Last Revised: January 31, 2024

Principles of data protection

This Data Privacy Policy covers information we collect from users and visitors of https://benmakva.com and our related services (collectively, the “Services”).  By using our Services or otherwise agreeing to this Data Privacy Policy, you are consenting to the collection, use and other handling of your information as described below.

If you have any unhandled concern about providing information to us or having such information displayed on the Services or otherwise used in any manner permitted in this Privacy Policy, you should not use the Services.

As Benmak Virtual Assistants, we are committed to professional handling of your information and sticking to the ethical standards and the data privacy laws and regulations.

1. The Information We Collect

Information Submitted by You

Information about you: We collect information about you when you choose to use any of our services on the website:

• When you create an account on our website, you provide us with information such as your name, email address, billing address. You may be prompted to provide additional information to enhance your profile such as your location, industry, bio, picture, and phone number. This information remains private and can only be accessed by you and us, and not by the public.  
• Information about the preferred audience, which majorly involves umbrella industries, fields or professions.
• Information about the content you would like us to share with your audience. This includes: Videos, live sessions, photos, audios, links and graphic design products, Questionnaires, quizzes, poll prompts, among others. This information is meant to be shared with your audience, and is therefore for public consumption.
• While submitting your Book for review or Manuscript for editing, e will collect your name, phone number, email address and an e-copy or physical copy of your published book for our records, but this information will not be made available to the public.
• Log in details to your personal accounts and log in details to your organization’s or corporate platforms, or both. This is specifically for Social Media Management, Website Design and Development related services or book review publishing service.
• When you complete a survey, your responses will remain anonymous, and in any case we have to display the results, we will do it along with generic identity details.
• When you submit an enquiry form or consultation form, it is important to be as accurate as possible and list as much relevant information as possible. The more information you provide, the easier it will be to address your pain points with exactitude. Depending on what you have filled, we will need, at the least, your name, company name, project details, email contact details and preferred way for us to contact you. Please note that your email address, phone number, and other submitted information would be provided to the service providers as well as affiliate network and partner Vendors who may best fit your project needs.

Information about others:  You may provide information about others (e.g. clients), including their names, emails, phone numbers and companies to support our efforts to connect you with the right audience, especially on social media, or initiate conversations with them on your behalf.  These details and related generic information touching on a field or industry of interest are purely suggestions of who you want us to include in your social media network. The information you provide about others is only used in adding building your social media network. You should never provide another person’s information as yours, or use it in opening a user account on our website.

Information from Third Parties

We may collect, process and store your user ID associated with any social media account (such as your LinkedIn account) that you use to sign in to the Services or connect with or use with the Services. When you sign in to your account with your social media account information, or otherwise connect to your social media account with the Services, you consent to our collection, storage, and use, in accordance with this Privacy Policy, of the information that you choose to make available to us through the social media interface. This could include, without limitation, any information that you have made public in connection with your social media account, information that the social media service shares with us, or information that is disclosed as being shared during the sign-in process. Please see your social media provider’s privacy policy and help center for more information about how they share information when you choose to connect your account.

We may also obtain information about you if it is contained in user-generated content that other users post to or about our Services. For example, a user could include information about you in a review they post.

Automatically Collected Information

We and third parties may use automated means to collect information about you, your computer or other device, and your use of the Services.  These automated means include technologies such as cookies, Web server logs, Web beacons, and JavaScript.

Cookies are files that websites and online services create and access on your computer or other Internet-connected device to uniquely identify your browser or to store information or settings on your device to help us recognize you, improve your experience, increase security, and measure use of our Services. Our Services may use HTTP cookies, HTML5 cookies, Flash cookies and other types of local storage (such as browser-based or plugin-based local storage). Your browser may tell you how to be notified when you receive certain types of cookies and how to restrict or disable certain cookies.  Please note, however, that without cookies or local storage you may not be able to use all of the features of our Services.

Regarding information gathering through cookies and other automated means, Web servers may log information such as your device type, operating system type, mobile device identifier provided by your mobile device operating system), browser type, domain, and other system settings, the name of your ISP or mobile carrier, as well as the language your system uses and the country and time zone where your device is located.

The Web server logs also may record information such as the address of the Web page that referred you to our Services and the IP address of the device you use to connect to the Internet. They also may log information about your interaction with our Services, such as which pages you visit.

We may also collect different types of information about your location, including general information (e.g., IP address, zip code) and more specific information (e.g., GPS-based functionality on mobile devices used to access the Services), and may use that information to customize the Services with location-based information, advertising, and features.

For example, if you provide a zip code that indicates that you live in California, the Services may be customized with California-specific information and advertisements. In order to do this, your location information may be passed along to our advertising or marketing team. If you access the Services through a mobile device and you do not want your device to provide us with GPS location-tracking information, you can disable the GPS or other location-tracking functions on your device, provided your device allows you to do this. See your device manufacturer’s instructions for further details.

2. How We Use Information

What legal basis do we rely on to process your Personal Data?

• Consent: When you receive our promotional material, you consent that your Personal data will be processed by us and we rely on this consent. You have the right to withdraw consent at any time.  We will stop to process data after consent is withdrawn, where consent is the only legal basis for processing.
• When you fulfill a contract: We will process your Personal data when you take steps to enter into a contract with us such as when you order our Services, use or purchase our Services, or when you get into a partnership with us. We use the said data to enable us deliver to the requirements of the Service(s) you have ordered, or the contract that you have entered into with us.
• For mutual promotion: At times, we may use your details, especially the name and email, to promote your work on our social media platforms. This is specifically tied to Book Reviews, where we may post a section or summary or the book review we have done for you and attach purchase details for prospects to reach out to you. This promotes your book and you as an author, and promotes us as book review service providers. We may also use works delivered to you, such as posters and e-cards, to advertise our services. We never use them for any commercial purposes though, apart from showcasing our services.
• Legitimate Interest: We process your data when it is in our legitimate interests to do this and when these interests are not overridden by your data protection rights. For example, we may need to get analytics for our website visitors, or to share valuable information with you.
• Legal obligation: We use the information we collect about you to:
• Establish your account and provide the Services;
• Fulfill your requests for our Services and provide customized content to you;
• Communicate with you through email, public-use updates posted on the website, and other means available through the Services.
• Create, tailor, deliver and study the effectiveness of advertising and promotional material both on and off of the Services, as well as for analytics (including as described in the Online Analytics, Advertising and Do-Not-Track section below);
• Improve the Services and to research and develop innovative features and new services;
• Investigate, prevent, or take action regarding unlawful or harmful activities relate to our Services and Platform (https://www.benmakva.com) , including potential threats to and violations of our Terms of Service.

Please note that we may anonymize and/or de-identify information collected through the Services or via other means so that the information no longer relates to you. Where we have appropriately anonymized and/or de-identified information so that it no longer identifies you personally, our use and disclosure of such information is not subject to this Privacy Policy, and may be used and disclosed to others without restriction.

3. How We Share Information

Information about you may be shared for the following purposes:

• Any information included in your user profile and any content you post on Benmak Virtual Assistants (e.g., your reviews) may be seen by others. When you post a review, your content, including your name as the contributor (if the review is not anonymous), may also be displayed in search engine results.
• If you provide any reviews or testimonials either about Clutch or service providers covered in our research we may post those reviews or testimonials or portions thereof. Reviews or testimonials and advertisements may include your name (if the review is not anonymous), title, company, and other information that you have provided.
• When we have your consent or where it is necessary to carry out your instructions.
• As reasonably necessary to provide Benmak Virtual Assistants features and functionality to you. We may share your information with third-party service providers such as Hootsuite, Buffer and others. This allows us to seamlessly serve you by use of Social Media Management tools and other automations and platforms which make our services to better serve your needs and necessary to operate features of our Services. These third-party platforms and service providers have access to and may collect information only as needed to perform their functions and are not permitted to share or use the information for any other purpose.
• In connection with significant corporate events (for example, we may share or disclose information we have about you in the event we sell or transfer all or a portion of our business or assets — such as in connection with a merger, acquisition, reorganization, bankruptcy, dissolution or liquidation — or take steps in anticipation of any such event). In such cases of major transitions, we would inform our clients for them to choose whether they desire to continue using our services.
• When we believe in good faith that sharing is reasonably necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding possible unlawful activities or to comply with legal process or other legal requirements; when we deem disclosure appropriate in situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, potential violations of our terms, or claims of violation of the rights of third parties; or when we deem disclosure appropriate to protect the rights, property and safety of us, our employees, users, or another person or entity (the disclosures described here may involve the sharing of your information with, for example, law enforcement, government agencies, courts, or other parties).

4. Online Analytics, Advertising and Do-Not-Track

Online Analytics Providers

To help us better understand your use of the Services, we may use third-party analytics. These third parties use the sorts of technologies described in the “Automatically Collected Information” section above. The information collected by this technology will be disclosed to or collected directly by these service providers.

Advertising Technology Providers

Data about your activities on our Services may be collected by us or by advertising technology providers for use in delivering online advertising tailored to your individual characteristics, activities, interests and other factors.  These ad services may track your online activities over time by collecting information through automated means, including through the use of the various technologies described above, and they may use this information, and other information they receive from us or other sources, to deliver advertisements to you on our website, our emails, and other websites.  We and third-party vendors may use first-party cookies and third-party cookies together, and other automated technologies, and in some cases additional information, (i) to inform, optimize, and serve ads based on past visits to our Services or other factors and (ii) to report how ad impressions, other uses of ad services, and interactions with these ad impressions and ad services are related to visits to our Services or other factors.

When necessary, you may opt out of receiving tailored advertising and other communications from us.  The opt-outs described in this Privacy Policy do not block or delete cookies, or prevent the use of cookies or other technologies for purposes other than selecting ads based on your interests as inferred by your online behavior. If you opt out, data may still be collected about your web browsing activities and you will still see advertising. Ads may be delivered based on other factors, such as the content of the web page in which they are shown, or demographic information obtained through other means.

Do Not Track Disclosure

Do Not Track (“DNT”) is a privacy preference that users can set in certain web browsers to inform websites and services that they do not want certain information about their webpage visits collected over time and across websites or online services. However, we do not recognize or respond to browser-initiated DNT signals, as the internet industry is still working to determine what DNT means, how to comply with DNT, and how to create a common approach to responding to DNT.

5. Information Access, Correction, and Deletion Options

You have a right to (1) access, modify, correct, or delete certain aspects of your information regarding your user account, and (2) close your user account. If you close your account, your information may be removed or unpublished from the Services within a reasonable amount of time.

Note that information that others have copied may remain visible and you may not be able to access, correct, or eliminate any information about you that others copied or exported out of Benmak Virtual Assistants, because this information may not be in our control. Your information may be displayed in search engine results until the search engine refreshes its cache. For example, a review to our Services.

Data retention

We retain your information as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services or because we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so. We also retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements. We store your information as long as is necessary for the purpose for which we have collected it.

For our records, we may retain documents of works and services we have offered you, such as Data Entry files, content calendars, book reviews, website URLs and pitch deck designs, for a considerable time. These details are not availed to the public or third parties, or used for any commercial purposes, but part of them may be used as samples when engaging with clients needing similar services or enquiring about formats and templates. We will only share with them samples which do not capture any sensitive details about you, your organization, or the entity the data represents.

Data Deletion

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymize it or, if it is possible (e.g. your personal information is stored for backup archives) then will securely store your personal information and isolate if from any further processing until the deletion/erasure is possible.

Within one month after we stop offering you services that required sensitive data from you, such as Social Media Management, we will consider informing you to change your log-in details to your social media platforms. We also delete such sensitive details from our files, but we may retain some data such as name, email and location, to help us monitor our progress as a company, and also for records about clients we have served. If even after no longer being a direct recipient or beneficiary of our services you visit our website, order a service, pay for a service, follow our social media pages, leave a review or create a user account on our website, the already-discussed tracking methods may pick your data and store it on our files.

6. Handling Payments

Our website allows clients to make payments within the website, as part of the Service ordering process. However, these payments are not handled within the website, but through payment handling platforms like PayPal, Banks, SendWave and M-Pesa. This means our website is a platform for information and instructions, but not a platform for directly handling any payments whatsoever.

For example, the website will automatically share an invoice with you as a client, but will not send you a message notification about your payment, apart from notifying you of the order progress upon successful payment. The security of your payments, therefore, is fully handled and satisfactorily secured by the payment service provider(s) you choose.

You may be required to share the payment message notification you receive after payment with us via email. This information is used to verify your successful payment for our services and further process your services as required.

In cases where a refund is required, or there are technical hitches affecting the processing of your payment and order progress, we will need your basic payment details such as name, account number, email address and other necessary details as required by the payment services provider, to allow us effect the required transaction process successfully.

Your basic payment details may be accessible by third parties as part of our compliance to the regulations of the law, such as Tax returns and related services.

7. Handling Comments and Reviews

Comments, reviews and others forms of user generated content may be moderated to fit the requirements of our audience and language use. Profanity, non-inclusivity and use of other forms of language we may deem inappropriate is not acceptable and may lead to deletion of your content without consent. Comments and Reviews posted on our website are visible to the public and may be on search engines, and their access by third parties is not within our control.

You should therefore not share sensitive details about yourself or other people on the comments or reviews. Such include passwords, credit card details, bank identification details, PINs, bank account balances and other sensitive data.

8. Security

We have implemented various technical, administrative, and physical safeguards to protect your information and handle it ethically. These safeguards vary depending on the sensitivity of the information being handled.

9. Third Party Links and Services

Some content on our website, https://benmakva.com, may contain links to third-party websites, applications and services, including social media services, as well as embedded images or other third-party content and features. Your use of these features may result in the collection, processing or sharing of information about you, depending on the feature.  

We are not responsible for the content, features, security or practices of any third parties. We do not vet, endorse, or make any representations about third parties or their websites, applications or services. The information you choose to provide to or that is collected by these third parties is not covered by our Privacy Policy.

10. Changes to this Policy.

This Privacy Policy may be modified from time to time as our business practices and legal requirements evolve.  If this Privacy Policy is modified, we will provide appropriate notice of the change, and we will include the effective date of the update.  Please review the changes carefully and regularly. If you disagree with the Privacy Policy, you must stop using the Service. If you continue to use Benmak Virtual Assistants after we publish or communicate a notice about any changes to this Privacy Policy, you are consenting to such changes.

11. Children’s Privacy.

The Services are not intended for use by children under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect (or knowingly allow any third party to collect) personal information from persons under the age of 18. If we become aware that personal information has been collected from a person under the age of 18, we will delete this information and terminate the person’s account as quickly as possible.

In cases where we need to offer a services to a person below the age of 18, for example reviewing a book by a child, we will obtain consent from the minor’s parent or guardian. In countries where the age for adulthood is lower than 18, we will use the consent of the adult user.

12. International Users

The Services are hosted in Kenya and are governed by Kenyan law. If you are using the Services from outside Kenya, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored and processed in Kenya, where our databases are operated. The data protection and other laws of Kenya might not be as comprehensive as those in your country. By using the Services, you consent to your information being transferred to our facilities and to the facilities of those third parties with whom we share it as described in our Privacy Policy.

13. Your California Privacy Rights

We do not disclose your personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes without your consent. If you have any questions regarding this policy, or would like to change your preferences, you may contact us using the information in Section 13 below.

14. Your Rights within the EU

Whenever you use our services from within the EU, the following rights apply to your user account:

The right to be informed, The right of access, The right to rectification, The right to erasure, The right to restrict processing, The right to data portability, The right to object and rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

If you wish to exercise any of the above rights, please contact us using the contact details we have provided below. For the protection of your privacy and security, our Data protection team shall take every reasonable step to ensure that your identity is verified before granting access, or rectification, or deletion.

15. No Rights of Third Parties

This Data Privacy Policy does not create rights enforceable by third parties.

16. How to Contact Us

For any enquiries, comments, complaints or concerns, please email us at benmakva@gmail.com, info@benmakva.com, or Call or WhatApp us at +254740487849 or visit our Contact Us page to fill an enquiry form.