The South African Protection of Personal Information Act will become enforceable from 1 July 2021 with fines of up to R 10 million for non-compliance.

It creates nine actionable rights such as the right to access, correction and deletion of personal data and additional conditions for lawful data processing such as the consent obtained to acquire the data obtained. The full text can be seen here: POPIA

Websites keep cookies containing customer data. Some cookies remember the user name or password to make navigation easier (preference cookies), others to feed information back to Google Analytics so the site owner can see visitor statistics (statistic cookies) and others feed valuable marketing data back to platforms such as Facebook to create an audience of people visiting your Facebook page (marketing cookies).  

The POPIA Act requires that you ask website visitors their permission to use these cookies. If you don’t, you can be fined. Further, it requires that users can know what cookies the website uses and a means to modify permissions granted such as to delete all cookies.

CookieBot is a Danish company that created software which can be installed on your website to make your website compliant with the POPIA Act.  The software has a pop up that asks for cookie permissions and a regularly updated list of cookies your website uses,  embedded into your Cookie Policy or Privacy Page. The entry level product for small websites of up to 100 pages is free but if you have more than that it starts at $9 (about R 135) per month for up to 500 pages and includes customisation options for the pop up widget.

PeppaWeb Marketing has been providing front line support for companies in Europe to implement the GDPR compliant CookieBot solution  since the implementation of GDPR in 1998. As an approved CookieBot Reseller, we get paid a small commission for this work.