Privacy Policy
This policy explains what personal information RespondZA collects through this website, why we collect it, and what you can ask us to do with it. It is written to comply with the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA).
Right now, this website does one thing: it collects waitlist signups and partner enquiries. RespondZA's app and control-room products are still in development, and this policy will be expanded before they handle anyone's data.
1. Who is responsible
RespondZA is the responsible party for the personal information described in this policy.
RespondZA is a South African project currently in development and is not yet operating through a registered company. Until a company is registered, RespondZA is operated by its founder as a natural person, who is also the Information Officer for the purposes of POPIA.
You can reach the Information Officer at hello@respondza.co.za. Every request described in section 7 — access, correction, deletion, objection — goes to that address and is dealt with personally.
If you need our full registered details, including a physical address, for a formal request to us or a complaint to the Information Regulator, email that address and we will provide them to you in writing. We will publish them here as soon as the company is registered, and this page will be updated on the same day.
2. What we collect, and why
Resident waitlist
- Name, email address, suburb and city / town — so we can tell you when RespondZA opens in your area, and know which areas have enough demand to launch in.
- Mobile number — optional. Used only to contact you about the pilot.
- Marketing consent — whether you ticked the box to receive occasional progress updates. If you did not tick it, we only contact you about the launch itself.
Partner enquiries
- Organisation name, contact name, email, phone, organisation type, areas covered and optionally the number of branches and vehicles, plus anything you write in the message field — used solely to respond to your enquiry and to plan coverage.
Collected automatically with a submission
- A one-way salted hash of your IP address — not the IP address itself. It lets us rate-limit and block abuse of the forms without storing information that identifies your connection.
- Your browser's user-agent string — for the same anti-abuse purpose.
- The date and time of the submission.
3. What we do not do
- We do not sell, rent or trade your personal information — to anyone, ever.
- We do not share it with security companies or other response organisations. A waitlist signup is not a lead we pass on.
- We do not use advertising trackers, analytics profiling, or third-party marketing pixels on this site.
- We do not load fonts, scripts or images from third-party servers, so visiting this page does not disclose your IP address to anyone but our host.
4. Cookies
This website sets no cookies and uses no browser storage for tracking. If we add a privacy-friendly visitor counter later, we will update this section first and it will not use cookies or identify individuals.
5. Where your information is kept, and for how long
Submissions are stored in a MySQL database on our South African hosting account, protected by account credentials that are not published or committed to any code repository. Access is limited to the people who need it to run RespondZA.
We keep waitlist records until the pilot launches and for a reasonable period afterwards, or until you ask us to delete them — whichever comes first. Partner enquiry records are kept for the life of the commercial relationship, or deleted on request if no relationship follows.
6. Who else processes it
Our web hosting provider stores the database and sends our notification email as an operator on our behalf. They may not use your information for their own purposes. We do not transfer personal information outside South Africa for these forms.
RespondZA's website and platform are being built for us by Coastal Tech Solutions, who may access this data only where it is necessary to develop and maintain the service, and only on our instruction.
7. Your rights under POPIA
You may, at any time and free of charge:
- Ask what personal information we hold about you.
- Ask us to correct anything that is wrong or out of date.
- Ask us to delete your information, or to remove you from the waitlist.
- Withdraw your consent to marketing updates — every email we send includes an unsubscribe link.
- Object to our processing of your information.
Email hello@respondza.co.za and we will act on it. We aim to respond within 30 days.
If you are not satisfied with how we have handled a request, you may complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa) — inforegulator.org.za, or complaints.IR@justice.gov.za.
8. Security
The site is served over HTTPS. Form submissions are written using parameterised database queries, form fields are length-capped and validated on the server, and submissions are rate-limited. No security is perfect, but we will not store more than we need — which is the strongest protection available.
9. Children
This website is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect the personal information of anyone under 18 through these forms. If you believe we have, email us and we will delete it.
10. Location data (planned)
The RespondZA app is not live. When it is, the following will hold, and this policy will be updated with the detail before a single user is onboarded:
- Location is collected when you send an alert, so that responders can find you.
- Your precise location is shared with the control rooms of response organisations covering that location — and with nobody else.
- Your exact location is never published publicly. Any community-facing view shows approximate distance or an area only.
11. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top. Material changes affecting people already on the waitlist will be emailed to them.
12. Contact
RespondZA is not an emergency service and does not guarantee a response. In an emergency always contact the SAPS (10111), your armed response provider, or emergency medical services.