Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

ISIGWEBO™ is a South African civic accountability platform. We are the "responsible party" for the personal information described in this policy, as defined by the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).

Our Information Officer can be contacted at the email address listed at the bottom of this page.

2. What Personal Information We Collect

We collect the following personal information:

• Account information: name, email address, phone number, hashed password
• Report information: report title, description, category, location, GPS coordinates, optional photo
• Optional contact details: name and contact information you choose to include in a report
• Technical information: IP address (used for rate limiting, duplicate detection, and abuse prevention)
• Usage information: votes, comments, views, and page interactions

3. Why We Collect It

We process personal information for the following purposes:

• To create and manage your account (one account per email and per phone number)
• To display your reports, comments, and votes on the platform
• To detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and duplicate accounts
• To enforce our Terms of Service
• To anonymise and aggregate data for research, reporting, and commercial use (see Section 6)
• To comply with legal obligations

4. Lawful Basis for Processing

We process personal information on the following bases under POPIA:

• Consent — for account creation, report submission, and commercial use of data. You give consent through the checkboxes at signup.
• Legitimate interest — for fraud prevention, abuse detection, and platform security.
• Legal obligation — where we are required by law to retain or disclose information.

5. Who We Share It With

We may share personal information with:

• Third-party buyers — in anonymised or aggregated form only. We do not sell your name, email address, or phone number without your separate explicit consent.
• Service providers — such as email delivery providers, hosting providers, and SMS verification providers, who process data on our behalf.
• Law enforcement — where required by law or court order.

Where we transfer personal information outside South Africa, we will ensure the recipient is subject to laws or binding agreements that provide an adequate level of protection, as required by POPIA section 72.

6. Commercial Use of Data

By submitting a report, comment, or vote, you agree that the content of your submission may be anonymised and aggregated, and that the resulting dataset may be shared with third parties for commercial purposes. This is described in Section 7 of our Terms of Service.

We do not sell your name, email address, or phone number without your separate, explicit consent. Where POPIA requires prior authorisation for the processing of unique identifiers, we will obtain such authorisation before any such processing.

7. How Long We Keep It

We keep personal information only as long as necessary for the purposes described above, or as required by law. Account information is kept while your account is active. Report data is kept indefinitely in anonymised or aggregated form for research and accountability purposes.

8. Your Rights Under POPIA

You have the right to:

• Be notified that we collect your personal information
• Request access to the personal information we hold about you
• Request correction or deletion of your personal information
• Object to processing based on legitimate interest
• Withdraw consent (this may affect your ability to use the service)
• Lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa)

To exercise these rights, contact our Information Officer at the email below.

9. Security and Breach Notification

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against loss, damage, and unauthorised access. These include hashed passwords, rate limiting, and restricted access to the database.

If a security compromise occurs, we will notify the Information Regulator and affected data subjects as soon as reasonably possible, as required by POPIA section 22.

10. Children

This service is not intended for children under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Continued use of the site after changes means you accept the updated policy.

12. Contact

Information Officer: info@isigwebo.co.za
Information Regulator (South Africa): inforegulator.org.za