Privacy Policy

Brannewyn (“we”, “us”, or “our”) is operated by Lyemac (Pty) Ltd, a company registered in the Republic of South Africa. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, who we share it with, and what rights you have under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA).

By using Brannewyn you agree to the practices described below. If anything here is unclear, please contact us — our details are at the bottom of this page.

Who is the responsible party?

Lyemac (Pty) Ltd is the “responsible party” for your personal information as defined in POPIA. Our Information Officer can be reached at jason@lyemac.co.za.

What we collect

• Account information.

  When you sign up, our authentication provider (Clerk) collects your email address and name. If you sign in with a social provider (for example Google), we receive your email, name, and profile image from that provider. We store your email, name, and a Clerk user ID in our database.

• Price reports.

  When you submit a price report, we store the place name and address, its geographic coordinates, the price, any notes you add, and the time of submission. Price reports are public by design — they are the crowdsourced data that powers the Brannewyn index.

• Newsletter subscription.

  If you subscribe to our newsletter, we store your email address for the purpose of sending you that newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any newsletter email or by contacting us.

• Payment information.

  If you purchase a paid product, payments are processed by Yoco (for South African card payments) or Polar (for international payments). We receive and store the order status, amount, currency, and a customer or order identifier from the payment provider. We never see or store your full card details.

• Technical and log data.

  We retain webhook and event records from our authentication and payment providers for audit and debugging. These records may include your IP address and browser user-agent. We do not use third-party analytics, advertising, or behavioural tracking tools.

Why we process your information

• To create and authenticate your account.
• To build and display the public Brannewyn price index from user-submitted reports.
• To send you transactional email such as welcome messages, order receipts, and access reminders.
• To send you our newsletter, when you have opted in to receive it.
• To process payments, issue discount codes, and manage subscriptions.
• To protect the integrity of the service — for example, detecting abuse, spam, or fraudulent activity.
• To comply with our legal obligations, including those imposed by POPIA and South African tax and consumer-protection law.

Who we share information with

We use a small number of contracted operators to run the service. They process your information on our behalf, under their own privacy terms, and only for the purposes described above:

• Clerk — account authentication and session management.
• Convex — hosted database and backend for the application.
• Google Maps Platform — place search and autocomplete; search queries you type are sent to Google.
• Resend — delivery of transactional and newsletter email.
• Yoco — South African card payment processing.
• Polar — international subscription and payment processing.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing purposes.

Cross-border transfers

Several of our operators — including Clerk, Convex, Resend, Polar, and Google — store and process information on servers outside the Republic of South Africa. Where we transfer your personal information across borders, we rely on the conditions permitted by section 72 of POPIA, including contractual safeguards that require the recipient to protect your information at a level comparable to POPIA.

How long we keep it

We keep your personal information only for as long as it is needed for the purposes described in this policy, or for as long as we are required to by law. Your account information is retained until you delete your account; price reports and newsletter entries are kept until you ask us to remove them; webhook and event logs are kept for a reasonable period to support auditing and troubleshooting. If you ask us to delete your information, we will do so except where we are required to retain it by law.

Your rights under POPIA

You have the right to:

• ask us to confirm whether we hold personal information about you, and request a copy of it;
• ask us to correct or update information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• ask us to delete your information or to stop processing it in a particular way;
• object to the processing of your information in certain circumstances;
• withdraw your consent at any time, where processing is based on consent (such as the newsletter);
• lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator of South Africa.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at jason@lyemac.co.za. You can reach the Information Regulator at inforegulator.org.za.

Cookies

Brannewyn uses a small number of strictly necessary cookies — primarily the session cookie set by Clerk to keep you signed in. We do not use third-party analytics, advertising, or behavioural tracking cookies.

Security

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your personal information, including encryption of data in transit over TLS and storing data with established providers that maintain their own security programmes. No internet service can guarantee absolute security, and we cannot promise that our systems will never be compromised.

Age restriction

Brannewyn tracks the pricing of alcoholic beverages. The service is intended for users who are 18 years of age or older, and is not directed at children. Please do not create an account or submit price reports if you are under 18.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the “Last updated” date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, notify you by email or a prominent notice on the site.

Contact us

For any privacy questions, access or deletion requests, or to exercise any of the rights described above, contact Lyemac (Pty) Ltd at jason@lyemac.co.za.