Privacy Policy

By using the Site, you consent to this Policy and agree to its terms.

The personal information that you are asked to provide, and the reasons why you are asked to provide it, will be made clear to you at the point we ask you to provide such information.

• If you contact us directly, we may receive additional information about you such as your name, email address, phone number, the contents of the message and/​or attachments you may send us, and any other information you may choose to provide.

• If you participate in a referendum, we ask for your identification number for the purposes of ensuring referendum legitimacy and ensure one vote is cast per person. Your ID number is encrypted at rest, along with all other information provided as part of your vote, such as your name(s), email address, and contact number.

Where applicable, and with your express consent, we use the information we collect in various ways, including to:

• Provide, operate, and maintain the Site,

• develop new features and functionality,

• communicate with you to provide you with updates and other information relating to the Site and its contents,

• in relation to referendums, run verification spot-checks to ensure referendum legitimacy when questioned by appropriate government personel, and

• send you emails, with your express opt-in permission.

Any information we collect is not made available to any third-party, unless in-situ (in person) with a government authorrity for the purposes of verifying referendum authenticity and legitimacy.

• Any information we collect will not be available to any third-party, unless in-situ (in person) with a government authority for the purposes of verifying referendum authenticity and legitimacy.

• Personally-identifying, or otherwise sensitive information is encrypted at rest and cannot be read by a third-party, should the Site or database be attacked or compromised in any way.

• The Site and it’s database runs on a secure server, housed in Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) that has tight access and other security protocols in place. This means that access by anyone, other than us, is not possible.

• All information transmitted to and from the Site is done using full SSL/TLS encryption.

• We are POPIA compliant, and will only use information and data collected where applicable, and only with your express consent.

We follow a standard procedure of using log files. These files log visitors when they visit websites. All hosting companies do this and a part of hosting services’ analytics. The information collected by log files include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date and time stamp, and referring pages. These are not linked to any information that makes you personally identifiable.

The Site uses basic analytics provided by CloudFlare. We receive information pertaining to bandwidth usage and requests, as well as summary information pertaining to Unique Visitors. For more information, please review their privacy policy.

In addition, the Site use a privacy-first analytics system called Plausible to analyse how visitors make use of the Site. No personally-identifying information is collected by this service, and it does not use cookies to function. Additionally, the Site does not make use of the hosted version of Plausible, but rather runs a private, self-hosted instance, which means that the anonymous, non-personally-identifying information collected does not leave our servers. For information about the data that is collected and how it is used, you can read Plausible’s Data Policy and Privacy Policy.

Like any other website, the Site uses cookies. Notwithstanding any exceptions listed below, we do not use these cookies to perform specific tasks on the Site in relation to visitors and their interactions.

For the most part, these cookies are session-tracking cookies that help the Site determine if a user is signed in or not. We do not store any preferences in relation to visitors, nor do we use cookies to track a visitor’s movement on the Site.

Exceptions

• If you participate in a referendum, we will store an encrypted cookie on your device with your vote number. This cookie is used to determine whether or not a vote for a particular referendum has been cast on your device. If you use the dedicated support link underneath a voting form, we will include the name of the cookie in the anonymous diagnostics section of the email, but the value will be excluded.

• We serve our website through CloudFlare, and they may choose to store cookies on your device. For more information, please review their Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.

We would like to make sure you are fully aware of all of your data protection rights. Every user is entitled to the following:

• The right to access – You have the right to request copies of your personal data. We may charge you a small fee for this service.

• The right to rectification – You have the right to request that we correct any personal information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request that we complete the personal information you believe is incomplete.

• The right to erasure – You have the right to request that we erase your personal data, under certain conditions.

• The right to restrict processing – You have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.

• The right to object to processing – You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.

• The right to data portability – You have the right to request that we transfer the data that we have collected to another organisation, or directly to you, under certain conditions.

• The right to complain – You have the right to lodge a compliant with the Information Regulator (JD House, 27 Stiemens Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2001P.O Box 31533, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2017; Email [email protected])

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact a Referendums.co.za administrator on Telegram directly, or via email at [email protected].

We encourage parents and guardians to observe, participate in, and/​or monitor and guide their children’s online activity. Referendums.co.za does not knowingly collect any personally-identifying from children under the age of 13. If you think that your child provided this kind of information on the Site, we strongly encourage you to contact us immediately and we will do our best to promptly remove such information from our records.

From time to time, it may become necessary to make changes to this privacy policy. It is your responsibility to periodically check this page for any changes. However, where it is deemed necessary, updates will be announced on public channels.

Updates (oldest first):

• Our email address has changed to [email protected], and this now reflects in the “Data Protection Rights” section of this document. (7 March 2023)

• The Site now uses a self-hosted version of Plausible Analytics. The relevant section has been updated to reflect this. (18 June 2023)

• The Site no longer uses cookies to prevent multiple votes from a single device, and now relies only on the provided identification number to do this. However, the cookies stored are retained for the purposes of indicating whether or not a vote was was cast in a particular referendum on a particular device. The relevant section has been updated to reflect this. (18 June 2023)