Privacy Policy
Effective 21 September 2026
In this policy we call ourselves Good Friend, we or us. We are the responsible party for your personal information under South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA), and the data controller under the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation where those apply to you.
This policy explains what we collect, why, who sees it, how long we keep it and what you can do about it. If anything here is unclear, write to us at team@goodfriend.haus and we will answer.
01
What we collect
| Category | What it includes | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Contact details | Email address, and your first name if you give it | You, when you sign up |
| Account information | Username, password (stored encrypted), account settings | You, when you create an account |
| Usage information | Which features you open, session length, in-app actions, crash reports | Automatically, from the app |
| Device information | Device type, operating system, app version, language, approximate region derived from IP | Automatically |
| Communication history | Emails we send you, whether you opened them, and your replies | Our email platform |
| Support correspondence | Anything you tell us when you contact us | You |
We do not ask for and do not want your identity number, payment card numbers, health information, religious or political views, or any other special personal information. Please do not send these to us.
02
Why we collect it, and our legal grounds
| Purpose | Information used | POPIA ground | GDPR basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Give you the app and your account | Contact, account, device | Necessary to perform our agreement with you | Art 6(1)(b) |
| Send you marketing emails about Good Friend | Contact, communication history | Your consent under section 69 | Art 6(1)(a) |
| Keep the app working and fix faults | Usage, device | Our legitimate interests | Art 6(1)(f) |
| Understand which features people use, so we can improve them | Usage, device | Our legitimate interests | Art 6(1)(f) |
| Answer your questions | Support correspondence, contact | Necessary to perform our agreement | Art 6(1)(b) |
| Meet legal obligations and defend legal claims | Any of the above | Compliance with an obligation of law | Art 6(1)(c) and (f) |
03
Giving us your information is voluntary
You do not have to give us anything. If you do not give us an email address you cannot create an account or receive our emails, and that is the only consequence. Nothing else in the app depends on it.
04
Marketing emails
We only send you marketing email if you asked for it. You ask for it by ticking the consent box yourself and then confirming through the link in the email we send you. We do not pre-tick that box, we do not bundle it into our terms, and we do not add you to our list because you created an account or contacted support.
Every marketing email we send tells you who sent it and carries a one-click unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing is free and takes effect immediately. You can also unsubscribe at any time by writing to team@goodfriend.haus, or in the app under Settings.
If you unsubscribe we keep a record of your address on a suppression list. We do that so we do not email you again by accident. We do not use that list for anything else.
We never sell your email address, and we never rent or share it with another company for that company’s own marketing.
05
Who else sees your information
We use service providers, called operators under POPIA and processors under GDPR, who handle information on our written instructions and may not use it for their own purposes.
| Provider | What they do | Where they process |
|---|---|---|
| Klaviyo | Sends our emails and stores the mailing list | US |
| Apple App Store and Google Play | Distribute the app and process any purchases | Global |
We also disclose information where the law requires it, where a court orders it, or where we need it to establish or defend a legal claim. If we ever sell or restructure the business, information may transfer to the buyer, and this policy continues to apply to it.
06
Information that leaves South Africa
Our service providers are mostly outside South Africa. POPIA section 72 allows this where the recipient is bound by a law, binding corporate rules or a binding agreement that gives substantially similar protection and restricts onward transfer, or where you consent, or where the transfer is necessary to perform our agreement with you. We rely on contractual commitments with each provider that require protection at that level. Where information moves out of the EU or UK, we rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses or the UK Addendum.
You can ask us for the detail of the safeguards for any specific provider, and we will give it to you.
07
How long we keep it
| Information | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Account information | As long as your account is open, then 12 months |
| Marketing list entry | Until you unsubscribe or we have not heard from you in 24 months, whichever comes first |
| Record of your consent | 3 years after consent ends, as evidence that we had it |
| Suppression list entry | Indefinitely, because deleting it would let us email you again |
| Usage and device information | 26 months, then aggregated so it no longer identifies you |
| Support correspondence | 3 years from the last message |
Where a law requires us to keep something longer, we keep it for that period and no longer.
08
Your rights
Under POPIA you have the right to:
- ask what personal information we hold about you and get a copy of it
- ask us to correct or delete information that is wrong, misleading, out of date, excessive or obtained unlawfully
- object to processing we base on legitimate interests, on reasonable grounds
- object at any time to the use of your information for direct marketing, and we must stop
- withdraw any consent you gave, without affecting what we did lawfully before you withdrew it
- not be subject to a decision with legal consequences based only on automated processing
- complain to the Information Regulator
If the EU or UK GDPR applies to you, you also have the right to receive your information in a portable format, the right to restrict processing, and the right to lodge a complaint with your own national supervisory authority.
To use any of these rights, write to team@goodfriend.haus. We answer as quickly as we reasonably can. If you make a formal access request under the Promotion of Access to Information Act, we must decide within 30 days of receiving it, and we will tell you if we need the further extension that Act allows. Use Form 2 and send it to our Information Officer at the same address. We may ask you to confirm your identity first, so that we do not hand your information to someone else.
09
Security
We protect your information with encryption in transit and at rest, access controls that limit who on our side can see it, and regular review of the providers we use. No system is perfect. If a breach affects your personal information, POPIA section 22 requires us to notify you and the Information Regulator as soon as reasonably possible after we discover it, and we will tell you what happened and what to do about it.
10
Children
Good Friend is for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has given us information, write to team@goodfriend.haus and we will delete it.
11
Automated decisions
We do not make decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects using automated processing alone.
12
Cookies and similar technologies
We use cookies and similar technologies on goodfriend.haus to run the site, remember your choices and understand how the site is used.
| Type | What it does | Consent |
|---|---|---|
| Strictly necessary | Holds your session, protects against fraud, remembers your cookie choice | Not required. Cannot be switched off |
| Preferences | Remembers settings like your language | Only with your consent |
| Analytics | Tells us which pages people read and where they leave | Only with your consent |
| Advertising | Lets us show you Good Friend on other platforms and measure whether it worked | Only with your consent |
You can change your choice at any time through Cookie Preferences in the footer, or by clearing cookies in your browser. Some of these cookies are set by third parties who process the information for their own purposes as well, and their handling is covered by their own privacy policies, linked in the preference panel.
The Good Friend app does not use cookies. It uses device identifiers and software development kits, and we ask for your consent to those on first launch in the same way.
13
Changes to this policy
We update this policy when what we do changes. The date at the top tells you the current version. If a change materially affects how we use your information, we tell you by email before it takes effect, and where the law requires it we ask for your consent again.
14
How to reach us, and how to complain
- Information Officer
- Frits Visser
- team@goodfriend.haus
- Address
- 72 Hofmeyer Street, WC.