Privacy
What we hold about you, why we hold it, who can see it, and how to get it back or have it removed.
This applies to the SGEG Community at app.community.savinggraceeducation.co.za. It is written to South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).
The short version
Reading the community needs no account. An account holds an email address, a username and what you choose to write. We do not publish a list of who is here, we do not sell anything to anyone, and we ask for nothing about a child.
What we hold
Only what the community needs to work:
- Your email address and password. Handled by Supabase, our sign-in provider. If you sign in with Google we receive your email address and name from Google and never see your Google password.
- Your profile. A username, a display name, and optionally your curriculum, your child's grade, your province, your town, and — for SGEG staff — a job title.
- What you write. Discussions, replies, and which answers you marked helpful.
- A profile picture, if you upload one.
- Notifications sent to you, and whether you have read them.
- Reports you make about other people's posts. These identify you to SGEG staff so a report can be followed up — they are never shown to the person reported.
What we never ask for, and never hold
- Anything identifying a child — no full names, no ages, no photographs
- Your physical address
- Payment or banking details — nothing is paid for here
- Your identity number
Please do not put these in a post either. A first name and a grade is plenty for somebody to help you, and discussions are public pages that search engines can read.
Who can see what
- Discussions and replies are public. Anyone on the internet can read them, with your display name and username attached. That is the point — a family searching for the same question should find your answer.
- Member profiles are for members. Signing in is required to open one. We do not publish a directory of members, and profile pages are excluded from search engines.
- Your province is shown on your profile, because assessment rules differ by province and it helps families know whose answers apply to them. On a student's profile it is not shown at all.
- Your town is never shown to anybody. It is removed before a profile is sent, and it exists only so SGEG can match you to their records.
- Your email address is never shown to another member.
Photographs you upload
A photograph taken on a phone usually carries hidden information, including the exact coordinates where it was taken. When you upload a JPEG, that metadata is removed before the file is stored, and the page tells you how many bytes were removed.
PNG files are stored as uploaded. If a picture matters to you, a JPEG is the safer choice. We are treating this as something to improve, not as acceptable.
Who else we send your information to
As few as possible, and never for advertising. Each of these does one job:
- Supabase — sign-in, and storing profile pictures.
- Amazon Web Services (Ireland) — where the community runs and where its database lives.
- Anthropic — every post and reply is read once by an AI classifier before it appears, to catch spam, abuse and anything raising a child-safety concern. The text of your post is sent for that check. It never has the last word: it can hold a post for a person at SGEG to read, and a person makes every decision.
- Resend — sending notification and digest emails.
- Google — only if you choose to sign in with Google.
Some of these are outside South Africa. POPIA allows that where the receiving country or the contract gives comparable protection, which is the basis we rely on.
We email you when something happens that involves you — a reply, a mention, your answer being accepted — and optionally a weekly summary. Replies arriving together become one email rather than ten.
Every email carries an unsubscribe link that works without signing in, and you can turn email off entirely in Your data under settings. We do not send marketing email from here.
Your rights, and how to use them
POPIA gives you the right to see what we hold, correct it, and have it deleted.
- See everything. Settings → Your data → Download my data. It is immediate and includes your profile, every discussion and reply you have written, what you voted for, your notifications, your badges, reports you made, and any AI suggestions you were shown.
- Correct it. Most of it you can edit yourself in settings.
- Have it removed. Settings → Request removal. A person carries this out rather than a button, so it can be checked first and nothing is destroyed by accident.
One thing deletion does not do: your discussions and replies stay, shown as written by “Former member”. Your profile, email address, username and votes are removed. Other families rely on the answers here, and deleting a solved question takes it away from everyone who comes looking for it. If you need a specific post removed as well, say so in your request.
Children
Students have accounts here. A student's profile deliberately shows less than an adult's — no province, and nothing about where they live. A parent or guardian should be aware of and agree to a learner under 18 taking part, and can ask us to remove that account at any time.
Contact
Email info@savinggraceeducation.co.za. A request about your own information is never handled by a community moderator — it goes to the person SGEG has made responsible for it.
To be completed by SGEG before launch: the name and contact details of the Information Officer registered with the Information Regulator, and how long a closed account's remaining records are kept. If you are not satisfied with our response you may complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa.
Changes
If this notice changes in a way that affects you, we will say so in the community rather than quietly editing the page.