Privacy Policy

Last updated 2 September 2026

Digital Characters (Pty) Ltd — registration 2014/164830/07 — is an animation, visual effects and film studio based in Johannesburg, South Africa. This policy explains what personal information we collect through digitalcharacters.africa, why we collect it, and what you can ask us to do about it.

We are the responsible party for this information under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA).

What we collect

Enquiry forms

Each production page carries a form for licensing and co-production enquiries. When you submit it we receive:

• Your name — required, so we know who we are replying to
• Your email address — required, so we can reply
• Your message — optional
• Which production you enquired about, and which page you came from

The form also contains a hidden field that is invisible to people and only ever filled in by automated bots. If it is completed, the submission is discarded. It collects nothing about you.

Submissions are sent to us by email. They are not written to a database and there is no account for you to create.

Newsletter

If you subscribe, we collect your email address and any name you provide. Subscription uses double opt-in: after signing up you receive an email asking you to confirm, and you are only added to the list once you click that link. If you never confirm, you are never subscribed.

Information we do not collect

This site has no analytics. There is no Google Analytics, no advertising pixel, no session recording and no visitor profiling. We do not know who visits the site, which pages they read, or where they came from. We set no cookies of our own.

Why we use it, and on what basis

Information	Purpose	Lawful basis under POPIA
Name, email, message, production enquired about	To reply to your enquiry and discuss the work you asked about	Your consent, given by submitting the form, and our legitimate interest in responding to business enquiries
Email address for the newsletter	To send studio news and production updates	Your consent, confirmed by double opt-in

We do not use your information for automated decision-making, and we do not build profiles about you.

Who else sees it

We do not sell, rent or trade personal information. It is shared only with the service providers we rely on to run the studio:

• Our email and web host — enquiry emails are delivered to and stored in our mailbox on our hosting provider's servers.
• Hostinger Reach — our newsletter platform. If you subscribe, your email address is stored there so campaigns can be sent and so you can unsubscribe.

Two third parties also see your browser when you load pages on this site, because we embed content from them:

• YouTube (Google) — trailers are embedded from YouTube. When a video loads, YouTube receives your IP address and may set its own cookies, governed by Google's privacy policy.
• Cloudflare — we load an open-source animation library from Cloudflare's public CDN, which means Cloudflare receives your IP address when the page loads.

We receive nothing back from either. Neither is used by us to track you.

Where it is stored, and for how long

Enquiry emails are stored in our mailbox, hosted in Europe. Newsletter subscriptions are stored by Hostinger Reach. Where personal information leaves South Africa, it goes to jurisdictions with data protection laws comparable to POPIA.

What	Kept for
Licensing and co-production enquiries	Up to two years from your last contact with us, then deleted
Enquiries that become active business	For the duration of the relationship, and afterwards as long as required by tax and company law
Newsletter subscription	Until you unsubscribe, after which your address is removed

Your rights

Under POPIA you may ask us to:

• Tell you what we hold about you
• Correct anything inaccurate or incomplete
• Delete information we no longer have grounds to keep
• Stop using your information, including for direct marketing
• Object to how we are using it

Email info@digitalcharacters.africa and we will respond within a reasonable time. There is no charge for a routine request. We may ask you to confirm your identity first, so that we do not disclose someone else's information to the wrong person.

Every newsletter carries an unsubscribe link. One click removes you, and you do not have to email us or explain why.

Keeping it safe

This site is served over HTTPS. Access to our mailbox and to the newsletter platform is restricted to studio staff and protected by strong authentication. We keep the amount of personal information we hold deliberately small, which is the most reliable protection there is: information we never collected cannot be lost.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach occurs that is likely to affect you, we will notify you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.

Children

Some of our productions are made for children, but this website is aimed at broadcasters, funders and industry partners. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has sent us information, email us and we will delete it.

Changes

If we change how we handle personal information we will update this page and the date at the top. Material changes affecting newsletter subscribers will be announced in the newsletter.

Contact and complaints

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your information, you may complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa — inforegulator.org.za, POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za.