How we handle your information

01 Who we are

iHubSA is the responsible party for the personal information described in this notice. That is POPIA's term for the organisation that decides why and how your information is processed.

Our Information Officer is responsible for how we comply with POPIA and is the person to approach with any question, request or concern about your information.

02 What information we collect

When you complete the enquiry form

We collect only what you type into the form. Nothing is gathered in the background.

• Your name and company or organisation name — required
• Your email address — required, so we can reply
• Your phone number — optional
• Your industry and what you currently use — optional
• A description of the problem you want solved — required
• The type of system you are interested in — optional
• A spreadsheet you choose to upload — optional

When you simply visit the site

This site is hosted on GitHub Pages. Like any web host, GitHub automatically records technical information when a page is served — including your IP address, browser type and the page requested — for security and to deliver the site. We do not have access to those logs and do not use them.

The site loads its typeface from Google Fonts. This means your browser makes a request to Google's servers, and your IP address is visible to Google as part of that request. We receive nothing from it. If you would rather avoid this, a browser extension that blocks third-party font loading will prevent it, and the site will still work.

03 Why we collect it

We use your information for one purpose: to respond to your enquiry and, if you want us to, to scope and quote for work. In practice that means:

• reading and replying to what you sent us;
• understanding your current process well enough to give you a useful answer;
• preparing a proposal, quote or assessment if you ask for one;
• keeping a record of our correspondence so we can pick up where we left off.

We do not sell your information. We do not share it for advertising. We will not add you to a mailing list or send you marketing. If we ever want to do that, we will ask for your consent separately and clearly first — POPIA requires it, and an opt-out buried in a footer does not count.

04 Giving us your information is voluntary

You are under no obligation to complete the form, and no law requires you to give us any of this. The only consequence of not providing it is a practical one: without a name, a company, an email address and a description of the problem, we cannot reply or give you a meaningful answer. The optional fields are genuinely optional — leaving them blank changes nothing about how we treat your enquiry.

05 Who else sees your information

Your enquiry is read by iHubSA. Beyond that, it passes through a small number of service providers who process it on our instruction and on our behalf — POPIA calls these operators. They are not permitted to use your information for their own purposes.

We will also disclose information if the law requires it — for example under a court order or a lawful request from a regulator. If that happens and we are permitted to tell you, we will.

06 Information leaving South Africa

Some of the providers above are outside South Africa, so your information is transferred across a border. POPIA permits this in defined circumstances, and we rely on the following:

• Our database, file storage and email delivery are hosted in Ireland, which is subject to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — a law that upholds principles substantially similar to POPIA. This satisfies section 72(1)(a).
• Where a provider operates more widely, the transfer is necessary for the performance of a contract, or for steps taken at your request before entering one — that is, in order to respond to the enquiry you sent us. This satisfies section 72(1)(d) and (e).

07 How long we keep it

We keep enquiry records for three years from our last contact with you, then delete them. We keep them that long because project conversations often restart after a long gap, and it is more useful to you if we still have the context.

If you become a client, records relating to the work are kept for as long as our agreement requires and for any period South African law obliges us to retain them — tax and company records, for example. You can ask us to delete your enquiry at any point before then, and we will, unless we are legally required to keep it.

08 How we protect it

• The site is served only over HTTPS, so what you type is encrypted in transit.
• Enquiries are stored in a database with access controls that deny all public access by default. There is no way to read stored enquiries from the website.
• Uploaded files go into private storage, not a public folder, and are reachable only through a time-limited link or by us signing in.
• No credentials or access keys are held in the website's code, so nothing about our systems is exposed by viewing the page source.
• Only file types we asked for are accepted, and uploads are size-limited.

No system is perfectly secure, and we will not claim otherwise. If a breach ever affects your information, POPIA requires us to notify both you and the Information Regulator, and we will.

09 Cookies and tracking

This site sets no cookies. It runs no analytics, no advertising pixels, no session recording and no third-party trackers, and it stores nothing in your browser. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to.

The only external request the site makes on its own is to Google Fonts, described in section 2.

10 Your rights

Under POPIA you have the right to:

• Ask what we hold about you, and be given a copy;
• Have it corrected if it is wrong, misleading or out of date;
• Have it deleted or destroyed where we are no longer entitled to keep it;
• Object to our processing it, on reasonable grounds;
• Withdraw consent you previously gave, at any time;
• Complain to the Information Regulator — see the next section.

How to exercise them

Email enquiries@ihub-sa.co.za and tell us what you want. You do not need a special form, a lawyer or a particular wording — a plain sentence such as "please delete my enquiry" is enough. It is free. We will not charge you to access, correct, delete or object, and we will not make you jump through hoops to do it.

We will respond within 30 days. If we cannot do what you have asked, we will tell you plainly why, and tell you how to take it further.

11 Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first — most things are quicker to fix directly, and we would rather know. Email enquiries@ihub-sa.co.za.

You are also entitled to complain to the regulator at any time, whether or not you have raised it with us:

12 Changes to this notice

If we change how we handle personal information, we will update this page and change the date at the top. Material changes — a new purpose, a new category of recipient — will be described here rather than absorbed silently into the text.