Legal
Privacy Policy
The short version? We use what you tell us to reply to you and prepare your proposal. If we found your business in a public directory, we contact you once to ask if you’d like to hear more, and only carry on if you say yes. We never sell your information, and this website only uses analytics cookies if you say yes.
1. Who we are
This policy explains how Merkcoco handles personal information collected through merkcoco.com and when you contact us. It is written to meet the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA). Under POPIA we are the responsible party for your information.
- Business
- MP Pretorius, sole proprietor, trading as Merkcoco
- Information Officer
- MP Pretorius
- hello@merkcoco.com
- Phone
- 079 076 2352
- Address
- 4 Boland Avenue, Hartenbos, Western Cape, South Africa
2. What we collect
Information you give us
When you complete the questionnaire on our home page, we receive
- your name, email address and, if you add it, your business name;
- your current website address, if you have one;
- your answers about goals, content, corporate identity, websites you like and budget, plus anything you type in the optional notes.
If you use the form on our Black Friday page, we receive your name, email address, business name and, if you add them, your phone number, what your business does, whether you have a logo and your message.
If you book a website and complete our website checklist (and, if you like, our design tool for choosing colours and wording), we also receive the business details you choose to share for your site, such as your services, reviews, opening hours and the contact details you want shown on it, plus any files you email us.
Your name and email address are needed so we can reply. Everything else is up to you, but the more you share, the more useful your audit and proposal will be. If you email, phone or WhatsApp us, we also keep that correspondence.
Please don’t send us special personal information (such as health, religious or biometric details) or other people’s personal information. We don’t need it to design a website.
Businesses we contact first
We sometimes get in touch with local businesses whose details are published in public sources, such as Google Maps and online business directories. A research service compiles these for us. For each business we keep the business name, the contact person’s name if it is published, the business email address and phone number, the town and industry, and notes about the business’s current website. We use this only to introduce our web design services.
Information collected automatically
Like every website, ours is delivered by a web server that keeps standard technical logs, such as your IP address, browser type, the pages requested and the time of each request. Our hosting provider keeps these for security and troubleshooting. We don’t use them to identify you or to build a profile of you.
3. How and why we use it
We use your information only to
- reply to your enquiry and answer your questions;
- research and audit your current website or competitors, and prepare your positioning, structure, design options and quote;
- carry out the project if you go ahead, and keep the records the law requires (for example for tax);
- keep this website secure and working properly.
Under section 11 of POPIA, we process this information because you asked us to take steps towards a possible agreement with you, to carry out that agreement, to comply with the law, and for our legitimate interests in running a secure website and in offering our services to businesses that may need them.
Contacting businesses we found. If we found your business in a public source, we may contact you once, by email, WhatsApp or phone, to ask whether you’d like to hear about a website. We only send more if you say yes, as section 69 of POPIA requires. Every message says who we are and how to opt out. Reply “no thanks” or “unsubscribe”, or email hello@merkcoco.com, and we won’t contact you again.
No newsletters, no selling. We won’t add you to a newsletter or send you marketing messages you didn’t agree to, and we never sell, rent or trade personal information.
5. Information sent outside South Africa
Some of the providers above store or process information on servers outside South Africa. FormSubmit, for example, processes the questionnaire on servers abroad before it reaches our inbox, and Google Analytics, if you accept it, processes how the site is used on Google’s servers. Section 72 of POPIA allows this where the transfer is needed to respond to a request you made, or where the recipient is bound by protections substantially similar to POPIA. We choose established providers with published privacy and security commitments.
7. How long we keep it
If your enquiry doesn’t turn into a project, we delete your questionnaire answers and related emails within 12 months of our last contact. The same applies to businesses we contacted first that didn’t reply or weren’t interested. If you ask us not to contact you again, we keep only your email address or phone number on a do not contact list, so it never happens by mistake. If we work together, we keep project and billing records for as long as tax law requires, which is usually five years. You can ask us to delete your information sooner (see your rights below).
8. How we protect it
This website is served over an encrypted connection (HTTPS), and the questionnaire is sent encrypted. Access to our inbox and project files is limited to the people working on your project and protected by strong passwords, with two factor sign in wherever the service offers it. If we ever become aware of a breach that affects your information, we’ll tell you and the Information Regulator as section 22 of POPIA requires.
9. Your rights
Under POPIA you can
- ask whether we hold personal information about you, and for a copy of it;
- ask us to correct information that is wrong, incomplete or out of date;
- ask us to delete information we no longer have a reason to keep;
- object to us using your information, and opt out of marketing at any time;
- complain to the Information Regulator.
To make a request, email hello@merkcoco.com with the subject “Privacy request”. We may ask you to confirm your identity first, and we’ll respond within 30 days. There is no charge for a simple request.
If you’re unhappy with how we handled your information, please tell us first so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa) at inforegulator.org.za.
10. Children
Our services are for businesses and adults. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has sent us their details, contact us and we’ll delete them.
11. Changes to this policy
We’ll update this policy when the way we handle information changes, and the date at the top will show when that happened. Please also read our Terms of Use.