Privacy policy
Last updated: 12 November 2026
This policy explains what personal information Optimize Energy collects, why we collect it, who we share it with, how long we keep it and what your rights are. We follow the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA).
1. Who is responsible for your information
[to be confirmed: legal entity name], trading as Optimize Energy, is the responsible party for the personal information described in this policy.
- Physical address: [to be confirmed: physical address]
- Postal address: [to be confirmed: postal address]
- Phone and WhatsApp: 081 484 4964
- Email: optimizeenergy@outlook.com
- Website: https://optimizeenergy.vercel.app
Our Information Officer is Shan, Operations Manager, on 081 484 4964 or optimizeenergy@outlook.com.
2. The short version
- We collect what we need to work on your municipal account case, to contact you and to take payment.
- We share your information with the municipality only as far as your case needs, and with the service providers that run our systems.
- Your information and documents are stored in the European Union (Ireland). Some services we use are in the United States, as explained below.
- We do not sell your information.
- We send marketing only if you have said yes, and you can say no at any time.
- You can ask to see, correct or delete your information, and you can complain to the Information Regulator.
3. What we collect and why
| Information | Examples | Why we use it | Our lawful basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account details | Name, cellphone number, email address, password (stored in scrambled form) | To create and secure your portal account and contact you | Needed to provide the service you asked for |
| Case details | Property address, municipal account numbers, meter numbers, your description of the problem | To assess and work on your case | Needed to provide the service you asked for |
| Documents | Municipal accounts, ID document, title deed, lease, SASSA letter, photos of meters or the property, municipal correspondence | To prove your identity and your link to the account or property, and to support your case with the municipality | Needed to provide the service you asked for |
| Letter of authority | Your signature, the date, the municipality and account it covers | To prove to the municipality that we may act for you | Needed to provide the service you asked for |
| Payment records | Amounts charged and paid, payment references, status of each payment | To take payment, keep accounting records and meet tax law | Needed to provide the service; required by law |
| Messages | Portal messages, emails, WhatsApp messages and notes of phone calls | To communicate with you and keep a record of the case | Needed to provide the service you asked for |
| Enquiry records | Your name, contact details, the problem you described, how you contacted us, how you gave consent to be contacted, follow-up dates | To reply to you and follow up an enquiry you made | Your consent, and our legitimate interest in responding to enquiries |
| Marketing choice | Whether you agreed to news and offers, and when | To send marketing only to people who agreed | Your consent |
| Technical information | Your internet address while you use the site (not stored by us), a scrambled code made from it for the chat assistant | To run the website, protect it from misuse and suggest your area | Our legitimate interest in running a secure website |
Giving us your information is voluntary. However, if you do not give us the account and case information we ask for, we will not be able to assess or work on your case. Marketing, the chat assistant and the location features are entirely optional.
Some information may come from someone other than you, for example from the municipality (account statements, reading histories, decisions and letters), from a person who contacts us on your behalf, or from public records such as a municipal valuation roll. We collect it only for your case, and you can ask us what we hold and where it came from.
4. Information about other people
Your documents may contain information about other people, such as a tenant, landlord, co-owner, spouse or household member. Please give us such information only if you are allowed to, and tell those people that you are sharing it with us for your municipal account case. We use it only for that case.
5. Sensitive information
Some documents can reveal sensitive information. For example, a SASSA letter or a rebate application may show that someone receives a disability grant, which is information about health. We use this kind of information only where it is needed for your case, such as a rebate or relief application, and only with your consent or where it is needed to establish or exercise your rights with the municipality. Please do not upload anything that is not needed for your case. If you are unsure, ask us first.
6. Children
Our services are for adults, and you must be 18 or older to open an account. Municipal applications such as indigent or rebate applications sometimes need details of children in a household, such as a child support grant. We process such details only where they are needed for your case, with the consent of the parent or guardian who gives them to us, or where they are needed to establish or exercise a right with the municipality.
7. Who we share your information with
The municipality. We share your information with the municipality (and, for Johannesburg, City Power or Johannesburg Water) that your case is with, and only as far as your case needs. We do this to carry out the service you asked for, and the letter of authority you sign also records your agreement.
Service providers who process information for us. These providers work on our instructions, may use your information only to provide their service to us, and must keep it secure.
| Provider | What it does for us | Where it processes information |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, sign-in and secure document storage | European Union (Ireland) |
| Vercel | Website hosting; our server functions run in Dublin | European Union (Ireland), with some technical processing in other countries, including the United States |
| PayFast | Card, instant EFT and buy now pay later payments | South Africa |
| Resend | Sending our emails, such as sign-in links and case updates | United States |
| Anthropic | The AI model behind our chat assistant, Virtual Shan | United States |
| Microsoft 365 (when our inbox moves to it) | Our business email inbox | [to be confirmed: Microsoft 365 data location] |
| Flick Media | Building, maintaining and supporting our website and portal | South Africa |
WhatsApp and email. If you contact us on WhatsApp or send us an email, those services (WhatsApp, run by Meta, and our current Outlook mailbox, run by Microsoft) process your messages under their own terms and privacy policies, including outside South Africa. You choose whether to use them, and you can always use the portal or phone us instead.
Others, only when needed. We may share information with our professional advisers (such as our attorney or accountant), with a buyer of our business if it is sold (who must protect it in the same way), or with authorities where the law requires us to.
We do not sell your information, and we do not share it with anyone for their own marketing.
8. Information sent outside South Africa
Some of the providers above process information outside South Africa. POPIA allows this only on certain grounds, and we rely on the following:
- European Union (Supabase, Vercel): these providers are subject to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, and to written data processing agreements with us. We consider that together these give your information protection substantially similar to POPIA.
- United States (Anthropic, Resend, parts of Vercel): the United States does not have a general data protection law like POPIA. We rely on written agreements with these providers that require them to protect the information. The transfers are also needed to provide services you ask for, such as sending you email. Using the chat assistant is your choice, and by choosing to use it you agree to your messages being processed in the United States.
- WhatsApp and email: when you choose to contact us on WhatsApp or by email, your messages are processed by those services, including outside South Africa, because you chose that channel and because it is needed to deal with your enquiry or case. You can always phone us or use the portal instead.
9. How long we keep your information
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| Case records (documents, letters of authority, messages and notes) | Five years after the case is closed, unless the law requires us to keep them longer |
| Payment and invoice records | As long as tax law and, where it applies to us, company law require, which is at least five years |
| An account with no case | [to be confirmed: how long an account with no case is kept] after your last activity, or sooner if you ask us to delete it |
| Enquiries that do not become cases | [to be confirmed: how long enquiries are kept] after the last contact |
| Your marketing choice | While your consent stands, and afterwards only as long as we need to show that we respected your choice |
| Chat assistant | We do not keep chat messages. The scrambled code used to prevent misuse is deleted automatically after two days |
When we no longer need information, we delete it or remove anything that identifies you, in a way that means it cannot be rebuilt.
10. How we keep your information safe
- Information is encrypted while it travels over the internet and while it is stored by our providers.
- Documents are kept in private storage, never public, and are opened through links that expire after a short time.
- Only signed-in Optimize Energy staff can see client information. Clients can see only their own cases.
- We keep a log of changes to case and client records, showing who made each change and when.
- Card details go straight to PayFast. We never see or keep them.
No system is perfectly secure, but we review our safeguards regularly and update them when risks change.
11. Our staff records of enquiries and cases
We keep a contact record for each enquiry and client, including enquiries made by WhatsApp or phone. It contains your contact details, what you asked about, how and when you agreed to be contacted, notes of our conversations, follow-up dates and a log of changes. We use it only to deal with your enquiry or case.
If you ask to see what we hold, we can export your record for you. If you ask us to delete it, we will, except for information the law requires us to keep, such as payment and invoice records.
12. Municipal contacts
To work on cases, we keep a list of the work contact details of municipal officials and staff we deal with, such as their name, job title, department, work phone number and work email address, and notes about who handles which kind of query. We get these details from municipal websites and notices, and from our dealings with the officials themselves. We use them only to deal with the municipality for our clients, because it is in our and our clients' legitimate interest to reach the right person. Officials whose details we hold have the same rights as everyone else under this policy, including the right to object.
13. Our email inbox
Emails you send us arrive in our Microsoft inbox. When we connect that inbox to our case system, the content of emails about your case, including attachments, will be processed through Microsoft's systems so that we can link them to your case. We use email content only to deal with your enquiry or case.
14. Virtual Shan, our AI assistant
Virtual Shan is an AI assistant, not a person, and it is clearly labelled as such. It gives general information and helps you get started.
- When you chat, your messages are sent to Anthropic, an AI provider in the United States, so that it can write a reply.
- We do not store chat transcripts. The conversation exists only in your browser and is gone when you close or reload the page.
- To prevent misuse, we count how many messages are sent, linked to a scrambled code made from your internet address, never the address itself or what you wrote. These counts are deleted automatically after two days.
- Anthropic handles chat messages under its commercial terms. They do not allow it to use your messages to train its AI models. It keeps them for a limited period set out in those terms to run and secure its service, and then deletes them.
- Please do not type ID numbers, bank or card details, or full account numbers in the chat.
- Virtual Shan does not make decisions about you. Only Shan decides whether we can help.
15. Location features
- Area suggestion. When you visit, our website may use the approximate location linked to your internet address to suggest which municipality you are likely to be in. This is worked out when the page loads and is not stored by us.
- "Use my location". If you choose this option, your device's location is used only inside your browser to find the nearest area we serve. Your exact location is never sent to us or stored. Only the area name is saved in your browser.
- You can always choose your area yourself instead.
16. Cookies and similar technology
We use only the cookies and browser storage that the website needs to work: to keep you signed in, to control access to parts of the site, and to remember the area you chose. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies. Our cookie policy gives the details.
17. Marketing
We send news and offers only if you have agreed to receive them, for example by ticking the box when you create an account. You can change your mind at any time under "My details" in the portal, by replying to any marketing message to tell us to stop, or by contacting us. Every marketing message will say that it is from Optimize Energy and how to stop receiving them. Saying no to marketing does not affect your case.
18. Your rights
You have the right to:
- ask us whether we hold information about you (free of charge), and ask for a copy or description of it, including who it has been shared with;
- ask us to correct or delete information that is wrong, incomplete, out of date, excessive or obtained unlawfully;
- ask us to delete information we are no longer allowed to keep;
- object to our using your information where we rely on our legitimate interests, and object to marketing at any time;
- withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting anything we did lawfully before;
- not be subject to decisions made only by automated means (we do not make any);
- complain to the Information Regulator.
How to make a request. Contact our Information Officer on 081 484 4964 (phone or WhatsApp), by email at optimizeenergy@outlook.com, or by message in your portal. You may use the Information Regulator's forms (Form 1 to object, Form 2 to correct or delete), but you do not have to. We will ask you to prove your identity first, to protect your information. Objections and corrections are free. If any fee applies to a copy of records, we will tell you in advance. We will respond as soon as reasonably possible, and we aim to do so within 30 days.
Our PAIA manual explains how to request other records we hold.
19. If something goes wrong
If we have reasonable grounds to believe that your personal information has been accessed or acquired by someone not authorised to do so, we will tell the Information Regulator and you, in writing, as soon as reasonably possible. We will explain what happened, what it may mean for you, what we are doing about it and what you can do to protect yourself.
20. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we handle your information, please tell us first so that we can put it right. You may also complain to the Information Regulator:
- Website: https://inforegulator.org.za
- Complaints email: POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za
- General enquiries: enquiries@inforegulator.org.za
- Phone: 010 023 5200, toll free 0800 017 160
- Address: Woodmead North Office Park, 54 Maxwell Drive, Woodmead, Johannesburg, 2191
- Postal address: PO Box 31533, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2017
21. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy, and the date at the top shows when it last changed. If we make an important change, we will tell you in the portal or by email.
22. Contact
Shan, Information Officer: 081 484 4964, optimizeenergy@outlook.com.