Privacy Policy (POPIA)

1. Who we are

MyTruth is an online counselling platform operated by TherapyNow (Pty) Ltd, a private company registered in South Africa (reg. 2022/281383/07), based in Cape Town. We are the “responsible party” for the personal information described in this policy.

Information Officer: Elza Berk, Founder & CEO. Contact: accounts@mytruth.co.za.

2. What information we collect

Contact details — name, email address, phone or WhatsApp number, country.
Booking details — the counsellor you choose, session dates and times, session format, who the session is for, and how you heard about us.
Emergency contact — the name, relationship and number of someone we may contact if there is a serious risk to your life.
Special personal information — information about your health and wellbeing that you share when booking or in sessions. POPIA treats this as special personal information, and we handle it with extra care.
Payment information — card, Apple Pay and Google Pay payments are processed by Yoco. We do not see or store your full card details.
Website information: the technical details your browser sends when you visit, such as your IP address and browser type, which our hosting provider uses to deliver the website and keep it secure, and, if you reach us through one of our adverts, the advert’s reference (see section 7).

3. Why we use it

To book, confirm, remind you about and deliver your counselling sessions.
To match you with a suitable counsellor.
To process payments, issue invoices and manage session packages.
To send you one reminder if you start a booking but do not finish paying. You can ask us not to.
To contact your emergency contact if there is an immediate risk to your life or someone else’s.
To meet our legal and professional obligations.
To send occasional news and tips — only if you opt in. You can unsubscribe at any time.

We process special personal information on the basis of your consent, which you give when you book, and to provide counselling you have asked for. You may withdraw consent at any time, although we may then be unable to continue providing services.

4. Confidentiality of sessions

What you share in counselling is confidential under the ethical codes of the HPCSA, ASCHP and CCSA. Session notes are accessible only to your counsellor and, where necessary for supervision, the Head of Supervision. We do not share session content with employers, medical aids, insurers or family without your explicit written consent, except where there is an immediate and serious risk to life, a court order or legal requirement, or a child’s safety is at risk.

If your sessions are funded by an employer or bursary programme, the organisation receives only anonymised, aggregated information (such as how many sessions were used) — never your name or what you discussed.

5. Who we share information with

We never sell your information. We share it only with:

Your counsellor, who is contracted to MyTruth and bound by confidentiality.
Service providers who help us operate: Vercel (website hosting), Yoco (payments), Google Workspace (email, calendar and booking records), WhatsApp and Twilio (messages and reminders), Google Cloud (turning WhatsApp voice notes into text), Anthropic (AI services that help us answer WhatsApp messages and keep our accounts), Telegram (a messaging service our accounting tools use), Google Meet and Microsoft Teams (sessions), and our accountants. Each processes information only on our instructions.
Meta (Facebook), which receives a scrambled copy of the name, email address and phone number of each client who pays online, to measure our advertising (see section 7).
Authorities, where the law requires it.

Some of these providers store information outside South Africa. We use providers with appropriate data protection safeguards, as required by section 72 of POPIA.

6. How long we keep it and how we protect it

We keep booking and session records for as long as professional and legal record-keeping rules require, and then delete or anonymise them. Access to your information is restricted to people who need it, and our systems are protected by passwords and two-factor authentication. Online sessions happen over third-party platforms, so we cannot guarantee complete security of communications over those platforms.

7. Cookies, browser storage and advertising

Our website does not use cookies, Google Analytics, the Meta (Facebook) Pixel or other third-party tracking tools. To suggest your country, currency and phone code, the booking page looks up the country of your IP address. We do not store the lookup.

The website keeps a few items in your browser’s own storage, on your device. You can clear them at any time in your browser settings:

your currency and time-zone choices, and recent exchange rates;
a booking you have started, until you close the browser tab;
your journal entries in the #MyTruth Daily morning ritual, and your progress through the daily affirmations, which stay on your device and are not sent to us;
if you reach us through one of our adverts, the advert’s reference (a click reference from Google, Meta or TikTok, and the campaign name). If you book within 90 days, it is saved with your booking so that we can see which advert brought you.

When you pay online, our booking system tells Meta (Facebook) that a purchase was made, with the amount and a scrambled (hashed) copy of your name, email address and phone number, so that Meta can match the purchase to our advertising. None of this includes anything you discuss with your counsellor.

8. Your rights

Under POPIA you may:

ask whether we hold information about you, and request a copy;
ask us to correct or delete information;
object to processing, including direct marketing;
withdraw consent;
lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa) at inforegulator.org.za.

To make a request, email accounts@mytruth.co.za. We will respond within a reasonable time and may need to confirm your identity first.

9. Children

We provide counselling to young people aged 13–17 only with verifiable written consent from a parent or guardian. We do not provide services to children under 13.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The latest version will always be on this page.

Privacy policy