Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible

MAIN ROAD CENTURION 30342 (PTY) LTD, 5 Vredenburg Building, Main Road, Irene, 0062, South Africa, is responsible for personal information processed through ShipmentChecker.

2. What we collect

Account information (your email address and password, which is stored only in encrypted form); the documents you upload and the information extracted from them for comparison; usage records such as how many checks and report downloads you have used; and subscription records such as your plan, status and billing period.

3. Payment information

Payments are processed by Paddle as merchant of record. Card numbers and security codes are entered directly into Paddle's secure payment form. We never receive or store them. We receive only a payment confirmation and subscription status so we can activate your plan.

4. How we use your information

To provide document comparison and reports, to operate your account and enforce plan allowances, to process subscriptions and prevent abuse, and to contact you about your account, such as password resets and service notices. We process this information on the basis of performing our contract with you, our legitimate interest in operating and securing the service, and legal obligations such as tax record-keeping; where consent is required, we ask for it.

5. Your documents

Uploaded documents are stored in private storage and are only accessible to your own account. Document content is processed automatically for the purpose of your check, and is not used to sell or market anything to third parties.

To read your documents, their content is sent through Lovable's AI gateway to an OpenAI model. If you send documents by email, the email and its attachments pass through Postmark, our email delivery provider, before reaching ShipmentChecker.

6. Service providers

We use the following providers to run the service: cloud hosting and database storage; Lovable's AI gateway and an OpenAI model to read documents; Postmark for documents sent by email; Paddle for payments; and Google Analytics and PostHog for product usage statistics. PostHog uses its US-hosted service. They may process information outside South Africa, under their own terms and data-handling policies.

7. Retention and deletion

Uploaded PDFs and the sensitive information read from them (such as document content and comparison results) are automatically deleted from ShipmentChecker's application storage 30 days after the check was created. You can also delete any individual check sooner from your check history.

After deletion we keep a minimal, non-sensitive summary of the check (for example the date, its status and that it was deleted) for usage records, billing, security and running the service. Deleting a check does not restore the check allowance it used.

Deletion from our active application storage does not necessarily mean immediate removal from backups, hosting logs or the systems of the third-party providers listed above. We have not yet verified the retention periods of those backups, logs and providers, so we cannot promise that copies there are removed within 30 days.

Account and subscription records are kept while your account is open, and are deleted on request or within a reasonable period after your account is closed, except where we must keep records for tax or legal reasons.

8. Your rights

You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information, and may object to certain processing. Email support@shipmentchecker.com or use the details on our contact page.

9. Security

Access is protected by authentication, per-account access rules on stored data, and encrypted connections. No system is completely secure, so please use a strong, unique password.

10. Cookies, analytics and your choices

We use the cookies and local storage needed to keep you signed in and to operate secure checkout. These are essential and are always on.

Google Analytics is optional. It is not loaded, and no analytics cookies are set, until you choose Accept (or switch Analytics on under Preferences) in our cookie notice. If you choose Reject, it stays off. Analytics tells us, using anonymous identifiers, which pages are visited and which features are used. Analytics events never contain your email address, name, document content or payment details. We do not use advertising cookies.

You can change or withdraw your choice at any time using the "Cookie preferences" link at the bottom of every page. When you withdraw, analytics stops and its cookies are removed from your browser; information already sent before you withdrew is not recalled.

11. How you found us

Only if you have allowed analytics, we note on your first visit the page you arrived on (without any query text), the domain of the site that referred you (for example google.com, never the full address), and any campaign tags in the link (source, medium and campaign). This is kept in your browser until you create an account; it is then saved once, privately, with your account so we can understand which channels bring customers. It is not visible to you or other customers, and we do not record your IP address for this.

Administrators can compare these consent-controlled sources with account registrations, completed checks, report usage and verified subscription payments to understand which channels bring customers. We distinguish recorded AI-assistant referring domains from source tags alone; a tag does not prove a referral. Reports contain no customer names, email addresses or document contents, and anonymous visit counts are never linked to individual accounts.

These details are deleted automatically 12 months after they are saved with your account, or sooner when your account is deleted on request. If you withdraw consent before creating an account, the stored details are removed from your browser.

12. Visit and download counts without cookies

Separately from Google Analytics, our own server keeps simple totals of page visits and free template downloads so we can understand demand. This uses no cookies or browser storage and works the same whether or not you accept analytics. For each request we record only the day, the page or template, a broad source category (for example search engine, social media or direct), the country inferred from your network and whether the device is a phone, tablet or computer. Automated traffic is counted separately.

For recognised AI-assistant sources, the aggregate category also distinguishes the assistant and whether its referring domain or only a source tag was available. We do not retain full referrer addresses or campaign text in these visit totals.

To avoid counting the same visit twice, we briefly create a scrambled, one-way value from your IP address and browser type combined with a secret that changes every day. The IP address itself is never stored, the value cannot be reversed or linked to you or to your account, and it is deleted after the following day. We do this in our legitimate interest in measuring the use of our website (POPIA section 11(1)(f), GDPR Article 6(1)(f)). Only the totals are kept. You can object at any time by contacting us.

13. Cookieless product measurement

PostHog measures visits to our Pro Forma Invoice and Export Document Toolkit pages, requests for free templates, Toolkit offer clicks, checkout openings and verified Toolkit purchases. It runs only after you allow analytics and stops sending new events when you withdraw that choice. Session replay is completely disabled. PostHog does not store tracking cookies or visitor identifiers in local or session storage, and we do not identify your account to PostHog.

Events contain only the relevant public page or template, button location, limited campaign information and, for a verified purchase, its transaction reference, amount, currency and test/live status. We exclude names, email addresses, document contents, passwords, download access keys and card details. Campaign information is held only in memory for the current page lifetime; advertising click identifiers are excluded.

Cookieless does not mean no personal information is processed or that consent is unnecessary. PostHog receives network requests and derives a daily identifier on its servers from the IP address, browser user-agent, website hostname and a daily-changing salt. This is not a persistent browser identifier, but it still requires an assessment of applicable privacy law, provider safeguards and international transfers. We have not verified a consent exemption for this processing, so we do not enable it for visitors who have not allowed analytics. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control also prevent collection. Previously sent events are not recalled when you withdraw consent.

14. Changes

We will publish any updated version of this policy on this page.