The latest allegations against Google by Kenyan company Mocality highlight the importance of an organisation's website terms and conditions.

Mocality have alleged that Google employees were "scraping data" from the Mocality website, using this data for various marketing activities and that this was unlawful and potentially in breach of Mocality's website terms and conditions.

Companies which have valuable data that they wish to protect and which can be obtained via their website must revisit their website terms and conditions to ensure that they are crystal clear as to what activity is allowed and what is prohibited in respect of the data hosted via their website.

Web scraping is just one of the methods that can be used to gather or extract information hosted on a website. It is on the rise and hence it's crucial that the wording used in the website terms and conditions must cover all methods of collecting data (both electronically and by human means).

Contact:
Tammy Bortz, director at Werksmans Attorneys
Direct line: +27 (0)21 405 5161
Email: tbortz@werksmans.com