1. Who we are
TrotTrot is operated by TrotTrot, based in South Africa. We are the “responsible party” for your personal information under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA).
Our Information Officer can be reached at hello@trottrot.co.za.
2. What we collect
When you create an account
- Your name, email address and password (passwords are stored securely by our authentication provider — we never see them).
- Your favourite wine region, if you choose one.
- A username, generated from your email address, which you can change.
When you use TrotTrot
- Profile details you add: display name, bio and your public / private and leaderboard settings.
- Wine routes you create, including stops, notes, timings and whether they are public or private.
- Farms and routes you save, and routes you upvote.
- Reviews you write, including your rating and text.
- Check-ins: when you check in at a farm, your phone's location at that moment (or the QR code you scanned) so we can confirm you're there. We store where you checked in, not your location at any other time.
- Activities you log after checking in (for example, a wine tasting), and the points, levels and badges you earn.
- Photos you share of farms you've visited, with any caption.
When you subscribe to our newsletter
- Your email address and where you signed up (for example, the newsletter banner).
Automatically
- Technical information needed to run the site securely, such as your IP address and browser type, kept in server logs.
- Anonymous visit statistics (pages viewed, rough location by country, device type) through Vercel Analytics, which doesn't use cookies or identify you.
- Only if you accept cookies: Google Ads and Google Tag Manager cookies that tell us whether our ads led to visits and sign-ups. See Cookies.
We don't collect payment details.
3. How we use your information
- To run your account and sign you in — necessary to provide the service you asked for.
- To save and show your routes, saved farms, votes and reviews.
- To show your public content to others: if your profile is public, your display name appears on routes you make public and on your published reviews. If it is private, these show as “TrotTrot member”.
- To check reviews and photos before they are published, so the site stays useful and respectful.
- To confirm check-ins and award points, levels and badges, and to show the leaderboard (you can hide yourself from it in Settings).
- To send the newsletter, only if you subscribed — you can unsubscribe at any time from any email.
- To send account emails, such as confirming your email address or resetting your password, and to tell you when a review or photo you shared is published (you can switch these off in Settings).
- To understand how the site is used and, if you accept cookies, to measure our advertising.
- To keep the site secure and fix problems.
6. How long we keep it
We keep your account information for as long as your account is open. If you ask us to delete your account, we delete or anonymise your personal information, except where we need to keep it by law. Newsletter subscriptions last until you unsubscribe.
7. Your rights
Under POPIA you can:
- ask what personal information we hold about you, and get a copy;
- ask us to correct or delete it;
- object to us using it, including for direct marketing;
- withdraw your consent at any time (for example, by unsubscribing).
You can change most of your details yourself in Settings. For anything else, including deleting your account, email hello@trottrot.co.za.
If you're unhappy with how we handle your information, you can complain to the Information Regulator.
8. Security
We use access controls at the database level so that private routes, saved items and your profile details are only visible to you, and we encrypt data in transit. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a strong, unique password.
9. Children
TrotTrot is about visiting wine farms and is intended for people aged 18 and over. We don't knowingly collect information from children.
10. Changes to this policy
If we make significant changes, we'll update the date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, let you know by email.