Academy Privacy Note
A short, specific note about what LadyBugz Academy stores, who helps us handle it, and what you can ask us to do about it. It sits alongside the main LadyBugz privacy policy, which still applies, and alongside our Terms of Service and Refund and Cancellation Policy. Where this note and the main policy differ about the Academy, this note wins.
The short version. We store your account details, your LinkedIn profile link, what you tell us about your work, any business or website details you choose to give us, and whatever you type into the coaching tools. To do the work, we send some of that to AI companies such as OpenAI, Google and Perplexity, and to our payment provider. We do not sell your information to anyone. You can ask to see it, correct it or have it deleted.
1. Who is responsible
LadyBugz Marketing, South Africa, is responsible for the information described here. The Protection of Personal Information Act, which everyone calls POPIA, calls us the "responsible party". That is the law's way of saying we are the ones legally answerable for how your information is handled.
| noleen@ladybugz.co.za | |
| Telephone | +27 81 598 7578 |
| Information Officer | Noleen Thompson |
| PAIA manual | LadyBugz Marketing PAIA manual |
2. What we store
| What | Examples |
|---|---|
| Your account | Name, email address, the password you set (stored scrambled, we never see it), and which plan you are on. |
| About you and your work | Your name as it shows on LinkedIn, your LinkedIn profile link, what you do, who you want to be found by, the country and town you want to be found in, and, only if you give them, your website, a company page link, the company name and a contact email. |
| Your website | Only if you give one: the web address, and what we read from the pages there when we check it. |
| Your questions | The questions we ask AI for you, any questions you set, and the full AI answers we get back, so you can read them yourself. |
| Your own writing | Any text you put into a coaching tool, such as a LinkedIn profile, a post draft or a comment, together with the score and feedback we gave it. |
| Your LinkedIn details | Your profile address and the profile content you give us, if you use the LinkedIn tools or the included LinkedIn Profile Assessment. We do not log in as you and we do not connect to your LinkedIn account. |
| Payments | What you bought, when, how much, and a reference from our payment provider. We do not store your card number. |
| Where you heard about us | Your answer to that question when you buy, and the referral link you arrived on if there was one. |
| Use of the service | Sign in times, which screens you used, credits spent, and technical logs that help us fix faults and keep the account secure. |
| Phone number (optional) | Only if you ask for a one-on-one session. |
| Messages | Emails and support messages between us, and the questions you send in before a group coaching session. |
| Group coaching | Growth sessions are recorded and shared with Growth members. We say so at the start of each session. If you would rather not appear, keep your camera and microphone off, or watch the recording afterwards. |
3. Why we store it, and what allows us to
- To run the service you paid for. POPIA allows this because it is necessary to carry out our contract with you.
- To bill you and keep accounting records. We are required by law to keep these.
- To support you, fix faults and keep the service secure. POPIA allows this because we have a genuine business reason for it: a product nobody supports and nobody secures is not a product.
- To improve the product, using information about how the service is used with your business details stripped out.
- To send you marketing, only if you agreed to it. You can stop that at any time with the unsubscribe link or by emailing us. Your score email and service messages are part of the product, not marketing.
4. Who else handles it
We use other companies to do parts of the work. They may only use your information to do that work for us.
| Who | What they handle |
|---|---|
| AI providers: OpenAI (ChatGPT), Google (Gemini), Perplexity, and others we may add such as Anthropic (Claude) | The questions we ask on your behalf, the name, field and town inside those questions (and business or website details, where you gave them), and the text you submit to a coaching tool. |
| Our payment provider, Paystack | Taking your payment. They handle your card details, we do not. |
| Hosting and database providers | Storing the portal and your data. |
| Email providers | Sending your score emails, welcome and getting-started emails, invoices and support replies. |
| Video provider for group coaching | Running and recording the Growth sessions. |
We use the AI providers' business interfaces rather than their consumer apps, because those terms say content sent that way is not used to train their models. We cannot see inside another company's systems, so we keep to a simple rule: we send only what the task needs, and we never send more of your writing than you asked us to coach. We do not use your writing to train AI models, and we never hand it to anyone for the purpose of training theirs.
5. Information leaving South Africa
The AI providers, and some of our hosting and email providers, process information outside South Africa, mostly in the United States and in Europe. POPIA allows this in two situations: where the company receiving it is bound by a law or a contract that protects it in substantially the same way POPIA does, or where we cannot do the job you paid for without sending it. Both apply here.
If you would rather your text never left the country, the coaching tools and the AI checks are not something we can provide, because the AI systems themselves are overseas.
6. What we never do
- We never sell your personal information. Not to a partner, not to a list broker. There is no version of this where your details end up on somebody's list.
- If you came through a referral partner, they do not get your contact details from us. We share only what is needed to count and pay their share.
- We never add you to anyone else's mailing list, and we never send email on a partner's behalf to their list.
- Your results, your scores and your writing stay private. We do not publish any of it without asking you first.
7. How long we keep it
- While your account is open: we keep your results and your coaching history so you can see how things have moved over time.
- After you close your account: within 30 days we either delete your results, your stored AI answers and your coaching text, or strip your name and business out of them so they can no longer be traced back to you. Ask us and we will do it sooner.
- Accounting records: invoices and payment records are kept for five years because tax law requires it, or seven years if we are a registered company, because company law requires that.
- Group coaching recordings: kept for 12 months and available to Growth members.
- One-on-one requests: If you ask for a one-on-one session, we keep your phone number and request for up to 90 days. If you go on to work with us as a client, we keep them for as long as we need them for that work.
8. Keeping it safe
Access to member data is limited to the people at LadyBugz who need it. Passwords are stored scrambled. Connections to the portal are encrypted.
No system is perfectly safe. If we have reasonable grounds to believe someone got to your information without permission, we will tell you and the Information Regulator as soon as we reasonably can, which is what POPIA requires. We do not wait until we are certain.
9. Your rights
Under POPIA you can:
- Ask what we hold about you, and get a copy.
- Ask us to correct anything that is wrong or out of date, or to delete anything we no longer need or are not allowed to keep.
- Object to us using your information for a particular purpose.
- Change your mind about anything you agreed to, at any time, including marketing.
- Tell us to stop sending you marketing by email, text or automated call.
- Ask for a human to look at anything decided only by a machine, where that decision has a real effect on you. Our scores are produced automatically, so if a score affects something that matters to you, ask us and a person will go through it with you.
- Be told if someone gets to your information without permission.
- Complain to the Information Regulator, and take the matter to court if you want to.
To use any of these, email noleen@ladybugz.co.za. We will reply within 30 days. We may ask you to confirm who you are first, so that nobody else can ask for your information.
Deleting some things means we can no longer run the service for you. We will tell you if that is the case before we do it.
10. Complaining to the Information Regulator
If you are not happy with how we handled your information, you can complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa.
| Address | Woodmead North Office Park, 54 Maxwell Drive, Woodmead, Johannesburg, 2191 |
|---|---|
| POPIA complaints | POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za |
| General enquiries | enquiries@inforegulator.org.za |
| Telephone | 010 023 5200, or toll free 0800 017 160 |
| Website | inforegulator.org.za |
11. Children
The Academy is for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect a child's personal information. If you think a child has given us information, email us and we will delete it.
12. Cookies
The portal uses cookies to keep you signed in and to remember your settings. We do not use advertising cookies inside the member portal. The main LadyBugz website has its own cookie arrangements, covered in the LadyBugz privacy policy.
13. Changes to this note
If we change how we handle your information in a way that matters, we will email you and change the date at the top of this page.