Johannesburg - Users of the PayMyFines website are accusing the website of giving out their personal details to the company managing the e-toll project without their permission.
Justice Project South Africa chairman Howard Dembovsky said people who have registered with the website have started receiving e-toll bills through e-mail, even though they were not registered e-tag users and had never given their e-mail addresses to Sanral.
One account which was sent to a user who owned a fleet of vehicles was for R6656, but provided no pictures or details of e-toll transactions.
The e-mail was sent from etcrecovery.co.za
A domain search of etcrecovery.co.za and paymyfines.co.za shows they are both owned and operated by TMT Services (Pty) Ltd, the South African company that is part of the Austrian company Kapsch TrafficCom, which runs the e-toll project.
The e-tolls are run by Electronic Toll Collection.
Dembovsky said users of the PayMyFines website were upset about their e-mail addresses being handed over for e-toll transactions because conditions on www.paymyfines.co.za say “we will not disclose personal information collected about you without your express consent thereto or through due legal process”.
CRIMINAL CHARGES
Dembovsky said the company was contravening its own privacy policy because paymyfines.co.za is specifically for users to check and pay traffic fines, note-toll accounts. He said criminal charges could be brought.
Dembovsky said that in terms of the e-Road regulations, an invoice must be sent to the user after 32 days to the last known address provided in terms of the National Road Traffic Act. He said an e-mail demanding money, without an invoice, had no value or legal standing.
TMT Services chief executive Douglas Davey said that the terms and conditions on their website specifically indicates that PayMyFines reserves the right to access and disclose individual-identifying information (including e-mail addresses) to parties.
“This obviously and specifically excludes any confidential financial information which can never be shared, no financial information is collected or stored on our web site,” said Davey.
Sanral spokesman Vusi Mona said Sanral would be using information from eNatis as well as a “database legally obtained from third parties” to send out e-toll invoices. -The Star