Privacy policy

Protecting your personal information is important to us. Below we inform you about the collection, processing and use of your personal information in accordance with the South African Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA) and, where applicable, other data protection laws such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

1. Responsible party and Information Officer

The responsible party for processing your personal information is:

PATRICK HOME LLC
Legal form: Limited Liability Company (LLC)
30 N Gould St Ste R, Sheridan, WY 82801, USA
Email: contact@meinungs-welt.com

Information Officer (section 55 POPIA): Patrick Walras Akpedje Den, reachable at contact@meinungs-welt.com.

2. Personal information we collect

When you fill in the sign-up form on our website, we collect the following personal information:

• First name
• Email address
• Phone number (including country code)
• Technical data (IP address, time of the request, browser user agent)

This information is collected directly from you and solely for the purpose of suggesting suitable surveys and market studies from our partners to you. Providing it is voluntary, but without it we cannot provide the service. Our service is intended for persons aged 18 or older; we do not knowingly process personal information of children.

3. Lawful basis for processing

We process your personal information on the basis of your consent (section 11(1)(a) POPIA; Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR where applicable). You give your consent by ticking the box in the sign-up form. Because we contact you by electronic communication (email, phone) about surveys and partner offers, this consent also covers direct marketing as required by section 69 POPIA. You can withdraw your consent and opt out of any further contact at any time, with effect for the future, by sending an email to contact@meinungs-welt.com.

Some processing (security of the form, prevention of misuse, visit statistics) is based on our legitimate interest (section 11(1)(f) POPIA).

4. Purpose of processing

Your personal information is used to:

• contact you by email or phone,
• suggest suitable surveys and market studies to you,
• point you to suitable studies from our carefully selected partners,
• prevent misuse of the platform and ensure technical security.

We do not process your information for any purpose that is incompatible with these purposes (section 15 POPIA).

5. Disclosure to third parties

Your personal information may be passed on to selected partner companies that offer surveys, market research or related services. Disclosure takes place exclusively for the purposes stated in section 4 and only after these partners have been contractually bound to comply with data protection regulations.

We use the following service providers (operators within the meaning of sections 20 and 21 POPIA) to run the website:

• Hostinger (web hosting) — stores the website and the database.
• Brevo (Sendinblue SAS, France) — sends the confirmation email and service emails. Your first name and email address are transmitted for this purpose.
• Meta (Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. / Meta Platforms, Inc.) — measurement of advertising campaigns, see section 8.
• OpenAI — AI answers in the chat, see section 9.

Your personal information is only disclosed to authorities if we are legally obliged to do so.

6. Retention period

Your personal information is kept only for as long as necessary for the stated purposes or as required by law (section 14 POPIA). Visit statistics (IP address and detected country) are deleted after 12 months at the latest. After you withdraw your consent, your information will be deleted or de-identified unless a legal retention obligation prevents this.

7. Your rights as a data subject

Under POPIA (in particular sections 5, 11, 23, 24 and 69) you have the following rights:

• Right of access: to ask whether we hold personal information about you and to receive a copy of it
• Right to correction of inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out-of-date or incomplete information
• Right to deletion or destruction of your personal information
• Right to object to the processing of your personal information, including at any time to direct marketing
• Right to withdraw consent at any time
• Right to be notified if your personal information has been accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person (section 22 POPIA)
• Right to lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa), inforegulator.org.za

To exercise your rights, an informal email to contact@meinungs-welt.com is sufficient. We will answer within a reasonable time and free of charge.

8. Cookies, tracking and Meta Pixel

We use the following categories of cookies and technologies on our website:

• Technically necessary cookies (e.g. session cookies for the security of the sign-up form and the chat). These are required for the service to work.
• Statistics: a first-party cookie (ow_vt) to count visits and measure which sources bring visitors (e.g. which campaign). This data stays on our own server.
• Marketing cookies and tracking — in particular the Meta Pixel and the Meta Conversions API (CAPI). These technologies allow us to measure the effectiveness of our campaigns on Facebook and Instagram and to show you relevant content. Pseudonymised data (e.g. hashed email address, hashed phone number, IP address) is transmitted to Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. / Meta Platforms, Inc.

You give your consent to the use of these marketing technologies by ticking the “I agree…” checkbox in the sign-up form and submitting the form. You can withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by sending an email to contact@meinungs-welt.com or by deleting cookies in your browser and blocking Facebook/Meta domains.

More information on data processing by Meta can be found in the Meta privacy policy.

9. Chat with Joe (AI assistant)

After confirming your email address, you can chat with our assistant Joe. Joe is an AI assistant (artificial intelligence), not a human. The predefined answer buttons are processed by our system. If you write your own message, the answer is generated using an AI language model. If necessary, a member of the ZAVORYA team takes over the chat.

For the AI answers, we transmit your first name, your country (based on the country code) and the chat history to OpenAI (OpenAI Ireland Ltd., 1st Floor, The Liffey Trust Centre, 117–126 Sheriff Street Upper, Dublin 1, Ireland, and its affiliate OpenAI, L.L.C., USA). Your email address and phone number are not transmitted. According to OpenAI, data transmitted via the API is not used to train AI models and is stored for a maximum of 30 days for abuse detection.

The lawful basis is the provision of the service you requested and our legitimate interest in answering your questions quickly (section 11(1)(f) POPIA). Please do not share sensitive data such as passwords, bank or health data in the chat. More information can be found in OpenAI's privacy policy.

10. Country detection based on the IP address

To preselect the matching country code in the sign-up form and to produce anonymous visit statistics, we compare your IP address with a country database when you visit the website. This comparison takes place exclusively on our own server; your IP address is not transmitted to third parties for this purpose. The IP address and the detected country are stored with the visit statistics on our server and deleted after 12 months at the latest. You can change the country code yourself at any time. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in a user-friendly form (section 11(1)(f) POPIA).

IP Geolocation by DB-IP (licence: CC BY 4.0).

11. Transfers of personal information outside South Africa

The responsible party and some service providers (Meta, OpenAI, Brevo, Hostinger) are located outside South Africa. Such transfers take place only in accordance with section 72 POPIA: on the basis of your consent, and where the recipient is subject to laws, binding corporate rules or binding agreements (such as standard contractual clauses) that provide an adequate level of protection.

12. Information security

We take appropriate, reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your personal information against loss, damage, unauthorised destruction and unlawful access or processing (section 19 POPIA). If we have reasonable grounds to believe that your personal information has been accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person, we will notify you and the Information Regulator as required by section 22 POPIA. However, data transmission over the internet can in principle have security gaps; absolute protection is not possible.

13. Changes to this privacy policy

We reserve the right to adapt this privacy policy to changes in the legal situation or to changes in our services. The current version is always available on this page.

14. Contact

If you have any questions about the protection of your personal information or wish to exercise your rights, you can reach our Information Officer at:
contact@meinungs-welt.com

Last updated: 22.10.2026