Privacy Policy
Devhulon Connect respects your privacy. This policy explains what we collect, why, and your rights under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).
Last updated: [Insert date]
1. Who we are
Devhulon Connect ("we", "us") operates a local business directory, comparison and content platform in South Africa. For the purposes of POPIA, we are the responsible party for personal information processed through this website. Contact: Info@devhulonconnect.co.za.
2. Information we collect
- Account details (if you register): name, email address, and your auth provider's user ID.
- Business listings: the information you submit for a listing (name, category, suburb, phone, WhatsApp, address, hours, description, photos).
- Quote/lead requests: the service, area, contact number and message you include when requesting quotes, together with the date and version of the consent you gave.
- Reviews: the display name, rating and review text you publish.
- Technical data: standard server logs and first-party daily aggregate counts of broad page types, searches submitted and quote requests submitted.
2a. First-party aggregate analytics
We measure whether the marketplace is working using daily counters for broad page categories, search submissions and successfully submitted quote requests. The analytics records contain counts only: they do not contain account IDs, device IDs, cookies, search terms, precise locations or IP addresses. We do not attempt to identify unique visitors or calculate user-level conversion rates. IP addresses may be processed separately for abuse prevention; rate-limit records are removed after 7 days. Daily aggregate analytics are retained for 400 days and then deleted.
3. Why we process it (lawful grounds)
- To provide the service you asked for (performance of a contract): publishing listings, routing quote requests to businesses, showing reviews.
- With your consent: sharing your contact details with the businesses matched to a quote request, optional marketing emails, and non-essential cookies.
- Legitimate interest: preventing spam and fraud, verifying listings by phone/WhatsApp, keeping the directory accurate, and measuring marketplace usage through non-identifying daily aggregate counts.
- Legal obligation: responding to lawful requests from authorities.
3a. How we ask for consent to share your details
When you post a quote request, we alert matched businesses to your request. Your name, phone number and email (where you gave one) are stored separately from the request and are disclosed to a matched business only when it unlocks your contact through Devhulon Connect. That is a disclosure to an independent third party, so we ask for consent explicitly: every request form has an unticked checkbox that names who receives your details and why, and we record the date and the exact wording version you agreed to.
- One request reaches at most 5 businesses (usually 3). Only matched businesses can unlock your contact details; your contact is not included in the alert itself.
- Businesses may use your details only to quote this job. Selling or sharing them is a breach of our Acceptable Use Policy and results in removal from the platform.
- If you decline, we simply don't send the request. Browsing and searching never require you to hand over your number.
- You can withdraw consent at any time using the erasure option in section 8 — we then remove your details from every request you made.
4. Advertising and cookies
We show ads through Google AdSense as one of our revenue streams. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to our site and/or other sites on the Internet.
5. Sharing of information
- Quote/lead requests are shared with the relevant businesses so they can respond to you.
- Listings and reviews are published publicly (that's the point of a directory).
- Service providers: hosting, authentication, database and analytics providers (currently Google Firebase). They process data on our instructions.
- We do not sell your personal information to third parties.
6. Security and retention
Data is stored with industry-standard safeguards (encrypted transport, access controls, and server-side enforcement of who may read what). We keep personal information only as long as we state below — not "as long as necessary".
- Quote requests: 180 days. After that we strip your name, number and email and keep only an anonymous record of the outcome (was it quoted, was it won). Businesses have 180 days to quote and for you to compare, which is generous.
- Unanswered open requests: 30 days. A request nobody responds to is closed and the businesses are stood down, rather than sitting in inboxes indefinitely.
- Reviews: kept while published. Remove yours any time and we anonymise it (your name is replaced and the link to your account is cleared) while keeping the rating and text, so a business does not lose genuine feedback.
- Payments and invoices: kept for the period required by South African tax law (typically 5 years), regardless of any other deletion.
- Server logs: short operational retention, then aggregated.
You can trigger this yourself — see section 8. We do not need you to email us first.
7. Cross-border processing
Some of our service providers may process information outside South Africa. Where that happens, we rely on POPIA s72 conditions and the provider's contractual safeguards to protect your information to a standard comparable to POPIA.
8. Your POPIA rights
- Ask us what personal information we hold about you and request access.
- Request correction or deletion of your information.
- Object to processing, or withdraw consent (e.g. unsubscribe from emails).
- Complain to the Information Regulator: inforegulator.org.za · POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za.
To exercise any right, email Info@devhulonconnect.co.za — we respond within 30 days.
Erase your details now (self-service)
You do not have to wait for an email reply to exercise the right to be forgotten. Sign in to your account and use Erase my personal data in your dashboard. This immediately:
- removes your name, phone number and email from every quote request you made,
- anonymises your reviews (your name is replaced, the link to your account cleared) while keeping the rating and text,
- removes your personal details from bookings and messages, and
- deletes your account profile.
We keep the commercial record in anonymised form — that a request existed, was quoted on, and was won or lost — because businesses need it for their own records and because it contains no personal information once your details are gone.
If you still have a business listing published, we will ask you to close or transfer it first rather than silently deleting a public profile other customers rely on.
9. Children
Devhulon Connect is not directed at children under 18, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information.
10. Changes to this policy
We'll post updates on this page with a new "last updated" date. Material changes will be highlighted on the homepage for a reasonable period.
