How we handle personal information.

Social Mediator (Pty) Ltd · Last updated 1 October 2026

1. Who we are

Social Mediator (Pty) Ltd ("Social Mediator", "we", "us") is a private company registered in South Africa. We provide social media marketing, AI systems and automated WhatsApp messaging for businesses.

We are registered with the Information Regulator (South Africa) under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). Our Information Officer is Matthew Alexandre.

Contact for anything in this policy: luke@socialmediator.net

2. Our two roles

Under POPIA, the organisation that decides how personal information is used is the responsible party. An organisation that handles it on someone else's instructions is an operator.

• Responsible party: for information about people who contact us, our clients' staff, and visitors to this website. Sections 3 to 5 cover this.
• Operator: for information we handle on behalf of our clients, such as their customers' WhatsApp messages and their social media accounts. Section 6 covers this.

3. What we collect

• Contact details: your name, email address, phone number and business name, when you get in touch or work with us.
• What you tell us: the content of your emails, messages and calls with us.
• Billing details: for clients, the company details we need to invoice you.
• Technical information: when you visit this website, our hosting provider records standard server logs (such as IP address, browser type and the pages requested) to keep the site running and secure. This website does not use advertising or analytics cookies.

4. How we use it

• To reply to you and discuss a possible engagement.
• To provide, support and secure the services we deliver to clients.
• To invoice and keep the accounting records the law requires.
• To protect our services and deal with misuse or legal claims.

We rely on your consent, on what is needed to perform a contract with you, on a legal obligation, or on our legitimate interests (or yours), as POPIA allows. We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.

5. How long we keep it

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purposes above, or as long as the law requires (for example, accounting records). After that, we delete it or make it anonymous.

6. Information we handle for our clients

When a business uses our services, we may handle personal information about that business's customers. For example: names, phone numbers and the content of WhatsApp messages, or comments and messages on social media pages we manage.

• We use it only to provide the service the client asked for, and only on the client's instructions.
• The client is the responsible party. Its own privacy notice explains how it uses your information, and requests about that information should go to the client first. If you contact us instead, we will pass your request on.
• We do not use it for our own purposes, and we never sell it.
• When the work ends, we delete it or return it to the client, as agreed with them.

WhatsApp and Meta platform data

Our WhatsApp services run on the WhatsApp Business Platform, provided by Meta, with Twilio as our messaging provider. When a business connects its WhatsApp account through us, we receive only the access needed to send and receive messages and manage message templates for that business.

• We use data received through Meta's platforms only to provide the service to that business.
• We do not sell it, use it for advertising, or share it with anyone except the service providers listed below, who need it to run the service.
• A business can disconnect its WhatsApp account from us at any time, and can ask us to delete the data we hold for it (see section 9).

7. Who we share it with

We use trusted service providers to run our services. They may only use the information to provide their service to us:

• Messaging: Meta (the WhatsApp Business Platform) and Twilio.
• Hosting and email: the cloud providers that host our systems and our email.
• AI services: the AI providers that process messages so our systems can draft or send replies.

We may also disclose information where the law requires it.

Outside South Africa. Some of these providers store or process information outside South Africa. Where they do, we make sure there is protection for your information at a level POPIA requires, for example through the provider's binding terms.

8. How we protect it

We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal information, including access controls, encryption in transit and limiting access to the people who need it. If a security breach affects your information, we will tell you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.

9. Your rights, and how to delete your data

Under POPIA you can ask us to:

• confirm whether we hold personal information about you, and give you a copy
• correct information that is wrong or out of date
• delete your information, where we no longer have a reason to keep it
• stop using your information for a particular purpose

To make a request, including a request to delete your data, email luke@socialmediator.net with your name, the phone number or email address the request relates to, and what you'd like us to do. We'll confirm who you are and reply within a reasonable time.

If you message a business on WhatsApp and no longer want messages from it, you can reply STOP at any time.

10. Complaints

Please contact us first, and we'll try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa): inforegulator.org.za.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The date at the top shows when it last changed.