Privacy Policy

This Policy applies to anyone who visits matricmentorsa.co.za, watches our lesson videos on YouTube, joins our WhatsApp community, or registers for an account on the Service. A large proportion of our users are Grade 10–12 learners, many of whom are minors under South African law. We describe the extra care we take with minors' information in Section 6.

Information you give us directly

• Full name, email address, and (where provided) phone number
• Grade (10, 11, or 12) and home language
• Subject enrolment and study preferences you select
• Your account password, stored only as an irreversible cryptographic hash — we never store or have access to your plain-text password
• Any messages you send us, for example through our contact channels

Information generated by using the Service

• Your practice answers, whether each was correct, and the resulting mastery score per topic
• Mock exam attempts, answers, and scores
• Lesson videos viewed and study session activity, used to build your study plan and reminders

Information collected automatically

• IP address, browser type, device type, and general location inferred from your IP address
• Log data such as pages visited, timestamps, and error reports
• Essential cookies used to keep you signed in and to remember basic preferences

Payment information (once subscriptions are live)

When paid subscriptions launch, payments will be handled by a licensed, PCI-compliant South African payment gateway. We do not, and will not, store your full card number, card expiry date, or CVV on our own servers — that information is entered directly with our payment processor. We retain only what is necessary to identify and manage your subscription, such as a subscription status and reference ID.

Under POPIA, we only process your personal information where we have a lawful basis to do so. We rely on the following:

• Performance of a contract — to create and manage your account, deliver lesson content, mark and track your practice and exam attempts, and operate your subscription
• Legitimate interest — to personalise your study plan and the difficulty of practice questions, to keep the Service secure, and to understand how the Service is used so we can improve it
• Consent — where you choose to join our WhatsApp community or opt in to any other optional communication
• Legal obligation — where processing is required to comply with South African law, including tax and consumer protection legislation

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with the following categories of recipients, each acting as an operator on our instruction or under their own applicable terms:

• Supabase (our database, authentication, and hosting provider) — stores your account and learning data on our behalf, behind access controls that restrict every table to your own data by default
• YouTube / Google — our free lesson videos are hosted on YouTube. If you watch a video embedded on our site or visit our YouTube channel, Google may set its own cookies and collect data under Google's own privacy policy, independently of us
• WhatsApp / Meta — if you join our WhatsApp community, your interaction with that channel is governed by WhatsApp's and Meta's own privacy policy, not this one
• Our payment processor (once subscriptions launch) — to process your subscription payment securely
• Law enforcement or regulators — where we are legally required to disclose information, or to protect our rights, users, or the public

Some of these providers may process information on servers located outside South Africa. Where that happens, we rely on the fact that the recipient is subject to laws, binding corporate rules, or contractual terms that provide an adequate level of protection substantially similar to POPIA, or on your consent, as permitted under section 72 of POPIA.

We do not send your personal answers or account details to any third-party AI provider at the moment you use the Service. Our lesson scripts and practice-question templates are authored and verified in advance using AI tools (including Anthropic's Claude and ElevenLabs for narration) — this happens before content is published, not on your personal data as you use the Service.

We use a small number of essential cookies required to keep you signed in and to remember your session. We do not currently use third-party advertising or tracking cookies of our own. Embedded YouTube videos may set their own cookies as described above. If we introduce analytics or marketing cookies in future, we will update this Policy accordingly.

MatricMentorSA is built for Grade 10–12 learners, most of whom are between roughly 15 and 19 years old. South African law regards anyone under 18 as a minor. Where a minor uses the Service, we require that a parent or legal guardian is aware of and permits that use, and has reviewed this Policy and our Terms and Conditions on the minor's behalf. By allowing a minor in your care to use the Service, you consent, as their competent person under POPIA, to the processing of their personal information as described in this Policy.

We collect no more personal information from minors than is necessary to provide the Service, and we do not knowingly use a minor's information for direct marketing without consent from a parent or guardian. A parent or guardian may contact us at any time to review, correct, or request deletion of a minor's information — see Section 9.

We keep your account and learning data for as long as your account remains active, so that features like mastery tracking and spaced-repetition reminders keep working correctly across sessions. If you close your account, we will delete or de-identify your personal information within a reasonable period, except where we are required or permitted by law to retain certain records for longer (for example, financial records for tax purposes).

We apply reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your personal information against loss, unauthorised access, and misuse, including:

• Row-level database security, so every account can only read or write its own data by default
• Encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS) between your device and our servers
• Password hashing, never storing your password in plain text
• Restricted, need-to-know access to production systems

No system can be guaranteed 100% secure. If we become aware of a security compromise that affects your personal information, we will notify you and the Information Regulator as required by section 22 of POPIA.

Under POPIA, you (or, for a minor, their parent or guardian) have the right to:

• Be told what personal information of yours we hold and why
• Access a copy of your personal information
• Request that we correct or update inaccurate or outdated information
• Request that we delete or de-identify personal information we no longer have a lawful basis to hold
• Object, on reasonable grounds, to the processing of your personal information
• Withdraw consent, where processing is based on consent, at any time
• Lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator of South Africa

To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@matricmentorsa.co.za. We will respond within a reasonable time and in line with POPIA's requirements. You can also reach the Information Regulator directly:

Information Regulator (South Africa)
JD House, 27 Stiemens Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2001
Email: complaints.IR@justice.gov.za

The Service links to third-party platforms we don't control, including YouTube and WhatsApp. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of those platforms. We encourage you to review their privacy policies directly.

We may update this Policy from time to time as the Service evolves — for example, when subscription payments or new communication channels go live. We will update the "Last updated" date above whenever we make a material change, and where required by law we will notify you directly.

KIESSLIM (PTY) LTD (Reg. 2026/419316/07), trading as MatricMentorSA
Email: privacy@matricmentorsa.co.za
South Africa