Privacy Policy

For information about our own website visitors, people who enquire with us and our clients' account users, Softechware (Pty) Ltd is the "responsible party" as defined in POPIA.

For information about the people who enquire with a business that uses Lead Desk, that business is the responsible party. Softechware is the "operator": we process the information for the business, on its instructions. If you sent an enquiry to a business that uses Lead Desk, please send requests about your information to that business first. We will help the business respond.

Our Information Officer is Galen Myburgh. You can reach the Information Officer at hello@softennect.com, or by post at Softechware (Pty) Ltd, 264 Cradock Avenue, Lyttelton, Centurion, South Africa.

Enquiries sent to us: if you send us an enquiry through softennect.com, or message us on WhatsApp or by email, we keep your name, your phone number or email address, your message, the page it came from and, for website enquiries, a record of the consent you gave and when you gave it.

Account information: for each person who logs in to Lead Desk for a client business, we keep a name, email address, phone number, the business name and login credentials.

Lead information held for our clients: when someone sends an enquiry to a business that uses Lead Desk, the Service stores that person’s name, phone number, message, a source tag showing which form or button the enquiry came from, the consent record, the stage the enquiry has reached in the business’s pipeline, and any notes the business adds.

Billing information: invoices, payment records and prepaid wallet balances for client businesses. Lead Desk is paid by EFT or debit order. Where a wallet top-up is paid by card, the card details are handled by the payment provider and are not stored on our servers.

Technical information: IP address, device and browser type and the pages requested, kept in server logs to keep the website and the Service secure and working. When something breaks, our error-monitoring service receives technical details of the error, which can include the IP address and browser involved.

To provide the Service: setting up and running client accounts, capturing enquiries, sending alerts and automatic replies, keeping the pipeline and producing the monthly report. This is necessary to perform our contract with the client business.

To answer you: replying to an enquiry you sent us, on the channel you used or the one you agreed to.

To bill and account: issuing invoices in Rands, managing prepaid wallets and meeting tax and accounting obligations under South African law.

To secure and improve the website and the Service: monitoring for abuse, fixing faults and understanding in aggregate how the website is used. We do this on the basis of our legitimate interest in running a safe and reliable service.

To send service notices to our clients. We send product news only where the law allows it or you have agreed, and you can ask us to stop at any time.

Every Lead Desk enquiry form has a consent tickbox that must be ticked before the form can be sent. The wording tells you that the business may contact you on WhatsApp about your enquiry. The Service stores the wording you agreed to and the time you agreed, together with your enquiry.

After you send the form, you may receive an automatic WhatsApp reply. It is sent from the Softennect WhatsApp line, not from the business’s own number, and it carries the name of the business you contacted so that you can see who it is from. The business may then continue the conversation with you from its own phone.

Your consent covers contact about that enquiry. It does not sign you up for marketing messages, and Lead Desk does not send marketing broadcasts.

To stop the messages, reply to the WhatsApp message saying that you no longer want to be contacted, or contact the business directly. You can also write to our Information Officer and we will pass your request to the business.

We use a small number of service providers to run the website and the Service. Each one processes personal information only to provide its service to us, under its data processing terms.

The application database, which holds account and lead information, is hosted with Supabase in the European Union (Amazon Web Services region eu-west-1, in Ireland).

The softennect.com website is served by Vercel, and the Softennect application server (API) runs on Render. Both operate infrastructure in several countries, so requests and server logs may be processed outside South Africa.

WhatsApp messages are sent and received through the WhatsApp Business Platform operated by Meta. Message content and phone numbers pass through Meta’s systems and are also subject to Meta’s WhatsApp Business terms and privacy policies.

We also use providers for email delivery, mobile push notifications, error monitoring and payment processing.

This means personal information is transferred outside South Africa. We make these transfers on the grounds allowed by section 72 of POPIA, including that the provider is bound by law or by its data processing terms to protect the information to a standard substantially similar to POPIA, or that the transfer is necessary to provide the service you asked for.

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

We keep personal information only for as long as it is needed for the purposes described above, and after that for as long as South African law requires (for example, financial records kept for the periods set by tax legislation).

When a client business closes its account, we delete or de-identify its lead information within a reasonable period, except where the law requires us to keep it. A client can ask us for a copy of its lead information before the account is closed.

We apply reasonable and appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information, as required by section 19 of POPIA. These include encryption in transit and access limited to the people who need it.

If we have reasonable grounds to believe that personal information has been accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person, we will notify the Information Regulator and the people affected as required by section 22 of POPIA. Where the information belongs to a client business, we will also notify that business.

You have the right to ask whether we hold personal information about you and to request access to it; to ask for information that is inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out of date, incomplete or misleading to be corrected or deleted; and to object, on reasonable grounds, to processing that is based on our legitimate interests.

You may withdraw consent where processing is based on consent, and you have the right not to receive unsolicited direct marketing in contravention of section 69 of POPIA.

To exercise any of these rights, email our Information Officer at hello@softennect.com with the subject line "POPIA request". We will respond within a reasonable time and may need to confirm your identity first.

If you are not satisfied with how we handle your request, you may lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa): POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za, or through inforegulator.org.za.

The public pages of softennect.com do not set advertising or tracking cookies. When you log in to Lead Desk, we use strictly necessary cookies to keep you signed in and to protect your session.

To see which pages are visited and which buttons are used, the website uses Vercel Web Analytics. It does not use cookies and does not build advertising profiles. It records aggregate counts of page views and of clicks on our WhatsApp links and enquiry form, without names, phone numbers or message content.

Lead Desk is a business tool and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly create accounts for anyone under 18. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

We may update this policy from time to time. We will tell our clients about material changes by email or in the Service before they take effect, and the version and effective date at the top of this page always show the current version.

Responsible party: Softechware (Pty) Ltd, 264 Cradock Avenue, Lyttelton, Centurion, South Africa.

Information Officer: Galen Myburgh, hello@softennect.com. Send privacy requests by email with the subject line "POPIA request".