1. Applicability

5FM (Hereinafter referred to as “5FM” or “the station”), a radio station, owned by SABC SOC and subject to the laws of the Republic of South Africa.

This 5FM Privacy Notice has legal force and effect in terms of section 11 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 25 of 2002.

2. Introduction

Your privacy is important to 5FM. We are committed to respecting your privacy and the security and confidentiality of your personal data, communications and choices. In this policy we explain how we will treat your personal information collected as specified in clause 4 below.

By using our website or mobile application, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy.

By using our website, you further also agree to have your data used by our third party service providers referred to in this Policy who may use your data under limited and restricted circumstances in accordance with the terms of this policy.

3. Purpose

The purpose of this 5FM Privacy Notice is to inform visitors to the website located at http://www.5fm.co.za, mobile application(s) and the other 5FM owned and operated internal and external websites, web-hosted applications, web pages and/or web properties, referred to in this Privacy Notice collectively as ‘Sites’, about how we treat your Personal Information, as defined in the Protection of Personal Information Act, No. 4 of 2013 (Hereinafter referred to as the “POPI Act”) and your rights in relation to 5FM Sites privacy.

Please note that other 5FM owned and operated Sites may contain their own specific Privacy Notices. Specific privacy notices will take precedence over this generic privacy notice in the event of a conflict between the two.

4. Scope

This Sites Privacy Notice relates to the Personal Information collected electronically by or through the Sites, through, inter alia, the following means:

• Interactive Voice Response (IVR);
• Short Message Service (SMS);
• Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD);
• Wireless Application Protocol (WAP);
• Online Based Billing (OBB);
• Events Based Billing (EBB);
• Location Based Services (LBS); or
• through email services related to the Sites and to other electronic communications arising from the Sites’ services.

5FM collects the following set of data and information:
- Personal identification information (name, physical address, email address, phone number)
- Images, videos and audio

5. Privacy Principles Subscribed to by 5FM

The broad privacy principles to which 5FM subscribes are articulated in, inter alia, South Africa's Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 25 of 2002 (Hereinafter referred to as the “ECT Act”) together with the POPI Act and concern:

• Collection, collation, processing and disclosure of Personal Information;
• Processing limitation;
• Purpose specification;
• Further processing limitation;
• Record retention requirements;
• Limitation on disclosure;
• Third party disclosure of Personal Information;
• Destruction of Personal Information; and
• Exceptions for statistical purposes.

6. Technologies Deployed in Providing 5FM Sites and Collecting Personal Information

The following technologies are deployed in providing the Sites services:

• Cookies

• ‘Cookies’ allow us to better serve users of the Sites when they purchase a product, subscribe to a service, request additional information or participate in various activities posted on our Sites. A ‘cookie’ is a bit of text that is placed on a user's device when certain Sites are visited.

• ‘Cookies’ may be placed on a user’s device by 5FM and/or by third parties, which are used to obtain data such as user-name, shopping preferences and web pages or advertisements viewed by the user. When the user revisits our Sites, we can recognise him or her by the Internet ‘cookie’ and customise the users experience accordingly.

• You, as the user, can set your browser to provide notice whenever a ‘cookie’ is received, which gives you the opportunity to decide whether to accept it or not. Without ‘cookies,’ however, you may not be able to take full advantage of all our Site features.

• To the extent necessary in terms of any applicable legislation, by making use of the Sites, you expressly authorise 5FM and/or its associated business partners to make use of cookies in order to optimise your user experience whilst interacting with our Sites and/or making use of any of our services.

• ‘Clickstream’

• Certain of our Sites may collect information about the ‘clickstream’ of users. This ‘clickstream’ data contains information on the pages that users came from, the navigational paths they took and the areas of the Sites they visited.

• 5FM may, from time to time, track such information from inside and outside of our Sites. Additionally, we may, from time to time, track and match ‘clickstream’ data with Personal Information that you provide to 5FM in order to deliver content and other offerings such as new services to you. To the extent necessary in terms of any applicable legislation, by making use of the Sites, you expressly authorise 5FM and/or its associated business partners to track and match clickstream data with your Personal Information in order to optimise your user experience whilst interacting with our Sites and/or making use of any of our services.

• Web Beacons

• Certain email that you, as the user, receive from 5FM may contain ‘web beacons’ which consist of a line of code on our Sites that deliver a small graphic image from another website or third party ad server. The ‘web beacon’ may not be visible as it is generally a 1x1 pixel in size and is designed to blend into the background of a web page. Web beacons allow third parties to obtain information such as the IP address of the computer that downloaded the page on which the web beacon appears, the URL of the page on which the web beacon appears, the time the page containing the web beacon was viewed, the type of browser used to view the page and the information in ‘cookies’ set by a third party. 5FM may use ‘web beacons’ for activities such as monitoring the effectiveness of ad banners on our Sites and in the email sent to you, the user. To the extent necessary in terms of any applicable legislation, by making use of the Sites, you expressly authorise 5FM and/or its associated business partners to make use of web beacons in order to optimise your user experience whilst interacting with our Sites and/or making use of any of our services.

7. Security of Personal Information Collected and Processed

Information protection is strongest when the information remains in the possession of the data subject as owner of the information. You, as the user and data subject, are requested to carefully consider the nature and risk of submitting Personal Information before doing so. To comply with applicable law and in line with international standards and best practice, 5FM commits itself to exercising all reasonable diligence, care and skill in processing Personal Information through the use of technical, administrative and physical controls.

8. Personal Information Collected and Processed

5FM collects the following Personal Information:

• Information you choose to provide in order to access our services;
• Information you choose to provide through the ‘contact us’ and ‘support’ facilities;
• Information you provide in communications such as email and when calling our customer care centre;
• Information you provide to our business partners and service providers;
• Information about you, such as your demographics and lifestyle, from other sources;
• Information collected through the use of common internet technologies such as ‘cookies’, ‘clickstream’ and ‘web beacons’ on our Sites and emails; and
• Two resources of Personal Information are collected and processed technologically during your visit to the Sites. Some information is transient and stored only for the purpose of current transactions such as payments and then deleted. Some information is persistent and stored for periods beyond the current transaction such as data from multiple transactions accumulated over time and retrieved when needed to enhance your experience and improve our services. To the extent any Personal Information is collected, stored, utilised and/or processed in any other manner whatsoever, by making use of the Sites, you, as the Data Subject, expressly authorise 5FM and/or its associated business partners to collect the above mentioned Personal Information, to store the above mentioned Personal Information, to utilise the above mentioned Personal Information and/or to process the above mentioned Personal Information in such reasonable manner as it deems necessary in order to optimise your user experience whilst interacting with our Sites and/or making use of any of our services.

9. Uses and Sharing of Personal Information

5FM uses the Personal Information you, as the user of the Sites and/or services, submit to us in order to furnish you with information and to provide you with the services that you request and/or subscribe to. 5FM shall only process such Personal Information to the minimum extent same is necessary to achieve this end.
Personal Information, such as names, email addresses and mobile telephone numbers, collected through our Sites, by email and submitted by you, as the user, to 5FM is necessary for the following:

• To respond to your requests for services;
• To respond to your requests for information;
• The marketing and promotion of 5FM and other associated business partners services that we believe you may find of interest;
• For the statistical analysis of users' behaviour and for feedback purposes;
• For service development or the enhancement thereof;
• To customise and improve the content and layout of our Sites;
• For internal purposes, such as the administration and operation of our Sites; and
• For compliance with our legal obligations, policies and procedures.

Please note that, unless we have asked for and obtained your explicit consent, we do not share your Personal Information with third party marketers. Please note further that where 5FM makes use of any 3rd party to process Personal Information collected by us, we have in place Data Protection Agreements which regulate the processing of such Personal Information in accordance with the provisions of the POPI Act.

We will use the Personal Information you, as the user, submit to us only for purposes consistent with the reason you submit it to us in the first place or, with your further permission, for other purposes, and only to the extent necessary to achieve such purposes.

When we provide your Personal Information to other companies on a temporary basis, in order for them to provide services to 5FM, we require these other companies to protect your Personal Information in the same manner as 5FM does. These third party service providers cannot use Personal Information for any purpose other than the reason you provided it to 5FM.

In addition, the Personal Information you, as the user, provide us with is also used and shared with the following:

• Permanent or temporary staff and part-time contractors in the performance of their duties;
• Various third parties such as contractors, sub-contractors, suppliers and partners in the sourcing, supply and provision of services;
• Other service providers websites and WAP sites to which 5FM Sites may link;
• Data analysis and market research to provide better services;
• Backup, archiving, business continuity and disaster recovery purposes;
• Information communication technology service and infrastructure providers that enable and facilitate wireless application services and the free flow of information; and
• Routine and non-routine internal requests, including e-Discovery, court orders and law enforcement investigations.
• The provision of information to regulatory bodies governing the provision of 5FM services, including but not limited to, the Wireless Application Service Providers Association of South Africa (“WASPA”)

10. Choices

You, as the user, have the right to make choices as to what is done with your Personal Information. Sometimes, your choices are made in the form of content such as online purchases, subscribing to services, registration or opting in or out of receiving communications or marketing material and engaging and/or interacting with our Sites.

Once you, as the user, have submitted information to us and requested that we communicate with or market to you, you may at any time thereafter choose to opt out of further contact with us.

Personal Information submitted by you is kept for as long as the purpose for which you furnished it to us exists or for the retention periods specified in law.

11. Access to Your Personal information

You, as the user, may access the Personal Information that we hold about you.

You can ask us to correct any errors or delete Personal Information we have about you.

To protect your privacy, the privacy of others and to ensure the integrity of our business information we may have to verify your identity before we allow access to or change the information that we have about you, as the user.

Access to your Personal Information by 5FM’s staff and third parties is limited and restricted by 5FM through training, administrative, technical and physical controls in accordance with best practice standards.

All access to your Personal Information must comply with 5FM’s policy relating to the protection of Personal Information.

12. Data Collection and Usage

We collect user data, including but not limited to (list specific types, e.g., email address, device information, and location data), to provide and improve our services, personalize user experience, and for analytical purposes. This data is only collected with user consent and for the purposes outlined in this policy.

13. Data Sharing

We do not share user data with third parties unless required to provide our services (e.g., with payment processors or analytics providers) or comply with legal obligations. All third-party partners are contractually obligated to protect user data and use it solely for the purposes specified.

14. User Rights

Users have the right to access, modify, or delete their personal data. To exercise these rights, users can contact us at Digital@5fm.co.za.We will respond to all requests within 30 days, and take appropriate actions as required by law.

15. Security Measures

We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to safeguard user data from unauthorized access, disclosure, or destruction. This includes encryption, secure servers, and regular security assessments of our systems and practices.

16. Contact Information

For any questions or concerns related to your data or this privacy policy, please contact us at Digital@5FM.co.za

17. Policy Updates

We may update this privacy policy periodically to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. Users will be notified of significant changes via (email notification, in-app alerts, or website updates) at 7 days before the changes take effect.

18. Important Information

5FM processes Personal Information, some of which flows to and from other legal jurisdictions. Please be aware that there may be implications in terms of the specific legal requirements in South Africa and other legal jurisdictions which may, depending upon the actual location of Personal Information, be relevant or become relevant. 5FM seeks to comply with complex technical and legal issues wherever possible, but users should be aware that international law and certain aspects of technology restrict our control in some respects.

As Personal Information is most safe, when under the control of its owners, you as the user and data subject, are cautioned to give careful consideration to the Personal Information you choose to disclose.

Sites include links to third party platforms or websites, and 5FM is not responsible for the privacy policies of these third party platforms or websites. These third party platforms or websites will have their own privacy policies.

19. Limits on expectation of privacy

To comply with law and in line with international standards and best practice relating to the use of information technology in its business activities, 5FM monitors and intercepts live communications such as IVR, SMS, USSD, WAP, EEB, LBS, email and website activity in compliance with of the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-related Information Act, 70 of 2002.

Subject to the provisions of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 25 of 2002, South African and international privacy principles and, where necessary and if required by law, 5FM will also access static data created, received, communicated and stored by 5FM as part of 5FM’s Site services.

20. Enquiries

This privacy policy may be updated from time to time.

If you have any questions, complaints or are concerned about your Personal Information or wish to report any malicious activity such as spamming, phishing and the like, please contact:

• Send an email to digital@5fm.co.za

If you are not satisfied with the response you receive, you may escalate your concern to:

21. Corporate Information and How to Contact Us

South African Broadcasting Corporation SOC Limited
Name	South African Broadcasting Corporation SOC Limited
Legal status	State Owned Company
Physical address and the address for receipt of legal service of documents	Cnr Henley & Artillery Road Auckland Park 2006 Johannesburg
Postal address	Private Bag X1, Auckland Park, 2006
Phone number	+27 (0)11 714 2500
Facsimile numbers	+27 (0)11 714 4031
Website address	http://www.5fm.co.za
Email address	Legalservices@sabc.co.za
Attention	GE: Legal, Governance & Regulatory

I BET YOU CANT FIND - CRIME STORIES (23 APRIL 2025)