Privacy Policy

Version 1.3.1 — published 13 October 2026. It applies to new customers from 13 October 2026 and to existing customers from 12 November 2026. See What changed in 1.3 at the end.

This Privacy Policy explains how SiteMinutes handles personal information when you use the SiteMinutes apps for iPhone, iPad and Mac, the web app at siteminutes.app and the website siteminutes.com (together, the Service).

It is written for everyone whose information passes through the Service: our customers and their users, and the people whose names, e-mail addresses or voices appear in meetings recorded with SiteMinutes. It is designed to meet the information requirements of the major privacy laws, including South Africa's POPIA, the EU and UK GDPR (Articles 13 and 14), US state privacy laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA), Canada's PIPEDA, Australia's Privacy Act (Australian Privacy Principles), and the data protection laws of Kenya, Nigeria and other countries. Section 11 sets out the rights that apply where you live.

In short: we collect what we need to run the Service; recordings stay on your device except for a temporary copy used to write minutes; we do not sell or share personal information for advertising; we do not use your content to train AI; and you can ask us to see, correct, export or delete your information.

1. Who we are

The Service is operated by Deidre and Co (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2023/811635/07), a private company registered in South Africa, trading as SiteMinutes ("SiteMinutes", "we", "us", "our"). The SiteMinutes apps are published on the Apple App Store by Martin Bosman for Water en Skaafsels Manufacturing and Trading CC, a close corporation registered in Namibia, until they are transferred to Deidre and Co (Pty) Ltd. SiteMinutes customer data is kept in SiteMinutes' own systems and is used only for SiteMinutes.

2. Two roles: our own data, and our customers' data

SiteMinutes plays two different roles, and your rights depend on which one applies.

1. We decide (controller / responsible party / business) for account, billing, support and website information: who signs up, who pays, who asks for help, and how the Service is used and secured.
2. Our customer decides (we are the processor / operator / service provider) for everything the customer puts into the Service: projects, meetings, recordings, transcripts, minutes, attendance lists, actions, plans and documents. The customer is usually a company (for example an architecture practice) and is the controller (GDPR), responsible party (POPIA) or business (CCPA) for that content. We process it only on the customer's instructions, under our Data Processing Addendum.

If you attended a meeting that was recorded or minuted with SiteMinutes and you want to see, correct or delete what was recorded about you, please contact the company that ran the meeting first. We will help them respond, and we will pass on any request we receive directly.

3. What we collect

3.1 Account information

• Name, e-mail address and password (the password is stored only as a salted hash by our authentication provider; we never see it).
• Company name, country, and optional company details (address, registration number, VAT number, telephone, billing e-mail).
• Your role in the company (owner, admin or member), invitations you send or receive, and whether you are the billing owner.
• The version of our Terms of Service and this Privacy Policy you accepted, and when.

3.2 Meeting content (customer content)

• Audio recordings. Recordings are made and kept on your device. A temporary copy is uploaded to our servers only when you tap "Create minutes", so it can be transcribed. That copy is deleted as soon as the minutes have been written, and in any event within 7 days (an automatic clean-up job runs every day).
• Transcripts and minutes: the text transcript produced from the audio, the draft and final minutes, the review-chat messages you exchange with the AI assistant about the minutes, and the minutes' version history.
• Attendance and people: names, companies, roles, e-mail addresses and attendance status of people in meetings and in a project's people register. These are often people who are not SiteMinutes users (see section 3.7 and section 9).
• Project records: projects, meeting agendas, quick marks, actions, contract instructions, snag pins and their text.
• Plans, documents and images: plans, documents and images you choose to upload (including images from your photo library) are stored in project storage.
• Call audio (Mac). On a Mac, you can switch on the optional Call audio setting when you record. SiteMinutes then records your microphone together with all sound the Mac plays — so the voices of the other people in a Teams, Zoom or Google Meet call, and any other sound played on the Mac during the recording. SiteMinutes records on your Mac; it does not join the call, so the call app does not show the other participants a recording notice. Those participants may not be SiteMinutes users. A call recording is handled exactly like any other recording: it stays on your device, and a temporary copy is uploaded only when you tap "Create minutes" (see section 9).
• Calendar invites (optional). If you give permission, the app reads the calendars on your device to list invites from 3 days ago to 2 weeks ahead. That list is shown only to you, on your device. For the one invite you choose, the app copies the date and time, the venue or type of meeting link (for example Online · Microsoft Teams) and the attendees' names and e-mail addresses into the meeting. Invitees who are not yet in the project are added to the project's people register and synced to our servers like any other contact. Other calendar events never leave your device. You can withdraw calendar access at any time in your device's settings.
• Photos taken in a meeting stay on your device in the current version and are not uploaded, apart from their captions if you add them to the minutes.
• Your permission before AI processing. Before any meeting data is sent to our AI providers (OpenAI and Anthropic), the apps ask for your explicit permission. You can withdraw it at any time in Settings → Account → AI processing; without it, cloud transcription and AI-drafted minutes are not available.

3.3 Billing information

• Plan, number of seats, billing period, prices, currency, payment references, payment status and the amounts charged.
• The billing owner's e-mail address, which is passed to the payment provider.
• We never receive or store card numbers. Card details are entered on the payment provider's own secure page (see section 6).

3.4 Support and help

• Support tickets and the messages exchanged on them.
• E-mails you send to help@siteminutes.com and our replies, which are kept in our Microsoft 365 mailbox.
• Help assistant: the questions you type into the in-app help assistant are sent to our AI provider to produce an answer. Our server does not store the conversation; it is kept only in your browser or app while the help panel is open. If you choose "Submit a ticket", the conversation is attached to the ticket. We keep a count of help questions per user for one hour to enforce a fair-use limit. Please do not share passwords, payment-card details or other highly sensitive information in the help assistant or in support tickets.

3.5 Usage and technical information

• AI usage records: for every AI call (transcription, drafting, editing, help), the workspace, meeting, kind of call, model, audio length, number of tokens and estimated cost. These records do not contain the audio, transcript or minutes.
• Technical logs kept by our hosting providers: IP address, device and browser type, time, requested address, and error messages. Our own functions are written not to log transcripts, minutes, API keys or payment secrets.
• E-mail delivery records: for each e-mail we send (for example a sign-in link, an invitation, a receipt or a reminder), the recipient's name and e-mail address, the kind of message, the details needed to write it and whether it was sent. Our e-mails contain no tracking pixels and no rewritten links, so we do not know whether you open them or which links you click.
• Country from your IP address: when you set up a company, we pre-fill the billing country from the country our web host detects for your connection. You can change it. On siteminutes.com, the same country is used to show an estimated price in your local currency (see the Cookie Policy).
• Location: the Service does not collect your device location. If a future version offers location features (for example to stamp a site visit), they will be off until you switch them on.

3.6 Cookies and local storage

We only use cookies and browser storage that are needed to sign you in, remember your display preference and show an estimated price in your currency on our website. We use no advertising cookies and no analytics or tracking tools. See our Cookie Policy.

3.7 Where the information comes from

• From you, when you create an account, use the apps, pay or contact us.
• From your company or colleagues, when they invite you, add you to a project's people register, fill a meeting from a calendar invite you also received, or record a meeting you attend — in the room or, with Call audio on a Mac, in an online call. This is how we receive the names, companies, roles, e-mail addresses and spoken words of meeting participants who are not users. The customer is responsible for telling these people about it (section 9).
• Generated by the Service, such as transcripts and draft minutes produced by AI from a recording, and usage records.
• From our providers: payment results from Paystack, and the country of your connection from our web host.

3.8 Sensitive information

SiteMinutes is not designed to collect sensitive or special categories of information (for example health, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, trade-union membership, criminal matters, government identity numbers or precise location). Such information may be spoken in a meeting; customers should avoid recording it unless they have a lawful basis. We do not use recordings to identify people by their voice: no voiceprints or other biometric identifiers are created. We do not use sensitive information to infer characteristics about anyone.

3.9 Do you have to give us information?

Account information is needed to create an account and provide the Service; without it we cannot provide it. Billing information is needed to buy a paid plan. Everything else is optional or depends on how you use the Service.

4. Why we use it (purposes and legal bases)

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have balanced them against your rights and expectations; you can ask us for details, and you can object (section 11).

Direct marketing. We send direct marketing by e-mail only with your consent or, for our own customers, about SiteMinutes itself with an opt-out in every message (POPIA section 69). We send no other direct marketing.

We do not sell personal information, we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, we do not use it for targeted advertising, and we do not use customer content to train AI models (ours or anyone else's). We do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects. The AI writes a draft that a person reviews (see the AI & Recording Policy).

5. Who processes it for us (sub-processors)

We use a small number of carefully chosen service providers. Each receives only what it needs, under a written contract that requires it to protect the information and use it only to provide its service to us.

If we publish an Android app on Google Play, Google will distribute it under its own privacy policy, as Apple does for the App Store, and we will add it to this list.

The AI providers' own terms (as at September 2026) say that data sent through their business APIs is not used to train their models by default. OpenAI states that its audio transcription endpoint keeps no abuse-monitoring log or stored copy of the audio; OpenAI may keep other API inputs and outputs for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring. Anthropic deletes API inputs and outputs within 30 days, but may keep them for up to 2 years if they are flagged for a usage-policy violation. Resend keeps its own delivery logs for a short period (about 30 days). We will update this list at least 30 days before we add or replace a sub-processor (see the Data Processing Addendum).

We may also disclose information to professional advisers under confidentiality, to a buyer or successor if the business is sold (who must honour this policy), or when the law requires it (for example a valid court order). We will tell the affected customer about a legal demand for its content unless the law forbids us.

6. Payments

Card payments are processed by Paystack (Paystack South Africa (Pty) Ltd, a Stripe company), which is certified to PCI DSS Level 1. All payments are in South African rand. At present, every payment is a once-off payment for one month or one year. You type your card details on Paystack's own secure page, not on ours. We receive only the result (approved or declined), the amount and a transaction reference. When recurring card payments become available, we will also receive a subscription reference. We check every result directly with Paystack before a plan is activated. Until card payment through Paystack opens, you can pay by EFT on invoice; we then receive only the payment details shown on our bank statement.

7. International transfers

Our servers are in the European Union (Frankfurt). Our AI providers are in the United States; our e-mail providers, Resend (which sends our e-mails from its EU region in Ireland) and Microsoft (Microsoft 365, our support mailbox), are United States companies; and our payment provider is in South Africa. Your information may therefore be transferred outside South Africa or your own country, to countries whose laws may differ from yours.

We protect those transfers by:

• choosing providers bound by written data processing terms that include the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum and the Swiss equivalents where they apply, or by relying on an adequacy decision or recognised certification (for example the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, where a provider is certified);
• for our e-mail providers (Resend and Microsoft 365), relying on the safeguards in the provider's data processing terms, such as standard contractual clauses;
• sending the AI providers only what the task needs, for as short a time as possible, under terms that forbid training on it;
• for South Africa, relying on section 72 of POPIA: the recipients are subject to binding agreements that give protection substantially similar to POPIA, and the transfers are needed to perform the contract with our customer (see our POPIA Notice & PAIA summary);
• for Kenya, Nigeria and other countries with transfer rules, using the same contractual safeguards and, where required, the transfer mechanisms those laws recognise; and
• for Canada and Australia, remaining accountable for information we transfer to providers, which are contractually required to protect it to a comparable standard.

You can ask us for a copy of the relevant safeguards (commercial terms may be redacted).

8. How long we keep it

In short: customer content is kept while the customer's workspace exists; the temporary audio copy is deleted after the minutes are written (at most 7 days); billing records are kept for 7 years; e-mail delivery records for 12 months; e-mails to our support mailbox for up to 3 years; and workspaces that stop paying are never deleted for non-payment for at least 12 months. Full details are in the Data Retention & Deletion Policy.

9. Meeting participants and recording consent

SiteMinutes records meetings. The person recording — on behalf of our customer — must tell everyone present that the meeting is being recorded and why, before recording starts. The app shows this reminder every time ("Tell everyone the meeting is being recorded"). Our customer is responsible for having a lawful basis, and where required the consent of every participant, for recording the meeting and for processing their names and e-mail addresses. Some countries and states require the consent of all participants before a conversation may be recorded. See the AI & Recording Policy.

Online calls. With Call audio on a Mac, SiteMinutes also records the other people in a Teams, Zoom or Google Meet call, who may not be SiteMinutes users. SiteMinutes records on the Mac and does not join the call, so the call app shows them no recording notice. The person recording must tell everyone at the start of the call that the meeting is being recorded, and must not record if anyone refuses consent, or where the law of any participant's location requires consent that has not been given.

Calendar invitees. When a meeting is filled from a calendar invite, invitees who are not yet in the project are added to the project's people. As with any contact a customer adds, the customer is responsible for telling them how their information is used.

If you took part in a meeting and want to exercise your rights, contact the company that recorded it, or contact us and we will pass your request on.

10. Security

We protect information with encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest, strict per-company separation enforced in the database (row level security), secrets kept in an encrypted vault, least-privilege access, logging and daily backups, organised along the lines of recognised frameworks such as ISO/IEC 27001 and SOC 2. No system is perfectly secure; we will tell affected customers, individuals and regulators about a personal-information breach as the law requires. See the Security Overview.

11. Your rights

11.1 Rights everyone has with us

Wherever you live, you can ask us to:

• tell you whether we hold information about you and give you a copy (access / right to know);
• correct inaccurate or incomplete information;
• delete information we no longer have a reason to keep;
• give you your information in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format, or send it to another provider (portability) — workspace owners can also export projects and minutes themselves;
• stop using it for direct marketing, at any time — every product-update e-mail has an unsubscribe link and one-click unsubscribe. Service e-mails (sign-in links, receipts, plan and trial reminders, security and legal notices) are still sent, because they are needed to run your account;
• object to or restrict processing based on our legitimate interests; and
• withdraw consent where we rely on consent (this does not affect earlier processing).

We will not discriminate against you, charge you more or give you a worse service for using your rights.

11.2 How to make a request

E-mail help@siteminutes.com with "Privacy request" in the subject. We will confirm receipt, may ask for information to verify your identity (we will not ask for more than we need), and answer within 30 days, or sooner where the law requires (the CCPA allows 45 days, extendable once). If we need longer, we will tell you why. Requests are free unless they are clearly unfounded or excessive. An authorised agent may make a request for you with your written permission. If we refuse a request, we will explain why and how you can appeal to us (by replying to our answer) and complain to a regulator.

Where we act for a customer (section 2), we will refer your request to that customer and help them answer it.

11.3 Rights in specific jurisdictions

Please contact us first so we can try to resolve any concern. You always have the right to complain to a regulator.

12. Children

The Service is for businesses and professionals and is not intended for anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children as users, and the Service is not directed at children under 13 (for the purposes of the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) or under 16. If a child's information has been included in a meeting record, the customer who recorded it is responsible for it. If you believe we hold a child's information without a lawful basis, contact us and we will delete it.

13. Accessibility of this policy

We write this policy in plain language and publish it as an accessible web page that works with screen readers and can be printed or saved as PDF. If you need it in another format (for example large print or read aloud), contact us.

14. Changes to this policy

We will post any change here with a new version number and effective date. If a change materially affects how we use personal information, we will tell account holders by e-mail or in the app at least 30 days before it takes effect, unless the change is required sooner by law, and ask for consent where the law requires it. Earlier versions are available on request.

15. Contact

SiteMinutes is a trading name of Deidre and Co (Pty) Ltd, registration 2023/811635/07, registered office Regus Century City, The Colosseum, Foyer 3, 1st Floor, Century Way, Century City, Cape Town 7441, South Africa. E-mail: help@siteminutes.com.

What changed in 1.3

1.3.1 (13 October 2026, the same day): the Information Officer is Deidré de Waal, director of Deidre and Co (Pty) Ltd; each purpose now names its POPIA ground (section 11); the direct-marketing rule (section 69) and the Information Regulator's complaints form are added; our PAIA manual is in the POPIA Notice & PAIA Manual.

Version 1.3 replaces version 1.2. It applies to new customers from 13 October 2026 and to existing customers from 12 November 2026. In short:

• New operator. SiteMinutes is now a trading name of Deidre and Co (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2023/811635/07), a private company registered in South Africa, with its registered office at Regus Century City, The Colosseum, Foyer 3, 1st Floor, Century Way, Century City, Cape Town 7441, South Africa. Under section 20 of the Terms (Assignment), Deidre and Co (Pty) Ltd takes over every existing customer agreement from 13 October 2026 and honours it in full: your plan, prices, paid periods, data and settings stay as they are.
• South African law. The Terms are governed by South African law, and our POPIA Notice is now that of a South African responsible party. The consumer rights you have under the law of the country where you live are not affected.
• Rand only, through Paystack. All prices are charged in South African rand (ZAR). Card payments will be processed by Paystack (Paystack South Africa (Pty) Ltd, a Stripe company), our new payment provider. Until card payment through Paystack opens, you can pay by EFT on invoice through a support ticket.
• Version 1.2 dates stay. The changes announced in version 1.2 (sub-processors Resend and Microsoft 365, Mac Call audio, calendar invites, once-off payments with reminders, product-update e-mails) take effect on 30 October 2026, as announced.

If you are an existing customer and do not agree to version 1.3, you may cancel before 12 November 2026 and receive a pro-rata refund of any prepaid, unused period (Terms, section 18). Under the Data Processing Addendum you may object to Paystack as a new sub-processor before that date by writing to help@siteminutes.com.