Privacy Policy
How Web Assist collects, uses and protects your personal information.
Last updated: October 20, 2026. This policy applies to https://webassist.co.
1. Who we are
Web Assist (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2016/081371/07), a company registered in South Africa, runs webassist.co. We decide how and why your personal information is used, which makes us the “responsible party” under South African law (POPIA) and the “controller” under UK data protection law (UK GDPR).
- Address: 1 Seacrest, 18 Adelaide Road, Kingsburgh, 4126, South Africa
- Email: privacy@webassist.co
- Telephone: +27 78 016 0706
Information Officer: Athlone Harris-Compton, Director, privacy@webassist.co. Registered with the Information Regulator of South Africa.
2. What we collect and why
| What we collect | When | Why | Lawful basis | Do you have to give it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name, email, phone (optional), company, website and message | Contact and inquiry forms | To answer your inquiry and, if you ask, to arrange a call | Legitimate interests (responding to people who contact us), or steps you ask us to take before a contract | No, but we can’t reply without an email address |
| Name, email, billing address, plan and payment details | When you buy a plan at checkout | To set up and bill your subscription and send receipts and renewal reminders | Contract; legal obligation (tax and accounting records) | Yes, we can’t provide the service without them |
| Your account login and subscription history | Customer dashboard | To let you manage, update or cancel your plan | Contract | Yes, to use the dashboard |
| Name, email, video and audio (if you join on camera) | Consultation calls on Zoom | To hold the call you booked. We don’t record calls unless we ask you first. | Legitimate interests; contract | No |
| Website content and files you give us | When we build or manage your website | To deliver the service you bought | Contract | Only as needed for the service |
| Review text, rating, name, job title, company, website and photo | If you send us a review | To publish it on our websites, with your permission. We don’t publish your email address | Consent | No |
| IP address, browser and device details, pages requested | Automatically, when you visit | To keep the site secure and working (server logs, firewall, spam protection on our forms) | Legitimate interests: security | Collected automatically, and not used for marketing |
| Pages you visit and how you use the site | Only after you accept analytics cookies | To understand which pages help visitors and improve the site | Consent | No. It only runs if you accept analytics |
| Name, email and your email preferences | If you sign up for our emails, or as an existing customer | To send news and offers about our own services, with an unsubscribe link in every email | Consent; or legitimate interests for existing customers | No |
Analytics: we use Usermaven, and it only runs after you accept analytics cookies in our cookie banner. It doesn’t set cookies. To tell one visit from another it uses a one-way code made from your IP address and browser details, and it stores only a shortened version of your IP address. If we add Google Analytics, it will also only run after you accept analytics cookies. We use Google Search Console, which shows us how the site appears in Google search; it doesn’t collect anything from your visit.
Information about your own customers: when we host or manage a website for you, we may handle personal information about your website’s visitors and customers. For that information you are the responsible party or controller, and we process it only on your instructions, under our Terms & Conditions.
3. Who we share it with
- Our team at Web Assist, and any contractors or other service providers who help us deliver your service. They may not use it for their own purposes.
- Service providers who process it for us, listed in section 4.
- Professional advisers, such as our accountants, where needed.
- Anyone we’re legally required to disclose it to, or where we need to establish or defend a legal claim.
We don’t sell personal information, and we don’t share it for anyone else’s marketing.
4. Where it’s stored, including outside your country
Websites, including ours, are hosted in whichever region suits each site and its visitors, for example the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe or South Africa. Our team works from South Africa, and several of our service providers are in the United States.
| Provider | What it handles |
|---|---|
| Vultr, managed through GridPane | Website hosting and server backups, in the region chosen for each website |
| GridPane (United States) | Server management platform |
| Backblaze (United States) | Off-site copies of the website, for recovery |
| Cloudflare | Spam protection on our forms (Turnstile) |
| SureCart | Checkout, subscriptions, customer accounts and billing emails |
| PayPal | Payment processing |
| SureContact | Contact records from our forms and checkout, and our emails to you |
| Amazon Web Services (Amazon SES) | Sending the website’s emails |
| Usermaven (Germany) | Website analytics, only with your consent (no cookies) |
| Search Console; Google Analytics only if you accept analytics cookies | |
| Zoom | Consultation video calls |
| Basecamp | Project management for client work |
| Sage | Accounting and invoicing records |
| Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI | AI tools our team uses when working on client projects |
When personal information is transferred outside the UK or South Africa, we use providers that protect it under recognized safeguards, such as the UK extension of the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or contractual commitments giving protection similar to POPIA and the UK GDPR. You can ask us for details about any provider.
5. How long we keep it
| Information | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Inquiries that don’t become a sale | 2 years after the last contact |
| Customer, billing and payment records | 5 years, as South African tax law requires |
| Your account and subscription details | For as long as you’re a customer, then as for billing records |
| Server and security logs | 30 to 90 days |
| Website backups | Up to 30 days on the server and up to 90 days off-site, on a rolling basis |
| Reviews | Until you ask us to remove them |
| Usermaven analytics data | While our Usermaven account is active, then deleted |
6. Cookies
We use only the cookies the site needs to work, such as remembering your cookie choice and keeping your checkout and customer dashboard session working. Analytics only runs after you accept it. You can change your choice at any time:
Cookie PreferencesThe full detail is in our cookie policy. Your light or dark mode choice is saved in your browser’s local storage, not in a cookie, and isn’t sent to us.
7. Marketing emails
We only send marketing emails if you’ve asked for them or, if you’re an existing customer, about our own similar services. Every marketing email includes our postal address and an unsubscribe link, and we act on unsubscribe requests within 10 business days. Service emails (receipts, renewal reminders, account notices) aren’t marketing and are part of your subscription.
8. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you have the right to:
- ask what personal information we hold about you and get a copy
- have inaccurate information corrected
- have your information deleted
- object to, or restrict, how we use it, including for direct marketing
- receive your information in a portable format
- withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on consent (this doesn’t affect what we did before)
To use any of these rights, email privacy@webassist.co or use our contact form. We respond within one month and may need to confirm your identity first. We don’t make decisions about you based solely on automated processing. Formal requests for records under South African law are handled under our PAIA manual.
US residents: depending on your state, you may have the right to know what personal information we hold about you, and to access, correct or delete it, and to opt out of its sale, sharing or use for targeted advertising. We don’t sell personal information, share it for targeted advertising, or use it to profile you. Wherever you live in the US, you can make any of these requests as described above, and we won’t treat you differently for doing so.
9. Complaints
If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your personal information, please tell us first at privacy@webassist.co or through our contact form. We’ll acknowledge your complaint within 30 days and tell you the outcome.
You can also complain to a regulator:
- United States: the Federal Trade Commission, https://reportfraud.ftc.gov, or your state attorney general’s office.
- United Kingdom: the Information Commission (ICO), https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/
- South Africa: the Information Regulator, Woodmead North Office Park, 54 Maxwell Drive, Woodmead, Johannesburg, 2191; +27 10 023 5200; POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za; https://inforegulator.org.za
10. Children
This site isn’t directed at children, and we don’t knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe we have, email privacy@webassist.co and we’ll delete it.
11. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. The date at the top shows when it last changed. If we make a significant change, we’ll tell customers by email.
