Privacy Policy for GutBuddies
Effective Date: June , 2026
At GutBuddies, we are committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring that your personal information is collected and used properly, lawfully, and transparently in strict compliance with the South African Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).
1. Who We Are
Our website address is: https://gutbuddies.co.za. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your personal data, you can contact us directly via our website contact page.
2. What Personal Data We Collect and Why
A. Shop & Order Information
When you make a purchase or attempt to make a purchase through our online store, we collect specific information from you to fulfill your order. This includes:
- Identity Data: Your name and surname.
- Contact & Delivery Data: Your billing address, physical shipping address, email address, and phone number.
- Why we need it: We process this data to process payments, arrange local shipping and door-to-door courier delivery, send you order confirmations, tax invoices, and track your package.
B. Account & Login Data
If you register an account on our website, we set up temporary cookies to manage your secure login status and save your screen preferences.
- Login cookies persist for two days, and screen settings persist for a year.
- If you select "Remember Me", your secure login will persist for two weeks. Logging out completely removes these tracking cookies.
C. Contact Forms & Product Comments
When visitors leave inquiries or product reviews on the site, we collect the data shown in the form, alongside the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to actively assist in spam detection.
3. Data Sharing & Third-Party Services
We do not sell or rent your personal information. We only share your personal data with essential, trusted third-party service providers to execute transactions and deliver your products. These include:
- Payment Gateways: Secure third-party payment processors handle your credit card and instant EFT transactions safely. We do not store your raw financial card details on our servers.
- Courier & Logistics Providers: Your name, phone number, and physical address are securely shared with our integrated South African logistics networks to facilitate automated parcel collection and door-to-door delivery.
- Security & System Maintenance: If you request a password reset, your current IP address will be included automatically in the transaction reset email.
4. Cookies & Analytics
We use essential cookies to keep track of items you add to your shopping cart while you browse the store, ensuring a seamless checkout experience.
We also utilize minor technical cookies to assess site performance and monitor embedded content (such as product videos). These external platforms may collect data or monitor your interaction if you are actively logged into their respective services simultaneously.
5. How Long We Retain Your Data
- Order & Transaction Records: For accounting, tax, legal, and warranty purposes, customer purchase history and associated contact data are securely archived in compliance with South African financial regulations.
- User Accounts: For users that register an account on our store, we store the personal information provided in their user profile indefinitely. All users can view, edit, or delete their personal info at any time (except their account username).
- Comments & Reviews: If you leave a product review or comment, the comment and its technical metadata are retained indefinitely to streamline automated moderation.
6. Your Legal Rights Under POPIA
You hold complete authority over your personal information. Under the POPI Act, you have the right to:
- Access: Request a digital export file of the personal data we hold about you.
- Correction: Request that we update or correct any inaccurate or outdated personal details.
- Erasure: Request that we completely wipe or destroy your personal data from our active systems. This does not include data we are legally obligated to retain for administrative, tax, or critical security security purposes.
7. How We Secure Your Data
We take data security seriously. Our website utilizes active SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption to ensure that all data transmitted between your browser and our server is completely encrypted. We maintain strict internal boundaries to prevent unauthorized data access or leakages.