Privacy notice
How Aviara handles your personal information, as required by the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).
Who holds your information
Grin Technologies (Pty) Ltd trading as Aviara (registration number 2022 / 255513 / 07), trading as Aviara, of 2 Oosthuizen Street, Potchefstroom, 2531. Full details are on the operator page.
What we collect, and why
| Name, or aviary name | Shown on your member profile, on ratings you sign, and to the other party once a sale is concluded, so members know who they are dealing with. A lot that is still running names nobody. |
| Email address | Signing in, and the messages the platform has to send you — auction reminders, an invoice, a lot you have won, a password reset. |
| Telephone number | Given to your trade partner after a sale so you can arrange payment and collection. Also used to match you to the members' WhatsApp group. |
| Town or area | Shown on your lots, because collection and transport depend on where the birds are. |
| Physical address and tax reference | Optional. Used only to put your billing details on a commission invoice. |
| Your lots, bids, sales and ratings | Running the auction, settling it, invoicing commission, and building the seller reputation the platform depends on. |
| Documents you attach | Photographs, permits and vet certificates, so buyers can see what they are bidding on and the auctioneer can review the lot. |
| Password | Stored only as a one-way cryptographic hash. Nobody at Aviara can read it. |
We ask for this because we need it to run the auction you have asked to take part in, to meet our own legal and tax obligations, and — for reminders — because you have chosen to receive them. We do not collect information about children, and Aviara is for adults only.
Who else sees it
Your trade partner. When a lot sells, the buyer is emailed the seller's name, email address, telephone number and town so the two of you can arrange payment and collection. The same happens when a price is agreed on the Trades board, and there it goes both ways: the seller is emailed the buyer's details too, because the sale began with the buyer. This is the point of the platform and it cannot be switched off — if you would rather not share those details, do not bid, do not sell, and do not post a request.
Other members. Your name or aviary name, town, lots and the ratings you have received are visible on the site.
Service providers. The company that delivers our email, and our payment processor for commission invoices. They act on our instructions and only for these purposes.
Nobody else. We do not sell, rent or trade your details, and we do not send you marketing on behalf of anyone. We disclose information otherwise only where the law requires it — for example to a conservation or tax authority acting within its powers.
Where it is kept
Aviara runs on a server in South Africa, and that is where your information lives day to day. Our payment processor is South African too.
Two things do leave the country. A copy of the database is backed up every night to cloud storage in the Netherlands, encrypted, so that a fire or a failed machine cannot take the record of everyone's sales with it. And the service that delivers our email handles the messages we send you, which carry your name and email address.
The backups sit under European data protection law, which POPIA treats as offering protection comparable to its own. Our email provider is bound by its agreement with us to protect what we send it to the same standard. Both act only on our instructions and only for these purposes; neither may use your information for anything of its own.
How long we keep it
Your account details for as long as you have an account. Records of auctions, bids, sales and invoices for at least five years after the transaction, because tax law requires it and because they are the record of how a sale was concluded — this is why a lot that carried a bid is archived rather than erased. Ratings stay on record as part of a seller's reputation, and uploaded photographs are deleted when the lot they belong to is removed.
Your rights
You may ask us to:
- tell you what information we hold about you;
- correct anything that is wrong — most of it you can edit yourself under My profile;
- delete your account and your personal details — you can also do this yourself, at once, under My profile;
- stop sending you auction reminders (also a tick-box under My profile);
- explain anything on this page you are not happy with.
Deletion removes your name, email address, telephone number, address, company and password, and any lot you listed that never sold, with its photographs.
It has one limit worth knowing before you ask: we cannot erase the record of a completed sale, an invoice or a bid, because we are required to keep those and because they are equally the record of the member you traded with. Those stay, without your name on them. Ratings you wrote about other sellers stay as part of that seller's reputation, and become anonymous. A commission you still owe has to be settled first — deleting an account does not cancel an invoice.
A request for a record, rather than for your own personal information, is made under the Promotion of Access to Information Act — our PAIA manual sets out what we hold and how to ask for it.
If we have not put something right, you may complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa) at inforegulator.org.za.
Keeping it safe
The site is served only over an encrypted connection, passwords are stored as hashes, and changing your password signs out every other device. Access to the database is limited to the people who run the platform. No system is perfect: if information is ever compromised in a way that could harm you, we will tell you and the Information Regulator.
Contact
Our Information Officer is G Koornhof. Write to privacy@aviara.africa with any request or question about your information. We answer within a reasonable time and never charge for a correction.
See also the auction rules and terms of service and the operator page.