Privacy

Responsible party

Ryan de Beer, sole proprietor trading as TariffGuard. Physical and postal address: 389 Cape Rd, Cotswold, Gqeberha 6045, South Africa. Telephone 078 245 0950. E-mail hello@tariffguard.co.za. Website www.tariffguard.co.za. The Information Officer is Ryan de Beer, registered with the Information Regulator (2026-066531). Write to the same address. Do not attach bills to that e-mail.

What we do not separately collect

The review form does not ask you for an identity number, e-mail address, phone number or postal address. The Section 102 notice and the draft e-mail leave those as blank fields — [YOUR FULL NAME], [YOUR E-MAIL] and so on — for you to complete on your own device before you send anything. We still process personal information that is already printed on a municipal account you attach.

Information processed

From a municipal PDF, this device may read: the account holder’s name as printed, account number, property address, erf / SG number, municipal valuation, meter numbers and readings, consumption (water, sanitation, electricity), tariff descriptions, interest, credits, payments, arrears, possible indigent or pensioner flags, and the financial history of the account. From checkout: the plan you choose, the amount, a payment reference, and the site origin. From a message you send to hello@tariffguard.co.za: whatever you choose to write. Technical information (IP address, browser, timestamps, referring page) is received by the parties listed below when a page loads.

Purpose and lawful basis

Purpose: to compare the attached accounts with published municipal tariffs and to generate a draft dispute pack for you to edit. Lawful basis: your consent, given by ticking the authority box before a PDF is read, and (if you pay) performance of the contract for a customised report. If you do not attach bills, we cannot run the review. If you do not pay, we do not unlock the line-by-line schedule or the notice.

Where the file stays

• Official municipal PDFs are read in your browser on this device. They are not uploaded to a TariffGuard server and are not sent to an AI company to extract the bill. Picture-only tax invoices are read on this device with Tesseract OCR. That engine may download worker files from jsDelivr (cdn.jsdelivr.net) and English language data from tessdata.projectnaptha.com into this browser only — the bill image is not uploaded to either host. Photographs you take yourself are not accepted.
• The working file is stored in this browser with a timestamp. The site discards that file the next time TariffGuard is opened after seven days, or sooner if you use Start over or clear this site’s data. Browser storage does not delete itself while the site is closed.
• We do not set advertising or remarketing pixels (Meta, Google Ads or similar). We do not send unsolicited marketing e-mail or SMS. TariffGuard itself does not set cookies. PayFast may set cookies on its own payment page.

Recipients and countries

• PayFast (PayFast (Pty) Ltd, South Africa) processes the payment. They receive the amount, a payment reference, item name and this site’s origin from us. On their own payment page they collect contact, transaction, financial, card and technical information, may retain records for up to seven years, and may process information outside South Africa under PayFast’s privacy policy. Bills are not sent to PayFast.
• Published municipal tariff pages may be fetched from the council’s own website when you run a review. Those pages are public. Your bills do not go with that request.
• The website is hosted on Vercel (Vercel Inc., United States). Vercel receives technical information (IP address, browser, timestamps, referring page) to serve the pages over HTTPS. Bills are not uploaded to Vercel by TariffGuard’s own code. Cross-border processing is on the basis that it is necessary to perform the service you requested (hosting this site).
• If you e-mail hello@tariffguard.co.za, the message is processed by the e-mail host for that address. Mailbox copies are kept for 24 months unless a complaint or legal hold requires longer, then deleted on request or at the end of that period. Do not attach bills.
• Picture-only invoices may cause this browser to fetch Tesseract worker code from jsDelivr (cdn.jsdelivr.net) and trained language data from tessdata.projectnaptha.com. Both are public CDNs. The bill stays in this browser.
• The company that publishes preview builds of this website (xAI / Grok App Builder) includes a platform script and a grok.me share-card image in the HTML it emits. On www.tariffguard.co.za those tags are stripped from the page we send you. A Content-Security-Policy on this host also blocks grok.com and grok.me, so if a rebuild puts the tags back the browser does not load them and no request reaches those hosts. Grok-hosted preview URLs may still include the script. It can receive technical information on those preview URLs. It is not given the municipal PDF by TariffGuard’s own code. TariffGuard does not set cookies. PayFast may set cookies on its own payment page.
• We do not send your bills or the notice to the municipality. You do that yourself, if you choose to, after filling in the blanks.

Automated analysis

The review is an automated comparison of line items against a tariff pack. It is not a credit-worthiness decision and it is not used to refuse a municipal service. You can ignore the result, edit the draft, or not send it.

Other people on an old bill

A statement sometimes still shows a previous occupant. Do not attach a file in order to review someone else’s account. If a prior name is printed on your own current account, we do not put that name on the notice.

Security incidents

If there is a compromise of personal information processed under TariffGuard’s control — including the mailbox, payment references, a hosting incident, a failure in the on-device review, or third-party code loaded for OCR or payment — we will notify the Information Regulator and affected persons as POPIA requires. Bills are not stored on a TariffGuard server; a browser-side incident is still treated as an incident if personal information on this device was exposed through our site or a library we load.

Your rights

You may object to processing, ask what we hold, and ask for correction or deletion. Because the working file lives in this browser, deleting it is Start over, or wait until the site is next opened after seven days, or clear site data. If you e-mailed us, ask us to delete that message. PayFast holds payment records as operator — we can confirm a TariffGuard reference we issued for seven years; card data sits with them. The PAIA manual explains how to request records. You may complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa) at inforegulator.org.za.