Privacy Policy | Midrand Live

Information we collect

We collect information you provide when creating an account, posting discussions, replying to community content, contacting us, or otherwise using Midrand Live. This may include your name, email address, username, profile information, community posts, comments, photographs, images, and other content you choose to submit or upload.

Images and other media that you upload may contain information about you or other people, including visual information that may make individuals identifiable. You should only upload content that you have the right to share and should avoid uploading sensitive or confidential information unless necessary.

We may also automatically collect information about your use of the service, such as pages viewed, interactions, searches, approximate location information, device information, browser information, IP address, and other technical or usage information.

How we use information

We use the information we collect for purposes including:

providing, operating, and maintaining Midrand Live;
creating and authenticating user accounts;
displaying community posts, discussions, profiles, images, and other content;
enabling users to interact with the Midrand Live community;
moderating community content, including text and images;
detecting, preventing, and investigating spam, fraud, abuse, and inappropriate content;
protecting the security and integrity of the service;
communicating with you about your account and the service;
understanding how users interact with Midrand Live;
analysing community interests, topics, trends, and engagement;
conducting internal research and statistical analysis;
developing, testing, training, and improving internal machine learning and artificial intelligence systems;
developing and improving features, products, and services;
creating aggregated or de-identified statistics and insights; and
understanding broad community and audience trends to inform our advertising, marketing, and business activities.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence

We may use community content submitted to Midrand Live, including text, photographs, images, comments, and other media, together with other information collected through the service, for internal research, analytics, and the development, training, testing, and improvement of machine learning and artificial intelligence systems.

For example, we may analyse text and images to develop systems that identify topics, categories, sentiment, trends, spam, inappropriate content, or other characteristics of community content. We may also use machine learning systems to help moderate content, improve search and discovery, and develop new features.

We may use information from multiple sources within Midrand Live to develop and evaluate these systems. This may include information from community posts, comments, uploaded images, interactions, searches, and other usage of the service.

Where reasonably practicable, we may use aggregated, anonymised, or de-identified information for these purposes. We may also use information generated from our analysis to improve the functionality, safety, relevance, and performance of Midrand Live.

Analytics, research, and community insights

We may analyse information about how Midrand Live is used to understand community behaviour, interests, engagement, and trends. This may include analysing posts, comments, images, searches, interactions, and other community content.

We may create aggregated or de-identified reports and statistics from this information. These insights may be used internally for product development, research, business planning, advertising, and marketing purposes.

For example, we may analyse which topics, categories, services, or types of content are popular within particular communities or areas. These insights may help us understand the needs of the communities served by Midrand Live and improve the service.

Where information is aggregated or de-identified, we aim to prevent the resulting information from being used to identify individual users.

Advertising and marketing

Midrand Live may display advertising from local businesses and other advertisers. Our approach to advertising is based on broad, aggregated insights about community and audience trends, rather than on targeting, profiling, or delivering advertisements to specific individual users.

For example, we may use aggregated or de-identified information — such as which topics or categories are popular in a particular city or area — to determine what kinds of advertising content are generally relevant to that community, and to measure the overall performance of advertising placements. We do not build individual advertising profiles based on a specific user's personal activity, and we do not use your personal information to target advertisements to you individually.

We may provide advertisers with aggregated or de-identified insights about community trends, such as the general popularity of particular topics or categories within an area. We do not sell your personal information to advertisers.

Community content and public information

Information that you voluntarily post publicly on Midrand Live, including discussions, comments, photographs, images, and other community content, may be visible to other users and may be copied, shared, or otherwise used by other people.

You should avoid posting personal, sensitive, confidential, or other information that you do not want to be publicly available. If an image contains other people, you should consider whether you have permission or another appropriate basis to upload and publicly share that image.

Sharing information

We may share information with service providers that help us operate Midrand Live, such as hosting, database, authentication, analytics, security, email, and other technology providers.

These providers may process information on our behalf to provide services to Midrand Live. We do not sell your personal information.

We may also disclose information where required by law, legal process, or a lawful request from a competent authority, or where reasonably necessary to protect the rights, safety, or security of Midrand Live, our users, or others.

Data retention

We retain information for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including providing the service, maintaining security, conducting legitimate analytics and research, developing and improving our systems, complying with legal obligations, and resolving disputes.

When information is no longer reasonably required for these purposes, we may delete it, anonymise it, or otherwise securely dispose of it in accordance with our retention practices and applicable law.

Data security

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect information against unauthorised access, loss, misuse, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. However, no online service can guarantee absolute security.

Your choices and rights

You may review and update available account information through Midrand Live. Depending on the circumstances and applicable law, you may also have rights to request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information, or to object to certain processing.

For privacy-related requests or questions about how your information is used, please contact the Midrand Live team.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes to Midrand Live, our data practices, or applicable legal requirements. When we make significant changes, we may provide additional notice where appropriate.

Contact us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or how Midrand Live processes personal information, please contact the Midrand Live team.