Privacy Notice

Who is responsible for your data

StockPhotosSA is managed by RunOS. For any privacy question or request, email [email protected] or use our contact form. StockPhotosSA is a validation launch: this notice will be expanded with full company and Information Officer details before the platform grows beyond a launch test.

What we collect

• Account data: email address, username, display name, password hash (or Google account link).
• Profile data you choose to add: bio, avatar, website, LinkedIn, X handle.
• Content you upload: photos, titles, descriptions, comments, messages to other users.
• Usage data: session cookies, login timestamps, IP address at sign-up and login (for security and abuse prevention).
• Contact form submissions: name, email, and your message.
• Anonymous, cookieless analytics: page views and referrers via Umami. This does not identify you personally.

Why we collect it

To operate your account, publish and moderate uploaded photos, respond to messages and support requests, prevent abuse, and understand whether this product is useful (visit and sign-up counts).

Who we share it with

• OpenAI (United States): uploaded photos and comment text are sent for automated moderation, quality scoring, and category/description generation.
• Google: if you sign in with Google, we receive your email, name, and profile picture from Google's sign-in service.
• Cloudflare: Turnstile bot-protection on our forms.
• RunOS: hosting infrastructure and the email service that delivers account and contact emails.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.

Cross-border transfer

Some of the processors above (notably OpenAI) operate in the United States. By using StockPhotosSA and uploading Content, you consent to your data being processed outside South Africa for the purposes described above, as required by POPIA section 72.

Cookies

We use only first-party, essential cookies: your login session, and short-lived cookies used during Google sign-in. Our analytics (Umami) does not use cookies and cannot identify you. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies, so we do not show a cookie consent banner.

How long we keep it

Login sessions last 30 days. Email verification and password reset links expire in 24 hours and 1 hour respectively. If you delete your account, your profile is removed; photos you uploaded may remain published under the licence you granted (see our Usage Policy), with the photographer credit removed.

Your rights

Under POPIA you can ask us what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, object to processing, or ask us to delete it. You can delete your own account from Account Settings, or email [email protected]. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa (inforegulator.org.za).