This notice explains what personal information Friends & Allies ("we", "us") collects, why, who we share it with and the choices you have, as required by the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA).
1. Who we are and how to reach us
Friends & Allies Climbing Gym (Pty) Ltd is the responsible party for your personal information. For any privacy question or request, contact our Information Officer:
- Email: info@friendsandallies.co.za
- Phone: +27 (0) 66 506 0828
- In person: 304 Tungsten Road, Strydompark, Johannesburg
2. What we collect
- When you sign up, sign a waiver or buy a pass: your name, email address, phone number, date of birth, emergency contact, and, for children, the details a parent or guardian gives us.
- Membership and payments: your membership type, passes, visits and payment records (amounts and dates). Card and bank details are handled by our payment provider, Paystack; we do not see or store your full card number.
- How you found us: which advert or link you came from (for example a click ID or campaign tag in the link) and what you tell us at the desk.
- On our website: cookies and similar technologies from Google (Analytics, Ads and Tag Manager) and Meta (the Meta Pixel), which record visits to our pages and which adverts led to them.
3. Why we use it
- To run your membership, waiver, check-ins and safety at the gym, and to take payments (to perform our agreement with you, and to meet legal obligations).
- To send you messages about your membership, bookings and payments.
- To send news, events and specials, only if you asked for them. You can unsubscribe from any marketing email at any time.
- To measure which of our adverts work (see section 4).
4. Ad measurement with Meta and Google
To see which of our adverts actually bring climbers in, so we can spend less on advertising and more on the gym, we share a scrambled (hashed) copy of your email address and phone number, together with the type, date and value of a sign-up or purchase, with Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Google. Hashing turns your email or phone number into a code that cannot be read back. Meta and Google can only match that code against accounts they already hold, and they report back to us in totals (for example "this advert led to 12 sign-ups"). We do not receive information about you from them.
Our basis for doing this depends on what you told us:
- You ticked the ad measurement box on a waiver or sign-up form: your consent.
- You were asked and left the box unticked: we do not share your details for ad measurement.
- You joined before we started asking (our forms have asked since July 2026): our legitimate interest in knowing which adverts work. You can object at any time and we will stop.
We never share information about children for ad measurement; children's records hold no email address or phone number of their own.
To opt out, use our ad measurement opt-out or email info@friendsandallies.co.za. Opting out does not affect your membership, your waiver or the emails you get from us.
5. Who else handles your information
- Paystack, to process card payments and debit orders.
- Our technology partner, 4What Digital, which builds and runs our systems on our behalf under a duty of confidentiality.
- Google Cloud, which hosts our systems, and our email provider, which sends our emails.
- Meta and Google, for ad measurement as described in section 4.
We do not sell your personal information.
6. Information sent outside South Africa
Meta, Google and some of our service providers process information outside South Africa, including in the European Union and the United States. We only use providers that are bound by data protection terms giving your information a level of protection similar to POPIA.
7. How long we keep it
We keep your information for as long as you are a member or customer and afterwards only for as long as the law requires (for example, financial records) or as needed to deal with a safety incident or dispute. Ad measurement data held by Meta and Google is governed by their own retention terms.
8. Your rights
You may ask us what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, and object to us using it for ad measurement or marketing. Email info@friendsandallies.co.za and we will respond within a reasonable time. If you are unhappy with how we handle your information, you may complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa) at inforegulator.org.za.
9. Changes to this notice
We may update this notice from time to time. The version and effective date at the top show when it last changed.