Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible for your information

The responsible party for your personal information is Strategies Migration Services South Africa (Proprietary) Limited, trading as Strategies Migration Services.

• Physical address: 145 Second Street Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa
• Telephone: 010 446 0244
• Email: info@immigrationspecialists.co.za

Information Officer

Our Information Officer is [Information Officer name: to be confirmed before launch]. You can contact them about anything in this policy at admin@immigrationspecialists.co.za.

2. What we collect

• Contact details: your name, email address and phone number, and those of any sponsor you invite.
• Assessment answers: your answers to our online eligibility questions. These answers do not identify you until you go to checkout and give us your contact details.
• Payment confirmation details: Netcash tells us whether your payment succeeded, the amount, a transaction reference and limited details such as the payment method type. We never see or store your full card number.
• Identity and relationship documents: documents you or your sponsor upload, such as passports, birth and marriage certificates, police clearance certificates, and evidence of your relationship.
• Supporting documents: other documents your visa category requires, such as medical and radiology reports, financial information (for example bank statements, payslips and proof of earnings), employment history, qualifications, photographs and, where relevant, DNA test results or death certificates of relatives.
• Account and usage information: sign-in records, portal activity and, only if you consent, analytics about how you use the website (see section 9).

Special personal information and children’s information

Some documents needed for a visa application contain special personal information as defined in POPIA, for example criminal behaviour (police clearance certificates), health (medical reports) and biometric information, and may reveal information such as religious or philosophical beliefs, race or ethnic origin. For Relative Visa applications, we may also process information about children, such as birth certificates. We process this information only because it is needed to prepare your application, with your consent (or that of a competent person, such as a parent or guardian, for a child) or as otherwise permitted by POPIA, and we protect it with the measures in section 6. Where we provide services for or on behalf of a minor beyond the toolkit, we will ask the child’s parents or legal guardians to sign a separate consent form before we start.

3. Why we use your information, and our lawful basis

• To provide what you bought (portal access, toolkit materials, Professional Review and add-on services): this is necessary to perform our contract with you.
• To process payments and keep transaction records: necessary for our contract and to comply with tax and other legal obligations.
• To send service notifications by email and, if you opt in, WhatsApp: necessary for our contract, and based on your consent for WhatsApp.
• To process special personal information and children’s information: your consent, or that of a competent person.
• To keep the service secure and prevent fraud and abuse: our legitimate interests and yours.
• To understand and improve how the website is used: your consent to analytics cookies.

We do not sell your personal information.

4. Operators who process information for us

We use the following service providers (“operators” in POPIA) to run the service. They process personal information only on our instructions and for the purposes described here.

• Vercel: hosts the website and portal.
• Supabase: database, sign-in and secure document storage.
• Netcash: payment processing.
• Resend: sending emails.
• WhatsApp Business provider: sending WhatsApp notifications, only if you opt in. [WhatsApp Business provider name: to be confirmed before launch]
• PostHog: website analytics, only if you consent to analytics cookies.
• Cloudflare Turnstile: bot protection on forms.

We have written agreements with our operators that require them to keep your information confidential and to apply appropriate security measures, as section 21 of POPIA requires.

5. Transfers outside South Africa

Your documents and account information are stored in [storage region to be confirmed]. Some of our operators may process information outside South Africa. Some of our own employees and consultants are based outside South Africa, including in Zimbabwe, and may work on your application or Professional Review from there. Where personal information is transferred outside South Africa, we rely on the grounds in section 72 of POPIA, such as binding agreements with the recipient that provide an adequate level of protection substantially similar to POPIA.

6. How we protect your information

• Information is encrypted in transit and at rest.
• Documents are kept in a private, access-controlled vault. Within our team, access is restricted to the consultants assigned to your application.
• Our staff use multi-factor authentication to sign in.
• Access to documents is logged.
• Uploaded files are scanned for malware.
• Card payments are handled on Netcash’s hosted payment page; card details never reach our servers.
• WhatsApp messages contain no personal details, only a note that there is an update in your portal.

7. How long we keep your information

Uploaded documents are deleted automatically 12 months after the outcome of your application is recorded or your application is closed, unless the law requires us to keep them longer or you ask us to delete them earlier (see section 8).

Transaction records, such as invoices and payment records, are kept for as long as tax and other laws require. Other account information is kept while your account is active and deleted or de-identified when it is no longer needed.

8. Your rights

Under POPIA you have the right to:

• ask whether we hold personal information about you and request access to it;
• ask us to correct information that is inaccurate, out of date or incomplete;
• ask us to delete information that we are no longer entitled to keep;
• object to processing on reasonable grounds, and to direct marketing at any time;
• withdraw consent you have given, without affecting processing that took place before; and
• complain to the Information Regulator.

To exercise these rights, contact our Information Officer at admin@immigrationspecialists.co.za. We may need to verify your identity first.

If you are not satisfied with how we handle your request, you can complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa): inforeg.org.za, email POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za.

9. Cookies and analytics

We use essential cookies to keep you signed in and to keep the service secure. These are needed for the website to work and do not require consent.

Analytics (PostHog) loads only if you accept analytics cookies in our cookie banner. If you decline, analytics does not load.

To change your choice, clear this website’s cookies and site data in your browser. The cookie banner will then appear again and you can make a new choice.

10. WhatsApp and marketing

We send WhatsApp messages only if you opt in. You can opt out at any time in your portal. We will send you marketing messages only where POPIA allows it, and you can unsubscribe from any marketing message.

11. Sponsors

If an applicant invites a sponsor (a spouse, partner or relative) to upload documents, we process the sponsor’s contact details and documents for the same purposes and with the same protections described in this policy. Sponsors have the same rights set out in section 8.

12. Security compromises

If we have reasonable grounds to believe that your personal information has been accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person, we will notify the Information Regulator and you as soon as reasonably possible, as section 22 of POPIA requires.

13. PAIA manual

Our manual under the Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000 (PAIA) explains how to request access to records we hold. [PAIA manual link: to be confirmed before launch]

14. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We will publish the updated version on this page and, if a change materially affects how we use your information, we will tell you. This policy should be read with our Terms of Service.