Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Solace Cloud Mining ("we", "us", "our") collects, uses, stores, and protects personal information in connection with the Solace Cloud Mining platform at scloudmining.co.za, in accordance with the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 ("POPIA").

Solace Cloud Mining is the responsible party for personal information processed through the Service, as defined under POPIA. Contact details for our Information Officer are provided in Section 11 below.

• Account information — name, email address, hashed password.
• Identity verification (special personal information) — government ID or passport number and images, and biometric data (a selfie and liveness capture) collected via our identity verification provider when you choose automated verification, or uploaded documents when you choose manual review. Biometric information is treated as special personal information under POPIA section 26 and is processed only with your explicit consent, captured at the point of submission.
• Financial and transaction information — contract, payment, payout, and withdrawal records, including the Bitcoin address you provide for withdrawals. We do not collect or store your card or bank account details ourselves — these are handled directly by our payment processor.
• Cellphone number (optional) — if you choose to enter one at checkout, we pass it to our payment provider so that your bank can skip a login step. It is used for that payment only. We do not store it, and leaving it blank does not affect your payment.
• Technical and usage information — IP address, device/browser information, and log data collected automatically for security, fraud prevention, and service reliability purposes.
• Support communications — messages you send us through the support widget or by email.

We process personal information to:

• create and administer your account and contracts;
• verify your identity and meet anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer obligations;
• process payments, calculate payouts, and process withdrawals;
• generate and store service agreements for signature;
• maintain accounting records;
• provide customer support;
• detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and security incidents; and
• comply with legal, regulatory, and tax obligations.

The lawful bases we rely on are: your consent (particularly for biometric verification), necessity for performing our contract with you, and our legitimate interests in operating a secure and compliant service, and compliance with legal obligations.

When you choose automated identity verification, our identity verification provider's system produces an automated match/no-match result from your selfie and ID document, which we use to set your verification status. This is automated processing with a potentially significant effect on you (it gates withdrawals), which POPIA section 71 specifically addresses.

You are not limited to the automated outcome: you may instead submit documents for manual review by a human staff member at any time from Dashboard → KYC, and you may request that an automated rejection be reviewed by a person rather than relying on the automated result alone. This manual-review path is not a fallback we might build later — it already exists alongside the automated one today.

We share personal information with the following categories of operator, strictly as needed to provide the Service. Approximate processing regions are noted where a category's typical hosting location is materially outside South Africa — exact sub-processor details are available on request to our Information Officer (Section 12):

• our identity verification provider, to perform biometric and document-based KYC checks (may process data in Kenya and other African markets, and/or the provider's other hosting regions);
• our payment gateway, to process ZAR payments (South Africa);
• our cloud storage provider, to store uploaded identity documents in a private, access-controlled bucket (global cloud infrastructure; bucket configured with public access blocked);
• our contract generation/e-signature provider, to prepare and send your service agreement (typically United States-hosted);
• our accounting platform, to record invoices for bookkeeping (typically Australia/New Zealand-hosted);
• our customer support platform (typically United States-hosted); and
• our infrastructure and security providers (hosting, bot protection, content delivery, transactional email — typically United States-hosted, globally distributed).

Each of these operators is contractually restricted to using your information only to provide their service to us, consistent with POPIA's operator provisions. Where a provider processes data outside South Africa, we take reasonable steps to ensure an adequate level of protection consistent with POPIA section 72 — for example, relying on the provider's own compliance with comparable data protection frameworks (such as the EU/UK GDPR) where applicable, and contractual data-processing terms.

We retain personal information for as long as your account is active, and thereafter for as long as required to meet legal, tax, and record-keeping obligations, or to resolve disputes.

In particular: financial transaction records (contracts, payouts, withdrawals) and the identity-verification records tied to them are retained for a minimum of 5 years after the account relationship ends, consistent with the record-keeping period generally required of accountable institutions under the Financial Intelligence Centre Act 38 of 2001. Account data for a user who never completes a paid contract (e.g. an abandoned sign-up) is retained only as long as reasonably needed for security and fraud-prevention purposes, then deleted.

We apply reasonable technical and organisational safeguards to protect personal information against loss, unauthorised access, and disclosure, including encrypted storage, access controls limiting identity documents to authorised reviewers only, and short-lived signed links rather than public file access.

You have the right to:

• be notified that we hold personal information about you;
• access the personal information we hold about you;
• request correction of inaccurate or outdated information;
• request deletion of personal information we no longer have a lawful basis to retain;
• object to processing based on legitimate interest, in certain circumstances;
• withdraw consent (for processing based on consent, such as biometric verification) — noting that withdrawing consent for identity verification may mean withdrawals cannot be processed; and
• lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa).

To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details in Section 12.

We use strictly necessary cookies to keep you signed in and to protect the Service against automated abuse. We do not use third-party advertising cookies.

The Service is not directed at, and may not be used by, anyone under the age of 18.

To exercise a POPIA right or raise a privacy concern, contact our Information Officer at privacy@scloudmining.co.za. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may lodge a complaint with South Africa's Information Regulator:

Information Regulator (South Africa)
Email: complaints.IR@justice.gov.za
Website: inforegulator.org.za

The responsible party is Solace Consortium (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2019/181200/07), trading as Solace Cloud Mining, of 33 Lemonwood Street, Highveld, Centurion, South Africa.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be notified to you by email or in-app notice before taking effect.