Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Richey Kidd, trading as Vineyard Intelligence (“we”, “us”, “our”), is committed to protecting the privacy and personal information of our clients, website visitors, and users. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, and protect your information in compliance with the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA) of South Africa.

2. Information We Collect

We collect the following categories of information:

2.1 Information you provide directly

• Estate details (name, location, region, blocks, cultivars, hectares)
• Contact details (name, email address, WhatsApp number)
• Authorised user information (names and WhatsApp numbers of team members)
• Vineyard operational data (spray records, block information)

2.2 Information collected automatically

• WhatsApp messages exchanged between authorised users and the Service
• Weather data relevant to your estate location (sourced from third-party providers)
• Spray records captured from WhatsApp conversations

2.3 Website data

When you visit our website, we may collect standard web analytics data including page views, browser type, and referring pages. We do not use cookies for tracking or advertising purposes.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use your information to:

• Deliver the Vineyard Intelligence service, including daily risk briefings and weekly intelligence summaries
• Respond to your on-demand queries via WhatsApp
• Capture and log spray events for compliance record-keeping
• Generate risk assessments based on weather data and your estate configuration
• Process onboarding and account setup
• Communicate with you about your account and the service
• Improve the service through anonymised, aggregated data analysis

4. Data Storage and Security

Your data is stored on Supabase, an enterprise-grade cloud database platform, with:

• Encryption in transit (TLS)
• Encryption at rest
• Logical data isolation on a per-estate basis

We implement and maintain reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your data against unauthorised access, loss, destruction, or damage. No client data is shared with, or accessible to, any other client.

5. Third-Party Services

Our service relies on the following third-party providers:

• Meta WhatsApp Cloud API — for message delivery and receipt via WhatsApp
• Open-Meteo — for weather data, forecasts, and historical weather information
• Anthropic — for AI language model capabilities used in generating analysis and recommendations
• Supabase — for database hosting and edge function processing

These providers process data only to the extent necessary to deliver the service. We do not share your data with any other third parties.

6. Data Sharing and Disclosure

We will never sell, share, rent, or disclose your data to any third party, except:

• As required by applicable law, regulation, or valid court order
• To third-party service providers essential to the delivery of the service (as described above), and only to the extent necessary for that purpose

7. Anonymised and Aggregated Data

We may use anonymised, aggregated data derived from your information for the purpose of improving the system, developing risk models, and conducting research. Such aggregated data will not contain any estate-identifiable or personally identifiable information.

8. Your Rights Under POPIA

As a data subject under POPIA, you have the right to:

• Request access to your personal information held by us
• Request correction of inaccurate personal information
• Request deletion of your personal information, subject to any legal retention requirements
• Object to the processing of your personal information on reasonable grounds

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at the details provided below.

9. Data Retention

Upon termination of your service agreement, you may request an export of your data within thirty (30) days. Ninety (90) days after termination, we will permanently delete all your data from our systems, unless retention is required by law.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any significant changes will be communicated to active clients via WhatsApp. The latest version will always be available on this page.

11. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or wish to exercise your rights under POPIA, please contact: