This policy explains how Pharmers Academy (Centurion, Gauteng, South Africa) collects, uses, stores and protects your personal information when you use our website and learning platform. We process personal information in accordance with the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA). Pharmers Academy is the responsible party; privacy queries go to our Information Officer at info@pharmersacademy.africa.
1. What we collect
- Account details — name, email address, username, phone number, country and city, and professional qualification, provided when you register.
- Learning records — courses you enrol in, module progress, quiz attempts and scores, certificates issued (including your certificate serial and learner number).
- Payment records — the amount, date, payment reference and status of course purchases. We never see or store your card number; card details are entered directly with our payment processor, PayFast.
- Messages — messages you send us through the platform or the contact form.
- Technical data — essential cookies used to keep you signed in, and, if you agree to them, analytics and advertising cookies together with the device, browser and approximate location data they collect (see section 6).
2. Why we process it
- to create and manage your account and provide the courses you purchase;
- to track your progress and issue verifiable certificates;
- to process and reconcile payments and prevent fraud;
- to send transactional email (enrolment confirmations, password resets, completion notices);
- to respond to your enquiries and support requests;
- to meet legal obligations (tax, accounting, consumer protection).
We process on the basis that it is necessary to perform our contract with you, to comply with law, or in our legitimate interest in operating a secure platform. We do not sell your personal information and we do not send marketing without your consent.
3. Who we share it with (operators)
We use a small number of service providers to run the platform:
- Supabase — database, authentication and file storage (hosted in the EU);
- PayFast — payment processing (South Africa);
- Resend — transactional email delivery;
- Vercel — website hosting and content delivery;
- YouTube — course video streaming (loaded when you open a lesson);
- Google (Analytics and Tag Manager), Meta and LinkedIn — website measurement and advertising, and only where you have agreed to analytics or marketing cookies.
These providers act as operators under POPIA and may only use your information to provide their service to us. Some are located outside South Africa; where personal information is transferred across borders we ensure the recipient is subject to laws or contracts that provide an adequate level of protection, as required by section 72 of POPIA.
If someone verifies a certificate using its serial number, the verification page confirms the certificate holder’s name, learner number, course and issue date — that is the purpose of a verifiable certificate. Serials are random and cannot be guessed from your name.
4. How long we keep it
We keep account and learning records for as long as your account is active, so your certificates remain verifiable. Payment records are kept for at least five years as required by tax legislation. If you ask us to delete your account we will remove or de-identify your personal information unless we are required by law to retain it.
5. How we protect it
- All traffic is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS).
- Passwords are hashed — we cannot read them.
- Access to data is restricted by row-level security in our database: students can only access their own records.
- Course files are stored privately and served through short-lived signed links.
- Administrative access is limited to authorised staff.
6. Cookies
We use three kinds of cookie. Only the first is set without asking you.
- Essential — secure, httpOnly session cookies that keep you signed in, and a cookie recording your choice below. The site cannot work without these, so they are always on.
- Analytics — Google Analytics, through Google Tag Manager, so we can see which pages are read, where visitors arrive from and which courses draw interest. We look at this in aggregate, not to build a profile of you.
- Marketing — Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and LinkedIn advertising cookies, which let us measure which adverts lead to enrolments and show our courses to people likely to be interested. Where you have agreed, this may include matching information you have given us — such as your name and email address — against your account on those platforms so the measurement is accurate.
Analytics and marketing cookies are set only if you agree. When you first visit we ask, and until you answer those cookies are switched off. You can change your answer at any time using the Cookie Preferenceslink in the footer of every page, or by clearing cookies in your browser. Withdrawing consent stops future processing; it does not undo processing that already, lawfully, took place.
Embedded YouTube videos may set their own cookies when you play a lesson — see Google’s privacy policy for details.
7. Your rights
Under POPIA you may, at any time:
- ask what personal information we hold about you and request a copy;
- ask us to correct or update it (most details can be edited in your dashboard);
- ask us to delete your account and personal information, subject to legal retention duties;
- object to processing or withdraw consent where processing is based on consent;
- lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa) — POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za, inforegulator.org.za.
To exercise any of these rights, email info@pharmersacademy.africa. We will respond within a reasonable time and may ask you to verify your identity first.
8. Changes
We may update this policy from time to time. The date at the top shows when it was last revised; material changes will be announced on the platform. See also our Terms of Use.
Questions about this policy? Contact us at info@pharmersacademy.africa or 012 646 1713. See also our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Refund Policy.