Privacy notice

1. Who we are

The responsible party is PetIP, a brand of ME Investments (in formation), referred to here as PetIP, we or us. Our Information Officer is Dean Smorenburg. You can reach us about anything in this notice at privacy@petip.co.za.

2. What we collect

When you join the panel (pet owners):

• About you: first and last name, email address, mobile number, your address (street, suburb, city, province, postal code) so we can deliver trial food, and how you prefer to be contacted.
• Your answers about how you'd like to take part: for example whether you are happy to send photos or videos, answer surveys, weigh food, or feed your pets separately.
• About your pets: name, dog or cat, breed, age, weight, sex, whether sterilised, current food and how long they have eaten it, appetite, allergies, any medical condition or special diet or medication, activity level and whether they live indoors or outdoors. This describes your pet, not you, but we treat it with the same care.

When you take part in a trial: your daily check-in answers and notes, any photos or videos you send us, and your replies to our messages.

When a brand contacts us: the contact's name, company, work email and message.

Technical information: our hosting provider keeps standard server logs, and our forms use a Cloudflare check (Turnstile) to tell people from automated spam. We do not use advertising cookies or tracking pixels on this site.

3. Why we collect it

• To run the panel: to match your dog or cat to suitable trials and invite you.
• To run a trial: to deliver the food, send the daily check-in links and reminders, and record what your pet did.
• To turn the results into reports for the brand that asked for the trial, always without your name or contact details (see section 5).
• To keep the site and your information safe, and to meet our legal duties.

We rely on your consent, which you give by ticking the box when you join. You can withdraw it at any time (section 8).

4. Who sees your information

• The PetIP team, who need it to run trials. Access to the administration screens is limited to authorised people who sign in.
• Service providers who help us run the panel, and who may only use the information for that purpose: our hosting (Cloudflare), our database (Supabase), our email and messaging tools (Google Workspace, Resend and WhatsApp), and spam protection (Cloudflare Turnstile).
• Nobody else. We never sell your information or give it to advertisers.

Some providers store or process information outside South Africa. Our database is hosted in Ireland (European Union). We only use providers that protect information to a standard comparable to POPIA.

5. What brands see

Brands never learn who you are. Your name, address, phone number and email are never shown to a brand or to anyone outside PetIP. In reports and in any brand portal, brands see only:

• your pet's first name and species (or an anonymous code),
• photos of your pet that you chose to send us for the trial, and
• the combined and per-pet results of the trial, without any detail that would identify you.

Please don't include people's faces, house numbers or other identifying details in photos. If you do, we crop or remove them before a photo goes in a report.

6. How long we keep it

• Panel details: until you ask us to remove them, or until three years after you last took part or replied to us (we will try to contact you first).
• Trial results: kept in anonymised form, without your details, for as long as they are useful for the trial and for our records.
• Brand enquiries: two years after the last contact.

When we delete your details, we also delete or anonymise the information linked to them. Backups are replaced within a few weeks.

7. How we protect it

Information is sent over encrypted connections and stored in a database that the public cannot read. Only signed-in PetIP administrators can open owner and pet records. Private links in our messages (for check-ins and invitations) are long, unguessable and each open only the one thing they are meant for. No system is perfectly secure; if we ever learn of a breach that affects you, we will tell you and the Information Regulator as the law requires.

8. Your rights, including opting out

You may at any time:

• ask what information we hold about you and get a copy,
• ask us to correct or delete it,
• object to how we use it, or withdraw your consent.

To opt out or withdraw, email privacy@petip.co.za or reply STOP to any of our WhatsApp messages. We will stop contacting you and remove you from the panel, and we confirm when it is done. Withdrawing does not affect anything we did with your information before you withdrew, and anonymised results already used in a report cannot be taken back because they no longer identify you.

If you are unhappy with how we handled your information, you can complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa) at inforegulator.org.za. We would appreciate the chance to put things right first.

9. Children

The panel is for adults aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect information about children.

10. Brands who contact us

If you are a brand, we use your name, company, work email and message only to reply and to discuss trials. Enquiry records are not public and are available only to authorised administrators. You can ask us to correct or delete them at any time at privacy@petip.co.za.

11. Changes to this notice

If we change this notice in a way that matters, we will update the date above and tell panel members by email or WhatsApp. Our terms of participation explain what taking part involves.