Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Deepbleu designs and builds automations for businesses. Deepbleu is the trading name of Seth van Niekerk, a sole trader based in South Africa. In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" mean Deepbleu.

We decide how and why the personal information described here is used, which makes us the "controller" under UK data protection law and the "responsible party" under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).

For anything about your information, email Info@deepbleu.co.za.

2. The short version

• This website uses no cookies, no analytics and no tracking.
• If we contact your business first, we found your work details on your company's own website or in public business records. Every email we send tells you how to stop hearing from us.
• We never sell or rent personal information.
• You can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, or tell us to stop contacting you, at any time.

3. What we collect and why

When you visit this website

The site has no forms, no cookies and no analytics. Like every website, the company that hosts it keeps short-lived technical logs, such as your IP address, browser type and the pages requested, to keep the site running and secure. The fonts are loaded from a font service, which receives your IP address when the page loads.

If we contact your business first

We contact businesses we think could use what we build. For that we collect your name, job title, work email address, work phone number and company details, from your company's website or public records such as Companies House. We use it to send a small number of relevant business emails and to keep a record of who we have contacted, so we don't contact anyone twice by mistake.

We do this on the basis of our legitimate interest in telling businesses about our services. We only contact businesses, not private individuals at home, and every email tells you how to opt out. If you opt out, we stop straight away.

If you get in touch, or book a call

When you email us or book a call, we keep your name, contact details, company and what you tell us, so we can reply and talk about what you need. Calls are held on Zoom. We use this information to take steps you have asked for before any agreement, and on the basis of our legitimate interest in running the business.

If you take part in a free audit

An audit involves conversations with the owner and, where agreed, members of the team about how work gets done. We keep notes of those conversations and use them only to write the findings for that business.

If you become a client

We keep contact and billing details for the people we work with, and records of the work and payments. Payments are handled by GoCardless or Stripe. We never see or store full bank card details. We use this information to carry out our agreement with you, and to meet tax and accounting obligations.

Do you have to give us anything?

No. Talking to us is always optional. The only exception is if you become a client: we then need contact and billing details to carry out the agreement, and can't do the work without them.

4. Information we handle for our clients

The automations we build often handle information about our clients' own customers, for example the name and address on a quote, or a voice note recorded by an engineer on site. For that information, our client is the controller and we act on their instructions as a "processor". A separate data processing agreement with each client sets out how it is protected, and what happens to it when the work ends.

If you are one of our client's customers and have a question about your information, please contact that business first. We will help them answer it.

5. The services we use

We share information only with the services needed to run the business and the systems we build, and only as much as each one needs:

• Zoom, for calls
• YouTube, which hosts our demo video. If you click through to watch it, YouTube's own privacy policy applies.
• Make and Airtable, which run and store the automations we build
• OpenAI and Anthropic (Claude), which provide the AI that turns voice notes into text, reads what comes in and writes replies. Information sent to them through our systems is not used to train their models.
• GoCardless and Stripe, for payments

We also use the companies that host this website and our email. Each of these is bound by its own terms to protect the information it handles. We may also share information where the law requires it.

6. Where your information goes

We are based in South Africa, and some of the services above store information in the European Union or the United States. Where information about people in the UK moves to another country, we rely on the protections those services provide for it, such as contract terms approved by UK and EU regulators, or the UK extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

7. How long we keep it

• Contact details of businesses we have emailed who did not reply: deleted 12 months after our last email.
• If you tell us to stop contacting you: we keep your name and email address on a do-not-contact list, only so we never contact you again.
• Enquiries and calls that don't lead to work: deleted 12 months after our last conversation.
• Audit notes: deleted 12 months after the findings are shared, unless the business becomes a client.
• Client, billing and payment records: kept for 6 years after the work ends, to meet tax and accounting rules.
• Information we handle for clients: as set out in each client's data processing agreement, and deleted or returned when the work ends.

8. How we protect it

Only Deepbleu has access to the information described here. It is kept in established cloud services, behind strong passwords and two-step sign-in where the service offers it, and we only collect what we actually need. No system is perfectly secure, but if something did go wrong we would tell anyone affected, and the regulators, where the law requires it.

9. Your rights

Wherever you are, you can ask us to:

• tell you what information we hold about you, and give you a copy
• correct anything that is wrong
• delete your information
• stop or limit how we use it
• stop contacting you. This one is absolute: if you ask, we stop.
• send your information to you or someone else in a usable format, where that applies

Email Info@deepbleu.co.za. We will reply within one month. It is free.

We don't make decisions about people using automated systems alone.

If you're not happy with our answer

You can complain to the data protection regulator. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. In South Africa it is the Information Regulator, at inforegulator.org.za. We would like the chance to put it right first, so please contact us before you do.

10. Information Officer

Under POPIA, Deepbleu's Information Officer is Seth van Niekerk, who can be reached at Info@deepbleu.co.za.

11. Changes to this policy

If the way we use information changes, we will update this page and the date at the top. If a change affects you in a way you would not expect, we will tell you directly.