Creator privacy notice

This notice explains what personal information VELA keeps about you as a creator, why we keep it, who can see it, how long we keep it and what you can do about it. We follow the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).

What we collect and why

• Your account: email address and sign-in details. We never see your password.
• Your profile: your name, mobile number, date of birth (only to check that you are 18 or older), home area, the niches you cover, the content formats you make and a short bio.
• Your platforms: the handles and links of your social accounts and the figures you report for them, such as followers, average views and engagement.
• Your rate card: the net rates you set for each kind of content.
• Your portfolio: examples of your work that you choose to add.
• Your consent choices, with the date and the version of each notice you agreed to.

We use this to review and verify your profile, match you to brand proposals, show your profile to verified clients when you allow it, pay you and keep VELA secure.

Screenshots and audience data

To check the figures you report, VELA asks for screenshots of your platform statistics. Screenshots are private. Only you and the VELA team can open them. Clients never see them.

From your audience statistics we keep aggregated percentages only, such as the share of your audience by age band, gender or country. We never collect or keep information about individual followers.

Who sees what

• You see and can change your own profile.
• The VELA team sees your whole profile, your screenshots and your consent history, so we can verify you and manage proposals.
• Verified VELA clients see your profile card only after VELA approves your profile and only while you allow profile display. They never see your contact details, your screenshots or your date of birth.

Where your information is kept

Your information is stored with Supabase on servers in Frankfurt, Germany. Storing it there is a transfer of personal information outside South Africa under POPIA section 72. Germany is covered by the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which gives protection at least as strong as POPIA. The website itself is hosted by Vercel.

How long we keep it

We keep information only as long as we need it. If you never submit your profile, we delete it after a period set in the VELA retention schedule. When you close your account, we delete your profile, screenshots and portfolio, and keep only the records the law requires, such as payment records for tax purposes. If a period changes, we publish an updated notice here with a new version number.

Your rights

• You can see the information VELA holds about you and download a copy.
• You can correct information that is wrong or out of date.
• You can withdraw a consent at any time. Withdrawing profile display hides your profile from clients.
• You can ask us to delete your account.
• You can complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa.

Contact the information officer

VELA has an Information Officer who looks after personal information and answers questions about it. Their contact details are shown below this notice.