Privacy Policy

Ibn Ataa’illah Institute, based in Cape Town, South Africa, is the “responsible party” for your personal information under POPIA. Our designated Information Officer is Isma-eel Abrahams.

If you have any questions or requests about your information, contact us at ibnataaillahinstitute@gmail.com.

We collect the following, most of which you give us directly:

• Account details — your name, email address, and a password you choose.
• Optional details — phone number, how you heard about us, and gender, if you choose to provide them at registration.
• Membership details — which class you are registered for and your payment history (amounts, dates, and status).
• Payment information — handled by our payment provider, Yoco. We receive a record that a payment was made and its status, but we do not receive or store your full card number.
• Your learning activity — private notes you save, questions you submit during live classes, and which recordings or workshops you access.
• Technical information — basic information your browser sends when you use the platform, used to keep it working and secure.

• To create and manage your account and give you access to the classes and workshops you are entitled to.
• To process your payments and keep a record of them.
• To run live classes, including showing your submitted questions to the teacher and moderators.
• To send you important messages, such as payment reminders, receipts, and class notifications.
• To keep the platform secure and to improve how it works.
• To meet our legal and record-keeping obligations.

We process your information to provide the service you have signed up for (to perform our agreement with you), to meet legal obligations, for our legitimate interest in running the Institute securely, and — where required — with your consent. You can withdraw consent at any time where processing is based on it.

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with trusted service providers (“operators” under POPIA) who help us run the platform, and only as needed:

• Supabase — stores our database, account sign-in, and uploaded files (such as recordings and materials).
• Yoco — processes your payments securely.
• Mux — hosts and delivers our live streams and video recordings.
• Resend — sends transactional emails such as receipts, where enabled.
• Vercel — hosts and serves the website.
• Google — if you choose to sign in with a Google account.

We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the rights and safety of the Institute, our students, or others.

Some of our service providers store or process information on servers outside South Africa. Where this happens, we take reasonable steps to ensure your information continues to be protected at a level comparable to POPIA.

We use cookies and similar browser storage to keep you signed in and to remember your preferences. These are necessary for the platform to work; without them you would not be able to stay logged in.

We keep your information for as long as you have an account with us. Payment and financial records are kept for at least five years after the transaction, as required by South African tax law. When information is no longer needed, we delete or de-identify it.

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your information, including secured access to our systems, encrypted connections, and payment handling by a dedicated provider so that we never hold your full card details. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to keep your information safe and to act quickly if a problem arises.

Under POPIA, you have the right to:

• Ask what personal information we hold about you and request a copy.
• Ask us to correct or update information that is wrong or out of date.
• Ask us to delete your information, where we are not required to keep it.
• Object to certain uses of your information.
• Withdraw consent where our use is based on it.
• Complain to the Information Regulator if you believe we have not handled your information properly.

To exercise any of these, email us at ibnataaillahinstitute@gmail.com. You can also manage some of your details from your account settings.

If a student is under the age at which they can consent on their own, a parent or guardian should register on their behalf and consent to this policy.

You have the right to lodge a complaint with South Africa’s Information Regulator, which oversees POPIA. Their contact details are available on the Information Regulator’s official website.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will change the “Last updated” date above. Please check back occasionally.

For any privacy question or request, email ibnataaillahinstitute@gmail.com. See also our Terms of Service.