Privacy Policy
Your privacy is not a formality here — it is the foundation Thuso Yanga is built on. This policy explains exactly what information we hold, why we hold it, and the strong protections that surround it. Please read it carefully, then reach out if anything is unclear.
1 Who We Are
Thuso Yanga ("Thuso Yanga", "we", "us", "our") is a South African peer-support community designed for survivors of abuse and for men navigating mental health challenges. We operate this platform with a deep commitment to anonymity, safety, and dignity.
We are subject to the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA), the primary data-protection legislation of the Republic of South Africa. This policy reflects our obligations under POPIA and our own, higher standard of care for our members.
2 What Data We Collect
We collect only what is necessary to provide a safe and meaningful community experience. We deliberately avoid collecting identifying information beyond what is required for account security.
Email Address
Collected during registration. Used solely for account authentication, password recovery, and critical safety notifications (such as a crisis alert that requires follow-up). Your email address is never shown to other members under any circumstances.
Anonymous Persona
When you join, Thuso Yanga assigns you a randomly generated alias — a handle and avatar colour combination (e.g. TranquilForest or SteadyRiver). This alias is your only public-facing identity on the platform. Your legal name is never requested, stored, or associated with your content. You may generate new aliases at any time.
Posts, Comments & Reactions
Content you choose to post or comment on in the community feed is stored and visible to other members under your anonymous alias. We retain this content to enable the community experience and for safety-moderation purposes. You may delete your own posts and comments at any time from your profile.
Thuso Companion Conversations
Messages exchanged with Thuso, our AI companion, are stored to maintain conversational continuity within your session. These conversations are encrypted at rest and are never visible to other members, never shared with third parties, and never used to train AI models without your explicit, opt-in consent. You may reset your conversation history at any time.
Usage & Technical Data
We collect standard server logs (IP address, browser type, pages visited, timestamps) to detect abuse, prevent fraud, and maintain platform security. IP addresses are retained for a maximum of 90 days and are not linked to your anonymous persona in any user-facing context.
3 How Your Data Is Used
We use your data for the following purposes only:
- Running the community: Displaying your posts and comments under your alias, enabling reactions and replies.
- AI-assisted content moderation: Posts are reviewed by an automated moderation layer to detect harmful content, hate speech, and crisis signals. Moderation flags are reviewed by trained human moderators before action is taken.
- The Thuso Companion: Your conversation history is used solely to provide you with coherent, contextualised support from Thuso. It is not aggregated or used for any other purpose.
- Crisis response: If our systems detect language associated with immediate self-harm or danger, we will surface emergency helpline information. No report is filed with authorities without your knowledge, except where we are legally required to do so to prevent imminent harm.
- Security & fraud prevention: Detecting and blocking abusive behaviour, spam, and account compromise.
4 The Anonymous Persona System
Anonymity is the cornerstone of Thuso Yanga. Here is how it works in practice:
- Your legal name, email address, and any real-world identifiers are stored securely in a private, encrypted layer of the database that is completely separate from your public-facing alias. The two are linked only by an internal identifier invisible to other users.
- Other members see only your alias and avatar. They cannot search for, look up, or discover any personal information about you through the platform.
- You may generate a new alias at any time. Old aliases are retained internally for moderation purposes only and are not re-shown publicly.
- Platform administrators can, in exceptional circumstances (e.g. a credible threat of violence or a court order), link an alias to an email address. This is logged, audited, and subject to internal review. It is never done for commercial purposes.
5 Companion Conversations Are Private
Conversations with Thuso, our AI companion, are treated with the same confidentiality as a conversation with a counsellor. Specifically:
- All companion messages are encrypted at rest using AES-256 encryption and in transit using TLS 1.2+.
- No human moderator or administrator can read your companion conversations unless you choose to report a specific message as harmful.
- Your conversations are not shared with any third party, including AI providers, beyond what is technically necessary to generate responses. The AI provider processes messages transiently and does not retain them for training.
- You can permanently delete your entire conversation history at any time from the companion screen. Deletion is immediate and irreversible.
6 We Will Never Sell Your Data
Thuso Yanga does not have a business model built on your personal information. We will never:
- Sell, rent, or broker your personal data to advertisers, data brokers, or any third party.
- Use your mental health disclosures for commercial profiling or targeted advertising.
- Share your data with insurance companies, employers, government agencies (except where legally compelled), or research institutions without your explicit, written consent.
We may engage trusted third-party service providers (cloud hosting, email delivery, AI inference) who process data strictly on our behalf, bound by data-processing agreements and prohibited from using your information for any purpose other than providing the contracted service.
7 Your Rights Under POPIA
The Protection of Personal Information Act gives you the following rights, all of which we fully honour:
Request a full copy of all personal data we hold about you.
Ask us to correct inaccurate personal information at any time.
Delete your account and all associated data permanently. You can initiate this immediately via our Account Deletion Page.
Object to us processing your data for any purpose you did not originally consent to.
Lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator of South Africa if you believe we have handled your data unlawfully.
Receive a machine-readable export of your personal data upon request.
Use our instant self-service deletion portal or submit a request if you uninstalled the mobile app.
To exercise any other rights, email us at [email protected]. We will respond within 30 days.
8 Data Retention
We retain your personal information only for as long as necessary to provide the service or meet our legal obligations:
- Active account data: Retained for the life of your account.
- Deleted account data: Permanently purged within 14 days of account deletion, except where we are legally required to retain records.
- Server logs: Automatically purged after 90 days.
- Companion conversation history: Retained until you choose to reset it, or until account deletion.
9 POPIA Compliance Statement
Thuso Yanga is committed to full compliance with the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).
We process personal information lawfully, for a specific, explicitly defined purpose, and only to the extent necessary for that purpose. We have appointed an Information Officer responsible for overseeing our POPIA compliance. Data breaches are reported to the Information Regulator and affected members within 72 hours of discovery, in accordance with POPIA Section 22.
10 Contact Us
If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this privacy policy or how your data is handled, please get in touch. We treat every privacy inquiry with care and urgency.
