Privacy policy

1. Who we are

Naughty Bean Consulting is a software engineering studio based in South Africa. In this policy, “we”, “us” and “our” refer to Naughty Bean Consulting.

2. Contact details

Questions about this policy or about how we process personal information can be sent to hello@naughtybean.consulting.

3. What personal information we may collect

Depending on how you interact with us, we may collect:

Identity and contact details, such as your name, e-mail address, phone number and company name.
Communication content, such as messages, enquiries, project briefs and correspondence you send to us, including anything you submit through the request-for-quotation form.
Technical and usage information, such as IP address, browser type, device information, pages visited and referral sources.
Commercial information relevant to a proposed or active engagement, such as project requirements, billing information and transaction records.
Any other information you choose to provide to us.

4. How we collect information

We collect personal information directly from you, automatically through our website, from your organisation, from service providers acting on our behalf, or from publicly available sources where lawful and appropriate.

5. The contact form

The request-for-quotation form on this site is delivered to us by a third-party form-delivery service. When you submit it, the contents of the form and your IP address pass through that provider’s servers and arrive in our e-mail inbox. If delivery fails, the site offers to open the same content in your own mail application instead, in which case nothing is sent through a third party.

6. Why we process personal information

We process personal information only where we have a lawful justification, including where processing is necessary:

To respond to enquiries and communicate with you.
To assess, propose, deliver and support software engineering services.
To manage our business operations, records, accounts and legal obligations.
To improve our website and services.
To protect our rights, systems, staff, clients and users.
Where you have given consent, if consent is the appropriate lawful basis.

7. POPIA principles we aim to follow

We aim to process personal information in a manner that is accountable, limited to what is relevant, specific to a clear purpose, transparent, accurate where reasonably possible, protected by appropriate safeguards, and respectful of data-subject participation rights.

We may share personal information with trusted operators and service providers, including hosting providers, form-delivery and e-mail providers, analytics providers, advisors and invoicing platforms, where reasonably necessary for our operations or for delivering services. We may also disclose information where required by law, court order or regulatory obligation, or to protect legitimate rights and interests. We do not sell personal information.

9. Cross-border transfers

Some of our service providers process personal information outside South Africa. Where this happens, we take reasonable steps to ensure that personal information receives an adequate level of protection and is handled in a manner consistent with applicable law.

10. Security safeguards

We take reasonable technical and organisational steps to secure personal information against loss, misuse, unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration or destruction. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, but we work to reduce risk appropriately, and we apply the same standards to our own systems that we build into our clients'.

11. Retention

We keep personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, to meet legal, accounting or reporting obligations, or to resolve disputes and enforce agreements.

12. Your rights

Subject to applicable law, you may have the right to:

Ask whether we hold personal information about you.
Request access to your personal information.
Request correction, updating or deletion of inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out-of-date, incomplete, misleading or unlawfully obtained information.
Object, on reasonable grounds, to certain processing.
Withdraw consent where processing depends on consent.
Lodge a complaint with the South African Information Regulator.

13. Children’s information

Our website and services are not intended for children where consent from a competent person would be required. We do not knowingly collect children’s personal information in a way that would contravene applicable law.

14. Cookies and local storage

This website sets no tracking cookies. It uses browser local storage for one thing: remembering whether you chose the paper or blueprint colour scheme. Web fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which may log the request in accordance with Google’s own privacy policy.

15. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we handle personal information, please contact us first so we can try to resolve the issue. You may also lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator of South Africa.

16. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Updated versions will be posted on this page with a revised date.

17. Important note

This policy is a general-purpose website privacy policy and does not constitute legal advice.