The ban happens to cover exactly what the regulator feared: Facebook using personal information it previously gathered in new ways.That happens to be exactly what the regulator has warned Facebook not to do with the telephone numbers of South Africans collected by its Whatsapp service.

ShareTweet Consumer credit reporting agency Experian has suffered a data breach at their South African branch.

As of Thursday the South African government can trace the movements of any South African cellphone user back as far as 5 March, in order to fight Covid-19.That movement data will go into a special database to identify anyone who may have had physical contact with a person known to be carrying the SARS-Cov-2 virus, for possible testing and quarantine.

Previously, the South African government has used a law called RICA (Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication Related Information Act 70 of 2002) to justify mass surveillance programs.

This is a great ruling for the people of South Africa, with a court firmly recognizing that: “no lawful authority has been demonstrated to trespass onto the privacy rights or the freedom of expression rights of anyone, including South Africans whose communications cross-cross the world by means of bulk interception.” It then declares that the activities are “unlawful and invalid.”.

This was revealed in the former State Security Agency Director General Arthur Fraser's affidavit and other documents filed in 2017 during a court case relating to amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism - a South African non-profit investigative journalism organisation.

___ The first message reached Bahr Abdul Razzak, a Syrian refugee who works as a Citizen Lab researcher, Dec. 6, when a man calling himself Gary Bowman got in touch via LinkedIn. The man described himself as a South African financial technology executive based in Madrid.