TVB Network (Pty) Ltd ("TVB Network", "we", "us", or "our"), incorporated in the Republic of South Africa (Reg. 2022/697770/07), acts as the Responsible Party under Section 1 of the Protection of Personal Information Act No. 4 of 2013 (POPIA) for personal data processed through Alt Media.
This Policy explains what personal information we collect, the lawful grounds for processing under Section 11 of POPIA, how we protect your social graph, and how you can exercise your statutory rights.
| POPIA Condition | Alt Media Engineering Implementation |
|---|---|
| 1. Accountability | Overseen by a registered Information Officer with full audit trails of administrative access. |
| 2. Processing Limitation | Processing is limited to providing social publishing services, algorithmic feeds, and payouts. |
| 3. Purpose Specification | Explicitly defined purposes for social interactions, creator tipping, and anti-fraud telemetry. |
| 4. Further Processing | Strictly zero cross-site data broker profiling, external resale, or unverified ad harvesting. |
| 5. Information Quality | Centralized SSO identity layer verifies phone numbers and profile integrity. |
| 6. Openness & Transparency | Full clarity on feed ranking parameters, data storage tiers, and privacy settings. |
| 7. Security Safeguards | BigQuery role-based access, TLS 1.3 encryption, single-row profile storage, AES-256 at rest. |
| 8. Data Subject Rights | Complete self-service profile export, post deletion, and account erasure mechanisms. |
We process the following categories of data in connection with Alt Media:
@username), bio, avatar image, header banner, South African mobile phone number (used for SMS OTP verification), and email address.Core Privacy Directive: In accordance with our master security architecture, internal BigQuery table keys and your 16-digit AccountID (e.g. altYYYYMMDDHHMMSSNN) are strictly isolated backend cryptographic identifiers. They are never exposed to public feeds, REST API JSON responses, profile URL slugs, or search engines. Other users only see your chosen public handle (@username).
Alt Media utilizes engagement telemetry (such as reading duration, likes, reposts, and topic affinities) to recommend relevant content in your discovery feed:
Alt Media's database infrastructure is hosted exclusively on Google Cloud BigQuery (Project: tvb-network-379518):
TVB_DATA_NETUSERS, minimizing the footprint of personal information.runWithParamsOnSelect), preventing SQL injection vulnerabilities.When you tip a creator or receive payouts on Alt Media:
Cloud infrastructure services provided by Google Cloud and Paystack may host or back up encrypted data in secure international data centers. In compliance with Section 72 of POPIA, we ensure that foreign data processors are subject to binding agreements and data protection laws offering an adequate level of protection substantially similar to POPIA.
As a data subject under South African law, you hold the following statutory rights:
To exercise any of these rights, contact our Information Officer at privacy@tvbnet.co.za.
If you believe that your personal information has been mishandled or that your POPIA rights have been infringed, you have the statutory right to lodge a formal complaint with the South African Information Regulator:
The Information Regulator (South Africa)
JD House, 27 Stiemens Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2001
PO Box 31533, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2017
Complaints Email: POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za
General Inquiries: enquiries@inforegulator.org.za