other reason. Data is stored in the cloud until accessed and downloaded to our internal machines for reporting purposes.
Your contact information
If you complete the contact form, we will add your information to a database. We will remove your information upon receipt of a written request from you to heidi@hertzlaw.co.za.
Additional information
How we protect your data
We will take all appropriate, reasonable, technical and organisational measures to safeguard your data to prevent loss of, damage to, or unauthorised use, access or destruction of your data.
What data breach procedures we have in place
We use best practice within reason in terms of password protection, firewalls, spam protection and virus threats. We use multiple saving platforms to assist with redundancy in the case of a breach.
Our site and e-mail is hosted with a Elite Host and backups are available for restore.
What third parties we receive data from
With the analytical software, we may receive data from the user from Facebook and LinkedIn and other third parties but only to the extent that the user has opted in or as is permitted in law.
What automated decision making and/or profiling we do with user data
We do not make any automated decisions, but we do use the user data to formulate our marketing efforts and strategies.
Questions?
If you have questions about this policy, please send us an e-mail to heidi@hertzlaw.co.za