Ruvia
Montagu Pass. Photo: A3alb, CC BY-SA 3.0
Privacy policy
What the Ruvia apps and this website keep about you, and why. The same text is in the apps.
Draft · last updated 19 October 2026
This is a draft. The company behind Ruvia is still being registered, so its name and contact details will be added here before the apps launch publicly.
Who we are
Ruvia (the tourist app) and Ruvia Business (the app for businesses) are run by Ruvia's operator (name to follow once the company is registered), the responsible party under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). Questions or requests: the contact details on this site (to follow).
What we keep about you
Your account: name, email address and password (stored only as a one-way hash). If you add them: phone number, home town, a short bio and a profile photo. Bookings you make, and the messages between you and a venue about them. Reports you send about a listing. For businesses: your listings (details, photos, opening hours, events, specials) and your subscription. Card payments are handled by PayFast; we never see card numbers.
What stays on your phone
Your saved places, trips, the places you've marked "Been here", your interests, and your location. Location is used on the phone to show distances and the nearest places; it isn't sent to us.
What businesses see
A venue you book sees your name, your booking details and notes, and your phone number if you've added one. Businesses see how many people viewed, saved or tapped their listing, as totals per day, never who.
Error reports
When the app hits an error it sends us the technical details (what went wrong and where, the app version and the phone's system version) so we can fix it. We don't add your account details to these.
Others involved
Our server, in South Africa, holds the data above. Weather comes from Open-Meteo (asked by our server for the town, not for you). Maps come from Esri (your phone asks for the map area on screen). "Go" opens Google Maps. Payment by businesses goes through PayFast. Password-reset codes are sent by our email provider.
How long we keep it
Your account until you delete it. Notifications for 90 days. Error reports for 60 days. Backups for up to 60 days. When you delete your account, your details are wiped; bookings stay with the venue without your name.
Your rights
You can see and correct your details in the app (Edit profile), and delete your account there at any time. You can ask us what we hold about you, object to how we use it, or complain to the Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za).
Keeping it safe
Everything travels encrypted (HTTPS). Passwords are hashed, sign-in tokens are short-lived and stored encrypted on your phone, and only you and the venue can read a booking's messages.
This website
This site doesn't use analytics, adverts or tracking cookies, and loads nothing from other websites. It sets two small cookies: one that protects the chat from forged requests, and one that lets the chat assistant remember your last few questions for up to an hour (kept for 30 days, holding a random number, not your name). Questions you type into the chat assistant are sent to Google's Gemini service to write the answer. Please don't type personal details into it. The topic buttons are answered by this site without Google.
