This Privacy Policy explains how Top Awards collects, uses, stores and shares information when you use the website, submit a nomination, vote, claim a nominee profile, receive communications or use nominee wallet and withdrawal features.
1. Information we collect
The information we collect depends on how you use the platform. It may include:
- Nominee information: name, organisation, biography, category, location, profile images, social links, website, phone number and email address.
- Nominator information: name, email, phone number and nomination details where these are requested.
- Account information: email address, phone number, password hash, claim status, login records and security events.
- Voting and payment information: mobile number, vote quantity, amount, platform reference, provider reference, payment status and transaction timestamps.
- Wallet and withdrawal information: earnings entries, available/reserved balances, payout number, withdrawal amount, fees, payout status and provider references.
- Communications data: messages sent by email, SMS or in-app notification, delivery status, provider identifiers and failure reasons.
- Technical information: IP address or request metadata used for security/rate limiting, device/browser information, analytics data and website interaction records where enabled.
2. How we use information
We use information to operate and improve Top Awards, including to:
- receive, review and publish nominations;
- create and maintain permanent nominee profiles;
- verify profile-claim requests and provide account access;
- initiate and reconcile voting payments;
- credit verified votes and calculate rankings;
- calculate nominee earnings and process eligible withdrawals;
- send service, security and campaign communications;
- detect abuse, fraud, duplicate processing and unauthorised access;
- maintain audit, financial and reconciliation records;
- understand platform usage and improve performance, SEO and user experience;
- comply with applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or dispute-resolution requirements.
3. Payment and mobile-money providers
Voting payments and nominee payouts may be processed by third-party providers such as KopoKopo and the relevant mobile-money network. The provider receives information required to initiate, confirm or settle the transaction. Top Awards stores transaction references and statuses required to reconcile votes, earnings and payouts.
We do not ask you to provide your M-PESA PIN to Top Awards. Your PIN is entered through the secure mobile-money prompt and is not stored by the Top Awards platform.
4. Email and SMS providers
We may use email infrastructure and SMS providers such as Africa's Talking to deliver claim invitations, password resets, nomination updates, voting communications, withdrawal updates and other authorised messages. These providers receive the destination address or phone number and message data required to deliver the communication.
5. Public information
Approved nominee profiles and nominations are intended to be public. Depending on the information supplied and the edition settings, a public profile may display the nominee's name, organisation, biography, image, category, edition, social links, website, rank and voting information.
Contact details used for authentication, voting or private communications are not intended to be published merely because they exist in the platform database.
6. Voter privacy
Nominee analytics may show voting activity and repeat-voter insights, but full voter phone numbers are masked before they are shown to nominees. Administrators may have access to more complete transaction data where needed for payment support, fraud review and reconciliation.
7. Cookies and sessions
Top Awards uses essential session cookies to keep administrators and nominees signed in securely and to protect forms against cross-site request forgery. Analytics technologies may also be enabled by the administrator to understand aggregate website usage. Browser settings can be used to control non-essential cookies where applicable.
8. How we share information
We do not sell personal information to advertisers. Information may be shared only where reasonably necessary with:
- payment and mobile-money providers;
- email and SMS delivery providers;
- hosting, infrastructure and security providers;
- analytics or website-performance providers where enabled;
- authorised Top Awards administrators and service personnel who need access to operate the platform;
- regulators, law-enforcement bodies, courts or professional advisers where disclosure is required or legally justified.
9. Data security
We use technical and organisational safeguards designed to protect platform information. These include access controls, password hashing, CSRF protection, login throttling, prepared database queries, secure session cookies, rate limiting, payment idempotency controls, audit logs and restricted handling of credentials.
No internet service can guarantee absolute security. Users should protect their login credentials, use a strong password and notify Top Awards promptly if they suspect unauthorised access.
10. Data retention
We retain information for as long as reasonably necessary to operate the awards, maintain nominee recognition history, provide account services, meet financial reconciliation and audit requirements, handle disputes and comply with applicable law. Financial transaction and payout records may need to be retained longer than ordinary website interaction data.
11. Your choices and rights
Subject to applicable law, you may request access to personal information associated with you, correction of inaccurate information, deletion where retention is no longer required, or clarification about how your data is being used. Some requests may be limited where information must be retained for financial, legal, security, fraud-prevention or legitimate award-record purposes.
Nominees can update many public profile fields directly from Nominee Studio after claiming their account.
12. Children and minors
An edition may include categories in which a nominee is under the age of majority. Where this occurs, the nomination and publication process should be handled with appropriate consent from a parent, guardian or authorised representative and with additional care around contact information and public profile content.
13. International service providers
Some technology providers may process or store information in countries other than the country in which a user is located. Where this occurs, we use service providers and arrangements intended to provide appropriate protection for the information involved.
14. Kenya data-protection context
Where applicable, Top Awards handles personal data in accordance with relevant Kenyan data-protection requirements, including principles of lawful, fair and transparent processing, purpose limitation, data minimisation and appropriate security.
15. Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy when platform features, service providers or legal requirements change. The latest published version will appear on this page and material changes may be communicated through the platform where appropriate.
16. Contact us about privacy
For privacy questions or requests relating to your information, use the official contact details on the Contact page and clearly describe the profile, account or transaction involved. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request involving private account information.