Privacy notice

ProductSpy (https://productspy.co.za) is responsible for the personal information described here. For any privacy question or request, email hello@productspy.co.za.

• Your account: email address, display name, an optional avatar link, and your password — stored only as a one-way scrambled hash, so we can’t read it.
• What you contribute: ratings, reviews, the store and price you report, and products and photos you add. Photos are shrunk on your phone and their hidden data (such as GPS location) is removed before upload.
• Security records: to stop password guessing and spam we briefly record failed logins and sign-ups with your email address or IP address. These are deleted automatically after one day.
• Technical logs: our hosting provider keeps standard server logs (such as IP address and pages requested) for a short time to run and secure the service.

We don’t collect your location, contacts, or anything from your camera except the photo or barcode you choose.

• To run your account and let you log in.
• To show your ratings and reviews to other shoppers — that’s the point of ProductSpy.
• To keep the service safe from abuse.

We never sell your information or use it for advertising.

Your display name, avatar, ratings, reviews, and the stores and prices you report are visible to everyone. Your email address is never shown. Choose a display name you’re happy to have public.

We use one essential cookie to keep you logged in (it can’t be read by scripts and lasts up to 30 days). There are no analytics, advertising or third-party tracking cookies.

• Vercel hosts the website. Our servers run in Frankfurt, Germany; pages are delivered through Vercel’s global network.
• Neon hosts our database, also in Frankfurt, Germany.
• Open Food Facts — when a barcode is scanned we look it up there. Only the barcode is sent, never anything about you.

Your information is therefore stored outside South Africa, in the European Union, which has data-protection law comparable to POPIA. These providers only process it to provide their service to us.

We keep your account and contributions until you delete your account. When you do, we delete your account, profile, ratings and reviews. Products and photos you added stay on ProductSpy as shared product information, but are no longer linked to you.

• See and correct your details on your profile at any time.
• Delete your account yourself under Profile → Account settings.
• Ask what information we hold about you, or object to how we use it, by emailing hello@productspy.co.za.
• Complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa) if you’re unhappy with how we handle your information: inforegulator.org.za.

If you’re under 18, please get a parent or guardian’s permission before creating an account.

Connections to ProductSpy are encrypted (HTTPS), passwords are hashed, and failed logins are limited to slow down guessing. No system is perfectly secure; if we ever discover a breach affecting you, we’ll let you and the Information Regulator know as POPIA requires.

If we change this notice we’ll update the date above, and tell you on the site if the change is significant.