Privacy notice

Who is responsible

Charis is operated by VerdanTech, which is the responsible party for the personal information described in this notice and decides what is collected and why.

Our information officer is Dennis Kriel. Write to hello@charis.net.za with any question about this notice, or to exercise any of the rights set out below.

Our address is The Willows Office Park, Unit 33-F3, Simon Vermooten Road, Die Wilgers, Pretoria, 0184. Our telephone number is +27 79 308 3651.

What we collect

• Account: your name, email address, a hashed password, and, if you use it, two-factor authentication settings. Privileged accounts must use two-factor authentication.
• A photo of you, only if you upload one. It is optional, other members can see it, you can remove it at any time, and it is deleted with your account.
• Profile, all optional: country, province and city, how you take part, your professional title, a short biography, skills and interests, what you can help with and what you need help with, and whether you are open to mentoring.
• Businesses you represent: everything in the listing, including description, services, areas served, the logo if you upload one, and the business contact details you choose to publish.
• Bookings: the name, email address and optional phone number of the person booking, plus the name of each attendee and, when the event asks for it, dietary requirements. Dietary notes are optional and used only for catering.
• What you need, if you tell us: a need you raise on your profile — what it is, the kind of help, an optional date, and which of your businesses it concerns — and the two optional questions at booking about what your business needs and who you serve.
• An enquiry, if you leave your email address on the home page to hear more before joining: that address and when you left it. Nothing else, and no account is created.
• Introductions: the business you asked about and the message you wrote.
• Text you ask us to read when you build your profile: the pages of a website whose address you give us, or text you paste. We keep only the answers you choose to save. The text itself is not stored.
• Feedback about an event, only if you answer the question we send afterwards: your rating and anything you choose to write. Answering is optional.
• Records of consent: which policy version you accepted, when, and from which address; and the same for announcements and for being suggested to other members, including when you withdrew either.
• Messages we send you, and whether they were delivered.
• An audit record of significant actions taken by organizers and administrators.
• Technical: a session cookie that keeps you signed in, and ordinary server logs.
• How the site is used, only if you agree on the cookie banner: which pages are visited, how a visitor arrived, and the kind of device and browser, recorded by Google Analytics under a random identifier rather than your name or email address; and, while you are not signed in, a recording of clicks, scrolling and mouse movement on public pages, made by Microsoft Clarity with all text on the page hidden

Why we use it, and on what basis

• To run your account and keep it secure: necessary to provide the service you asked for.
• To take bookings, confirm places, send confirmations and reminders, and handle cancellations and refunds: necessary to perform the booking you entered into.
• To publish your business in the member directory and to arrange introductions: with your consent, which you give by submitting a listing or a request, and can withdraw.
• To moderate listings, review introductions and keep the community safe: our legitimate interest in a trustworthy community.
• To help introduce you to the right people: with your consent, which you give by raising a need or answering the questions at booking. Organizers read what you wrote to plan introductions. You can close or withdraw a need at any time, and closing it ends that use.
• To suggest people you should meet, and to suggest you to others: only with your separate consent, which you can give when you register or under My profile, and switch off there at any time. While it is on, the organizers and the tools we build may use your profile, your business listing and your open needs to make suggestions, before an event or when you ask. A suggestion is never sent to anyone on your behalf. We keep a record of when you gave this consent and when you withdrew it.
• To suggest answers when you build your profile from a website or from text you paste: at your request, which you make by pressing the button. Nothing is saved until you have checked the answers and saved them yourself.
• To keep financial and audit records: to meet our legal and accounting obligations.
• Optional email about events and community news: an announcement when a new event opens, and the Charis newsletter about every second week. Only if you asked for it, when you registered, under Settings, or by ticking the box when booking. Every one carries a link that stops them all in one click, and your email program's own unsubscribe button works too; stopping them does not affect any booking. Members can switch them back on under Settings. A newsletter may go to only some of the people who asked, such as members, or people in one area (from your profile or the events you booked); that only ever narrows who receives it, and never adds anyone who did not ask.
• To feature a business in the newsletter: only with its owner's separate consent, given under My businesses and withdrawn there at any time. A feature uses the approved listing's name, logo, industry, area, description and website, never its contact details, and goes to everyone who receives the newsletter, including guests who are not members.
• To answer an enquiry: with your consent, given by leaving your address. An organizer writes to you personally and tells you when the next event opens. It does not sign you up for announcements.
• To ask how an event was and to improve the next one: with your consent, which you give by answering. Ignoring the question is a complete answer.
• To see which pages are read, how people find Charis and where a page is hard to use, so we know what to improve: with your consent, which you give on the cookie banner and can withdraw at any time under Cookie settings at the foot of the page.

Who can see what

• Public: only what is on the public pages, which are events and general information. Member profiles are never public, and the directory is not public.
• Signed-in members: an approved business listing, exactly as approved. Your personal account email address is never published; a business shows only the contact details its owner chose.
• Other signed-in members: your name and your photo, where you appear to them. That happens when you ask for an introduction, when you represent a business alongside them, and in similar places where knowing who someone is matters. Your title, biography and where you are are shown only if you switch that on under My profile.
• A business owner you ask about: your name, your photo and the message you wrote. Your email address reaches them only if they accept the introduction.
• A need you raise: the organizers always see it while it is open, together with your name and email address, because raising it is asking for help. Other members see it only if you choose that when you raise it. What you answered at booking is seen by the organizers of that event only, never by other attendees.
• Feedback you give about an event: the organizers of that event see the ratings and comments together, without names attached.
• Organizers and administrators: what their role needs. Event organizers see the attendees of their events. Finance administrators see payment and refund records. Community administrators see listings, introductions and member accounts. Every privileged action is recorded.

Who else processes it

We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing. We use these service providers, each only to run the platform:

• Payfast handles card payments. Your card details are entered on Payfast's own secure page and never reach Charis. Payfast tells us the amount, the outcome and its reference.
• Resend delivers our email. It processes the recipient address and message content in order to deliver it, and is hosted outside South Africa. It also tells us when an email to an address bounces for good or is marked as spam, and we then stop sending that address announcements and the newsletter.
• The newsletter is drafted with the help of AI research tools we run, which use language models hosted outside South Africa. They can read only the public event pages, the announcement the organisers are showing members, totals such as how many came to an event, and the listings of businesses whose owners agreed to be featured. They never receive the name, email address or contact details of any member or guest, never see who receives the newsletter, and cannot send anything: every issue is edited and approved by a person before it goes out.
• Google Analytics, provided by Google, counts visits to the site, only for visitors who agree on the cookie banner. It receives the address of each page without any private link codes in it, the page title, how you arrived, your device and browser type, and your internet address, which Google uses to estimate a country and city and does not store. It sets cookies holding a random identifier. Google signals and advertising features are switched off, so it is not used to show you advertising. It is hosted outside South Africa. Management pages are not counted, and nothing is sent if you decline.
• Microsoft Clarity, provided by Microsoft, shows us how pages are used, as heatmaps and as recordings of clicks, scrolling and mouse movement, only for visitors who agree on the cookie banner. It runs only while you are not signed in, only on public pages whose address carries no private link code, and never on member or management pages. All text on the page is hidden before anything is sent, and what you type into a form is never captured. It receives the page address, your device and browser type, and your internet address, which Microsoft uses to estimate a country. It is hosted outside South Africa. Microsoft may also use this data for its own purposes, including improving its products and advertising, as described in the Microsoft Privacy Statement (microsoft.com/privacy/privacystatement). We do not use it for advertising.
• Hostinger hosts the server, and therefore stores the database and backups on our behalf.
• An embeddings provider, Voyage AI unless we tell you otherwise, turns short pieces of text into numbers so that a need can be set beside what a business offers. It receives only the text itself — a need, an offering, a listing summary — never your name, email address or anything else, and only where you switched matching on. It is hosted outside South Africa. With matching off, nothing of yours is sent.
• OpenRouter, serving a decision model made by TypeSafe, is asked one question about a need and a business listing: could this business meet this need? It answers with a probability, which the organizers see beside the suggestion. It receives the need as written, the kind of help, and the business's approved listing text — its name, industry, description, who it serves and what it offers — and never the name or contact details of the member who raised the need or who owns the business. Only where both members switched matching on. It is hosted outside South Africa. The answer never decides anything by itself: an introduction is still made by a person, and you can ask under My profile to see the suggestions made for your own needs.
• OpenRouter also serves a language model, Google's Gemini unless we tell you otherwise, when you ask us to build your profile from your website or from text you paste. The model reads that text and suggests answers to the welcome questions. It receives that text and nothing else about you: not your name, not your email address. We route it only to providers that do not keep it to train their models. It is hosted outside South Africa. A reply from your own AI assistant in the layout our prompt asks for is read on our own server and is not sent to anyone.

Photos and logos

An image you upload is converted to a new file on our server before it is stored. That conversion discards the metadata cameras and phones attach, including the location where a photo was taken, so we do not receive it and cannot pass it on.

Images are stored at web addresses containing a random identifier. They are not listed anywhere and are not indexed by search engines, but anyone given the exact address could open the image. Removing an image deletes the file.

A photo you upload is shown to other signed-in members, so upload one you are content for the community to see. The organizers can take down a photo that does not belong in the community, and will record having done so; you can then upload another.

Where it is stored

The application, its database and its backups run on a server in Manchester, United Kingdom, operated by Hostinger. The United Kingdom has data protection law that provides protection substantially similar to POPIA. Email delivery and payment processing involve the providers named above.

How long we keep it

• Your account and profile: until you delete the account, or the organizers remove it under the community guidelines. Either way the same things are deleted, and a business listing you are the only owner of is removed with it.
• Bookings and payment records: kept for accounting and audit purposes. If your account is deleted we keep the booking record but remove your name and contact details from it.
• Guest booking links: they stop working thirty days after the event. A feedback link stops working about six weeks after the event.
• Event feedback: kept with the event record so organizers can see how the series is going.
• Analytics, if you agreed to it: Google deletes the record of individual visits after two months; after that only totals remain, such as how many people read a page. Microsoft deletes Clarity recordings after 30 days, and its heatmaps and totals after 13 months.
• A request to stop receiving announcements and the newsletter, including one recorded because an email bounced or was marked as spam: kept as a one-way code rather than your address, for as long as it applies, because forgetting it would mean emailing you again. It is lifted only if you switch news back on yourself, under Settings while signed in; ticking the box on a booking does not lift it, because anyone can type an address into a booking.
• If the organizers remove an account for a breach of the community guidelines, they may keep a one-way code made from its email address, so that the address cannot be used to join again. The code cannot be turned back into the address, and is kept until the organizers lift the restriction.
• Business listings: until you or the organizers remove them.
• Enquiries: until you join, or ask us to remove your address, whichever comes first.
• Backups: daily copies for about two weeks, and weekly copies for about two months, after which they are deleted.

Your rights

Under POPIA you may ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, object to processing based on legitimate interest, and withdraw consent you gave.

Most of it you can do yourself: edit or clear your profile, edit or withdraw a business listing, and delete your account under Settings. An account with an upcoming booking cannot be deleted until that booking is cancelled or the event has passed, so that the organizers know who is coming.

For anything else write to hello@charis.net.za. If you are not satisfied with how we handle it, you may complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa).

How we protect it

• Traffic is encrypted in transit, and passwords are stored only as hashes.
• Two-factor authentication is required for organizer and administrator accounts.
• Access follows the role: organizers, finance and community administrators each see only their own area, and every privileged action is recorded with who did it.
• Backups are encrypted at rest on the server and their restoration is rehearsed.

Cookies

Charis sets a session cookie to keep you signed in and a token to protect forms against cross-site request forgery. These are needed for the site to work and are not used to track you.

Only if you agree on the cookie banner, Google Analytics sets cookies named _ga and _ga_ followed by an identifier, which last up to two years, to recognise a returning browser and count visits. Microsoft Clarity sets _clck, which lasts a year, and _clsk, which lasts a day, to join the pages of one visit together, and Microsoft may set its own cookies on clarity.ms. Your answer is kept in your browser's own storage so we do not ask on every page. You can change it at any time under Cookie settings at the foot of any page; withdrawing removes these cookies. We do not use any of them for advertising

Changes to this notice

If we change how we use personal information we will publish a new version here with a new version number and date, and ask you to accept it where that is appropriate.