Privacy policy

Shankdt (“we”, “us”) is a South African golf booking and community service operated by SHANKDT (PTY) LTD (company registration 2026/568985/07, 9 Lanyon Street, Baillie Park, Potchefstroom, South Africa), the responsible party for the purposes of POPIA. It is available at shankdt.com and through the Shankdt mobile app. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, and the choices you have. We process personal information in line with the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA).

What we collect

• Booking details — name, email, phone (optional) and handicap (optional) when you book a tee time, join a fourball, or enter an event.
• Reviews and photos — ratings, comments and photos you choose to upload to a course page, shown publicly with the first name you provide.
• Shot-tracer data — tracing happens entirely on your device, and your video is never uploaded to us. Camera and microphone access is used on the device to find the moment of impact. If you choose to post a shot to the Clubhouse or save a scorecard, then those figures (club, carry, apex, hang time, or your scores) are sent to us together with your name and email, stored on our servers, and — for a Clubhouse post — shown publicly on the feed. Nothing is sent unless you tap to post or save.
• Profile photo — if you choose to set one. It is stored on our servers and shown only to you and to friends you have accepted — never on a public page, never in search, never to a club. Replacing it destroys the old photo; removing it (Profile → tap your photo) destroys it on our systems immediately, and any copy cached on your friends’ devices expires within an hour.
• Friends — if you connect with another golfer, we store the connection between your two accounts. You add a friend by typing their exact email address; we deliberately never confirm to you whether an address has a Shankdt account, and a declined request is deleted outright, not recorded.
• Leads and enquiries — details you submit through forms on our website (early access, golf days, partnerships, gift cards).
• Technical basics — standard server logs (IP address, browser type) needed to run and secure the service.

What we don’t do

• We don’t sell your personal information.
• We don’t run third-party advertising trackers on this website.
• We don’t store card details — when in-app payments launch, they will be handled by an accredited South African payment provider, and their privacy terms will apply to the payment itself.

Why we use your information

• To make your booking — we share your booking details (name, contact, party size, handicap if given) with the golf club you book, because they host your round. Clubs use those details under their own policies.
• To run fourball matchmaking — your first name and handicap are shown to golfers sharing your tee time.
• To set up a shared round — when a golfer books a tee time and splits the booking fee with named players, each named player’s share is recorded against the email address the booker gave for them, so that player can see the round and their share in their own account.
• To respond — when you submit an enquiry or join the waitlist.
• To keep the service safe — moderation of reviews and community content, abuse prevention, and debugging.

Third parties we rely on

Our website is hosted on Netlify and our API on Railway. Course photography includes images licensed via the Google Places API, shown with contributor attribution. Golf clubs receive the booking details described above. Mully, our AI caddie, is powered by Anthropic — when you ask Mully a question, your message is sent to Anthropic’s API to generate the answer. That processing happens outside South Africa, which POPIA permits where the recipient is bound by comparable protections (section 72); your question is not used to train anyone’s models. Don’t type anything into Mully you wouldn’t want leaving the country. If you sign in with Google or Apple, that provider confirms your email address and name to us; we receive nothing else from your Google or Apple account. We use no third-party analytics — our only measurement is the page counter described below, which runs on our own server.

Email is delivered by Resend. Every message we send you — your sign-in code, your booking confirmation, a cancellation notice, a request to rate a round — goes out through Resend, which therefore receives your email address and the contents of that message, including your booking reference and the club and time you booked. Resend processes it on our instruction only, to deliver the mail. This also happens outside South Africa, on the same section 72 basis as Mully above.

Payments. Green fees are paid to the club, not to us. Where paying in the app is switched on for your club, the payment is handled by Paystack, and a Shankdt Pro subscription by Yoco — both licensed South African payment providers. They receive the amount, your email address and a reference for the booking. Your card details are entered on the provider’s own page and never reach Shankdt’s servers; we never see or store a card number. The club’s share of a payment is settled by the provider straight to the club’s own bank account and never passes through ours.

When a friend books you in

A golfer booking a round can add you to it and split the booking fee with you. When they do, we receive your email address from them, not from you, and we use it for exactly one thing: to send you that invitation — who booked you in, at which club, on which date, and your share of the booking fee — and to show the round in your Shankdt account if you have one. We don’t add you to any mailing list, we don’t use the address for marketing, and if you never engage with the invitation the address simply sits on that one booking record and nothing else. If you’d rather we removed it, email support@shankdt.com and we will — the booker’s round and their own fee record stay intact, but your address comes off it.

Club partners and signatories

When someone signs their golf club up at shankdt.com/join, we collect the club’s details (names, registration and VAT numbers, address, notice email) and the signatory’s own information: full name, role, mobile number and email address, together with the date, time, network address and browser details of the electronic signature. We use this for exactly three things: concluding the Club Partnership Agreement, keeping the execution record that proves who signed what and when, and the verification call we make before anything goes live. The signing code and the signed copy are delivered by Resend on the same section 72 basis described above; the record also goes to the club’s own notice address, and the data is hosted on Railway with the rest of our service. We never use a signatory’s details for marketing.

How long: a concluded agreement’s record is kept for the life of the agreement plus the legal prescription period, because it exists to establish, exercise or defend claims about that contract. Sign-up drafts that are never completed are deleted after 24 hours, and where a sign-up fails our verification, the signatory’s personal details are removed after 90 days.

Website statistics (our own counter)

We count page views ourselves, on our own server, so we know which pages matter. The counter stores only which page was viewed, on which of our sites, on which day, and a running total. That is the whole record. It uses no cookies and no similar tracking technologies, stores no IP addresses, no device or browser fingerprints, and no identifiers of any kind — it cannot tell whether two visits came from the same person, and neither can we. These daily totals are not personal information, and nothing about them is shared with anyone.

How long we keep things

Booking records are kept as long as needed for the service, dispute resolution and our legal obligations. Reviews stay up until you ask us to remove them or they are removed under our content rules. Lead enquiries are kept while relevant. Shot-tracer history lives on your device — deleting the app deletes it. Your profile photo is kept until you replace or remove it, or delete your account; each replacement destroys the previous photo. Friend connections are kept until either side removes them — unfriending deletes the connection for both of you — or until either account is deleted.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself at any time, without asking us: in the app under Profile → Delete account, or on the web at shankdt.com/delete-account. It takes effect immediately and cannot be undone.

We erase your account details (name, email, phone, home club, handicap and membership number), your profile photo, your entire friends list — every connection and every pending request, in both directions, so your address does not linger in anyone else’s list — every device session, every scorecard and shot trace you saved, and any marketing contact record.

We keep your booking, payment and event-entry records, your course reviews and any course photos you submitted — but with your identity removed and replaced by an anonymous marker that cannot be traced back to you. We do this because the Tax Administration Act requires us to retain transaction records for five years and VAT already declared cannot be unwound, and because reviews are about the club rather than about you. Nothing that remains identifies you.

Your rights (POPIA)

You may ask us to access, correct or delete the personal information we hold about you, or object to processing. Email support@shankdt.com and we’ll respond within a reasonable time. If you’re not satisfied, you may lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa) — inforeg.org.za.

Children

Shankdt is intended for users 18 and older, or younger golfers using the service with a parent or guardian’s consent.

Cookies

Our website uses only what’s essential to serve pages — no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. The app stores your preferences and history locally on your device.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, we’ll update this page and the “last updated” date above.

Contact

Shankdt · shankdt.com · support@shankdt.com