Website Privacy Notice

• Contact and enquiry details you provide: name, job title, organisation, email address, telephone number, country and the content of your message.
• Discovery-call qualification information you choose to submit, such as the challenge you want to discuss and your organisation's context.
• Careers and recruitment information you submit, such as your application, role of interest and any document you attach.
• Sampling and campaign preferences where you request AO material through the website.
• Any other information you choose to include in correspondence with AO.

Providing this information is voluntary. If you choose not to provide it, AO may be unable to respond to your enquiry, arrange a discovery conversation or consider an application.

• IP address, approximate location derived from it, browser and device type, operating system and language.
• Pages viewed, referring page, date and time of access, and interaction events such as scrolling or clicking.
• Security and abuse-prevention signals generated by the hosting and delivery network.
• Where you consent to analytics, aggregated interaction analytics, heatmaps and session recordings with sensitive areas masked.
• Where you consent to advertising measurement, advertising identifiers and conversion events.

Optional analytics uses Microsoft Clarity and optional advertising measurement uses Microsoft Advertising Universal Event Tracking. Neither is strictly necessary, both rely on your consent, and both are described in full — including every cookie, storage key, duration and default state — in the Cookie Policy. A record of your consent decision is stored in your browser for six months so that your choice can be honoured; it contains no identifying information.

• Responding to your enquiry and routing it internally to the AO entity best placed to assist.
• Arranging and conducting discovery conversations you request.
• Considering applications and managing recruitment interactions.
• Operating, securing, maintaining and improving the website.
• Measuring website usage where you have consented to analytics.
• Measuring advertising performance where you have consented to advertising cookies.
• Keeping records of your consent choices and of privacy requests.
• Meeting legal, regulatory, accounting and governance obligations, and establishing or defending legal claims where necessary.

• Consent — optional analytics, optional advertising measurement, optional third-party content, and optional marketing communications where you opt in. You may withdraw consent at any time.
• Performance of a contract, or steps taken at your request before entering into one — responding to a proposal request or progressing a supplier, customer or employment discussion.
• Legal obligation — where AO must retain or disclose information under applicable law.
• Legitimate interests, where applicable and balanced against your rights — responding to business enquiries, securing the website, preventing abuse and improving AO's services. Under POPIA, comparable grounds apply, including the legitimate interests of the responsible party or of the data subject.

The basis that applies depends on the relevant processing activity, the entity involved and the law applicable to it.

• Affiliated AO entities, where an enquiry or relationship falls within their area of responsibility.
• Hosting, content-delivery, security and email-delivery providers engaged to operate the website and transmit correspondence.
• Microsoft, as the provider of Clarity analytics and Microsoft Advertising measurement, where you have consented to the relevant category.
• AO's business systems, including CRM and enquiry-management systems used to record and progress enquiries.
• Professional advisers, auditors and regulators, where required or permitted by law.

Service providers act as operators or processors on AO's instructions for the services they provide, except where they determine their own purposes as independent providers, as Microsoft does for parts of its analytics and advertising services.

• Encryption of website traffic in transit.
• Access controls and role separation for internal systems that receive website enquiries.
• Masking of form fields, sensitive page areas and personal information in analytics, and exclusion of authenticated portal routes from analytics recording.
• Network-level protection against automated abuse.
• Supplier due diligence appropriate to the service being provided.

• Enquiry and discovery records are kept for as long as needed to respond and to maintain a reasonable business record of the interaction.
• Recruitment information is kept for the duration of the recruitment process and for a reasonable period afterwards, unless you ask AO to delete it earlier.
• Website analytics information is retained by the analytics provider according to its own retention periods; the cookies and storage used are listed with their exact durations in the Cookie Policy.
• Consent records are kept for six months from the decision, after which you are asked again.
• Information may be kept for longer where a law, a regulatory obligation or an actual or anticipated legal claim requires it.

• Request access to the personal information AO holds about you.
• Request correction of information that is inaccurate, out of date or incomplete.
• Request deletion or destruction of information, where the law allows.
• Object to processing, including processing based on legitimate interests, in the circumstances the law provides.
• Object to direct marketing at any time, and unsubscribe from any marketing email AO sends.
• Withdraw consent for optional cookies, analytics, advertising measurement or marketing at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing before withdrawal.
• Where the GDPR applies to the processing: request restriction of processing and, in applicable cases, receive your information in a portable format.
• Lodge a complaint with AO's Information Officer and, if you remain dissatisfied, with the competent supervisory or regulatory authority.

To exercise a right, email info@aogroup.co.za. To change or withdraw cookie consent, use the cookie preference controls. AO does not use the website to make decisions about you by automated means that produce legal effects or similarly significantly affect you.