Privacy Policy

Who we are

Soap Opera (“we”, “us”) makes and sells cleaning products from Hartbeespoort, North West, South Africa. For the purposes of the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA), we are the responsible party for the personal information described here. You can reach us at admin@thesoapopera.co.za.

What we collect, and why

• “Notify me” sign-ups. If you ask to be told when we reach your area, we store the contact detail you type in (a phone number or email address). We use it only to contact you about that.
• Area requests. If you ask us to visit an area, we store the area name and any contact detail you choose to give. We use it to plan new routes.
• WhatsApp button taps. When someone taps a WhatsApp button we record that a tap happened, which driver it related to and which page it came from. This is anonymous — it contains no name, number or identifier, and we cannot tell who tapped. We use it to see which areas are busiest.
• Website analytics. We use two tools to understand general traffic and improve the site. Vercel Analytics counts page views without cookies and builds no advertising profile. Google Analytics 4 uses cookies and collects anonymous usage data — the pages you view, your approximate location (derived from your IP address, not precise GPS), and your device and browser type — so we can see how the site is used. It is not used to advertise to you. You can opt out using Google’s browser add-on at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout or by blocking cookies in your browser.

Your location — customers

We never track you. If you tap “near me”, your browser asks your permission and then uses your position to centre the map on your own screen. That position stays on your device — it is never sent to us and never stored. If you decline the permission, everything else on the site still works.

Our drivers

Our drivers are part of our team. For each driver we store a name, a photo, a WhatsApp number, a route, and a PIN which is stored hashed (we cannot read it). When a driver starts a shift they tap “check in” and their phone shares its position so that customers can see where the tuk tuk is. This happens only when the driver checks in, only while they are working, and there is no background tracking.

Who else is involved

We use trusted service providers to run this service: Supabase (database hosting), Vercel (website hosting and cookieless analytics), and Google (Google Analytics 4, and Google Search Console for anonymous search-performance data). Google may process this information on servers outside South Africa; where that happens, it is subject to Google’s own safeguards and privacy commitments. If you choose to chat to us, that conversation happens on WhatsApp and is governed by Meta’s own terms and privacy policy. We do not sell or rent your personal information, and we do not share it with advertising networks.

How long we keep it

We keep sign-ups and area requests until you ask us to delete them, or until they are no longer needed for the purpose you gave them for. Driver check-ins are kept as an operational record for route planning. Anonymous tap counts are kept as aggregate statistics and contain no personal information. Usage data collected by Google Analytics is retained for a limited period, according to our Google Analytics settings, and then deleted automatically.

How we protect it

Driver PINs are hashed rather than stored as text. Our database is protected by row-level security, and the public website holds no master key — every privileged action runs through a controlled, permission-checked function.

Your rights under POPIA

You may ask us what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, object to how we use it, or withdraw your consent at any time. Email admin@thesoapopera.co.za and we will action it free of charge, as soon as reasonably possible.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa):

Email POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za
Website inforegulator.org.za
JD House, 27 Stiemens Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2001

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle personal information we will update this page and the date at the top.