Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

ListingForge is a software service that helps South African estate agencies turn property details and photos into marketing material — descriptions, portal copy, social posts, brochures and lead-capturing landing pages.

For the information relating to your account and agency, we are the “responsible party” under POPIA. For the buyer enquiries (leads) captured through your landing pages, your agency is the responsible party and we act as an “operator” (processor) on your behalf — we process that information only on your instruction.

2. The information we collect

Information you give us

• Account details — your name, email address, password (stored encrypted) and, optionally, a profile photo.
• Agency details — agency name, logo, branding, contact phone, email, WhatsApp number, website, address and similar business information.
• Listing content — the property details and photographs you upload in order to generate a listing pack.
• Buyer enquiries (leads) — when a member of the public submits an enquiry on one of your published landing pages, we collect their name, email, phone number and message, and make it available to your agency.
• Buyer alerts — a member of the public may sign up on a landing page to be emailed when an agency lists a similar property. We collect their name, email, phone number and search preferences (such as budget and bedrooms) for that purpose, on behalf of the agency they signed up with. Every alert email contains an unsubscribe link, and buyers can opt out at any time.
• Communications — anything you send us by email or through a support or demo-request form.

Information we collect automatically

• Usage and device data — pages visited, actions taken, browser type, approximate location derived from your IP address, and similar technical information, used to operate and improve the service.
• Cookies — see section 9 below.

Payment information

Subscription payments are processed by our payment provider, Paystack. We do not store your full card details on our servers — they are handled directly by Paystack under their own security standards. We retain only a record of your plan, billing status and the dates of your billing period.

3. How we use your information

• To create and manage your account and provide the service.
• To generate listing packs and marketing material from the details you supply.
• To deliver buyer enquiries to your agency and enable you to follow them up.
• To process subscription payments and send billing-related notices.
• To provide support and respond to your requests.
• To maintain security, prevent fraud and abuse, and meet legal obligations.
• To improve our features and understand how the service is used.

We rely on POPIA’s lawful bases for this processing, including performing our contract with you, your consent, our legitimate business interests, and compliance with the law.

4. Artificial intelligence

ListingForge uses third-party artificial-intelligence services to generate marketing copy. When you generate a listing pack, the property details you enter (for example features, location and pricing) are sent to our AI provider, Anthropic, to produce the written content. We do not send your customers’ personal lead information to the AI provider for this purpose. Generated copy is a starting point — you are responsible for reviewing it for accuracy before publishing (see our Terms of Service).

5. How we share information

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with the service providers that make ListingForge work, who process it on our behalf under appropriate safeguards:

• Supabase — database, authentication and file storage (hosting our application data).
• Vercel — application hosting and content delivery.
• Anthropic — AI generation of listing copy (see section 4).
• Paystack — payment processing.
• Resend — sending transactional emails such as lead notifications.

We may also disclose information where required by law, to protect our rights, or in connection with a business transfer (such as a merger or acquisition), in which case we will notify you.

6. Where your information is stored

Our application data is hosted with Supabase in the European Union, and other providers listed above may process information outside South Africa. Where personal information is transferred across borders, we take reasonable steps to ensure it receives a level of protection consistent with POPIA (section 72), including relying on providers that are subject to comparable data-protection laws or contractual safeguards.

7. How long we keep it

We keep personal information for as long as your account is active and as long as needed to provide the service, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements. When information is no longer required, we delete or de-identify it. You may ask us to delete your account data at any time (see section 8).

8. Your rights under POPIA

You have the right to:

• Ask what personal information we hold about you and request access to it.
• Ask us to correct or update information that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Ask us to delete information we are no longer entitled to keep.
• Object to certain processing of your information.
• Withdraw consent where we rely on it (this won’t affect prior processing).
• Lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (see section 11).

To exercise any of these rights, email us at privacy@listingforge.co.za. We will respond within a reasonable time.

9. Cookies and analytics

We use a small number of cookies and similar technologies:

• Essential cookies — required for the service to function, for example to keep you signed in and to keep your session secure.
• Referral cookie — if you arrive at our site from one of our posts or links, we may set a cookie (for up to 30 days) recording which channel or campaign brought you here, so that if you sign up we know which of our marketing worked. It contains no personal information — only a campaign label.
• Analytics — we use privacy-focused, aggregated analytics (Vercel Analytics) to understand how the site is used. This does not build individual profiles of you.

You can control or delete cookies through your browser settings, though disabling essential cookies may stop parts of the service from working.

10. Children

ListingForge is a business tool intended for licensed estate agents and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

11. Contact us

If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle your information, contact our Information Officer at privacy@listingforge.co.za.

You also have the right to complain to South Africa’s Information Regulator:

• Website: inforegulator.org.za
• Email: enquiries@inforegulator.org.za (general) / POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za (complaints)

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the “Last updated” date above and, where appropriate, notify you. Continued use of ListingForge after a change means you accept the updated policy.