Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Brunia Bay (Pty) Ltd ("SafeGrid", "we", "us", "our") is committed to protecting your personal information in accordance with the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA) and, where it applies to you, the EU/UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, and protect your information when you use the SafeGrid platform.

The SafeGrid mobile applications are distributed through the Apple App Store and Google Play under developer accounts operated on behalf of Brunia Bay (Pty) Ltd, so a store listing may show a different publisher or seller name. Whichever store you obtained the app from, Brunia Bay (Pty) Ltd is the data controller for the personal information described in this policy — and the responsible party for the purposes of POPIA — and any privacy request should be directed to us using the contact details in this policy.

2. What Information We Collect

2.1 Personal Information

• Full name
• Email address
• Mobile number
• Residential address (optional)
• Suburb / neighbourhood affiliation

2.2 Location Information

• Real-time location (during incidents or when explicitly shared)
• Approximate location for mapping and safety coordination

2.3 Incident & Communication Data

• Incident reports submitted by you
• Messages sent within the platform
• Photos or attachments (if provided)

2.4 Optional Information

• Emergency contact details
• Medical or health-related information (if voluntarily provided)

3. Purpose of Processing

Your information is used to:

• Facilitate neighbourhood safety coordination
• Enable incident reporting and response
• Assist responders (security, medical, or emergency services)
• Provide communication between residents and control rooms
• Improve platform functionality and safety outcomes

4. Sharing of Information

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own independent purposes (such as advertising). Information is only shared as described below, to operate the platform and coordinate safety.

4.1 With Authorised Responders

Security personnel, emergency responders, and medical responders — only when necessary to assist in an incident or emergency.

4.2 Within Your Community

Incident information may be visible to authorised users within your suburb. Personal details are limited to what is necessary for safety coordination.

4.3 With Service Providers

Payment providers (e.g. PayFast) and hosting/infrastructure providers. All third parties are required to protect your information.

5. Medical Information (Special Personal Information)

If you choose to provide medical or health-related information:

• This is considered special personal information under POPIA
• It will only be used in emergency situations
• It is only accessible to authorised responders when required

Providing this information is completely optional.

6. Consent

We do not treat your continued use of SafeGrid as consent. We process your information on the lawful grounds set out in section 11.1 — principally to provide the service you have signed up for, and to protect life in an emergency. Separate, specific, opt-in consent is asked for and can be withdrawn at any time for: sharing your live location with your team, medical information you choose to store, and subscription payments. Withdrawing any of these does not remove your access to the rest of the platform.

7. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your data, including encryption of sensitive information, secure authentication, and controlled access to personal data. However, no system is completely secure, and use of the platform is at your own risk.

8. Data Retention

We retain your information for as long as your account is active or as required for operational and legal purposes. You may request deletion of your data (subject to legal and operational requirements).

9. Your Rights (POPIA)

You have the right to:

• Access your personal information
• Correct or update your information
• Request deletion of your data
• Withdraw consent where applicable

Requests can be sent to: support@safegrid.online

Deleting your account: You can permanently delete your account and personal data at any time. See Delete Your Account for exactly what is removed and how to request it — either by emailing support@safegrid.online from your registered address, or by asking your site administrator to purge your record. Deletions are completed within 30 days.

10. Cookies

SafeGrid uses session cookies for authentication and security. We do not use third-party advertising or tracking cookies.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify users of material changes through the platform.

12. Contact

11. If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom

Brunia Bay (Pty) Ltd is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. This section applies in addition to the rest of this policy where the GDPR applies to you.

11.1 Our lawful bases for processing (Article 6)

• Contract — creating and running your account, your membership of a community, and the incident, patrol and messaging features you use.
• Consent — sharing your live location with your team. This is opt-in: it starts only when you set yourself On Duty or Standby with location sharing on, and you can withdraw it at any time by going Offline or Hidden, without losing access to the rest of the app.
• Legitimate interests — keeping the platform secure, preventing abuse, and keeping a community safety record of incidents. We balance this against your rights and you may object (see 11.3).
• Vital interests — acting on an SOS or emergency, where processing is necessary to protect someone's life or physical safety.

Where we rely on consent, we do not treat continued use of the app as consent.

11.2 Special category data (Article 9)

Medical or health information is optional and is processed only on your explicit consent, given when you choose to enter it, or where necessary to protect someone's vital interests in an emergency. You may remove it at any time from your profile.

11.3 Your rights

You have the right to access your data, to have it corrected, to have it erased, to restrict or object to our processing of it, and to receive it in a portable, machine-readable format.

• Access and portability — you can download everything we hold about you as a JSON file at any time from your profile on the SafeGrid website (Profile → Download my data), or by emailing us and we will send it to you.
• Erasure — you can delete your account and personal data from inside the app. See Delete Your Account for exactly what is removed.
• Objection and restriction — email us and we will stop or limit the processing concerned unless we are required to continue.
• Withdrawing consent — turn off location sharing in the app, or remove optional information from your profile.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority (in the EEA, your national data protection authority; in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office).

11.4 How long we keep things

• Account and profile — while your account exists. On deletion, removed within 30 days.
• Location and patrol history — kept as your community's operational patrol record; deleted with your account.
• Camera event snapshots — automatically deleted after 7 days.
• Incident attachments — retained while your community's subscription is active, subject to a minimum of 7 days.
• Incident records — retained as the community's safety record. When you delete your account these are no longer linked to your identity.

11.5 Where your data is processed, and transfers

Brunia Bay (Pty) Ltd is established in South Africa and SafeGrid is hosted on Microsoft Azure, with personal data stored and processed in South Africa. South Africa is not the subject of a European Commission adequacy decision.

When you use SafeGrid, you provide your information to us directly. Where we then use service providers to process it on our behalf — principally Microsoft (hosting and automated incident classification) and Google (push notifications) — those providers act as our processors under written data protection terms which incorporate the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, and the UK Addendum where the UK GDPR applies. We keep the technical measures described in section 7 in place alongside them.

11.6 Automated processing

Incident reports and messages are analysed by an automated service (Microsoft Azure OpenAI, acting as our processor) to classify the type and urgency of an incident, to translate, and to summarise. This assists human controllers; it does not make decisions producing legal or similarly significant effects about you, and a person can always review and change a classification.

11.7 Our representative in the EU and the UK

Article 27 of the GDPR requires a controller outside the EU that offers services to people in the EU to appoint a representative there. Our representative can be contacted about anything in this policy, in your own language, and you may contact them instead of us if you prefer:

EU representative: to be appointed — contact details will be published here.
UK representative: to be appointed — contact details will be published here.

Until then, and at any time, you can reach us directly at support@safegrid.online.

11.8 Contacting us, and response times

For any privacy request or question, email support@safegrid.online. We answer requests about your rights within one month, and will tell you if we need longer because a request is complex.

12. If you are in the United States

Depending on your state (for example California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas or Oregon) you may have the right to know what personal information we collect and why, to obtain a copy of it, to have it corrected or deleted, and not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We do not serve advertising in SafeGrid and we do not use your data for profiling. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. To exercise any right, email support@safegrid.online; you may use an authorised agent, and we will verify the request against the details on your account before acting on it.

13. If you are in Brazil

Under the Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD) you have the rights to confirmation of processing, access, correction, anonymisation or deletion, portability, information about with whom we share data, and to withdraw consent. Our legal bases mirror those in section 11.1: performance of a contract, your consent, our legitimate interests, and protection of life or physical safety. Requests: support@safegrid.online.

14. If you are in Australia

We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles under the Privacy Act 1988. You may request access to, and correction of, the personal information we hold about you, and complain about how we have handled it. If we cannot resolve a complaint, you may refer it to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). Where a data breach is likely to cause serious harm, we will notify you and the OAIC in line with the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme.

15. If you are elsewhere in Africa

In South Africa this policy is issued under POPIA and our Information Officer is named at the end of this policy; you may complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa). If you are in another African country with its own data protection law — for example the Nigeria Data Protection Act or the Kenya Data Protection Act — the rights described in this policy (access, correction, deletion, objection and complaint to your national regulator) apply to you as well.

16. Data breaches

If a breach of security affects your personal information and is likely to put you at risk, we will notify the relevant regulator without undue delay — and within 72 hours where the GDPR applies — and we will tell you directly where the law requires it or where you need to act to protect yourself.

17. Everyone, everywhere

Wherever you live, and whatever the law where you are, you can: download everything we hold about you (Profile → Download my data), delete your account and data from inside the app, turn location sharing off at any time, and email support@safegrid.online with any question about your information. We apply the same protections to everyone by default rather than only to those whose law requires it.

Information Officer: Brunia Bay (Pty) Ltd
Email: support@safegrid.online