Privacy Policy
iCharts takes privacy seriously and handles personal information in line with the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA).
This site holds less about you than most. There is no account, no login, no newsletter, no comment section and no shop. Nothing is sold here and no payment is ever taken. That is not a promise about our conduct; it is a description of what the site can technically do.
What we collect
If you email us, we receive whatever is in that message, which is usually your name, your address and your question.
If you simply read the charts, our hosting, security, analytics and advertising providers record standard technical information: IP address, browser and device type, approximate country, which pages you viewed and what sent you here.
We do not collect payment details, addresses or anything you have not chosen to send us, because there is no mechanism on this site to do so.
What we do with it
Email is used to answer your question and for nothing else. We do not send marketing and we have no mailing list.
Technical information is used in aggregate to see which charts people actually read, which countries they come from and what needs fixing. It is not used to identify you.
We do not sell or rent personal information.
Cookies and third-party services
This site uses cookies. Some are needed for it to work and stay secure, others are set by services we use to measure traffic, show advertising, and play video when you choose to. Every cookie is listed, by category, on our Cookie Policy page.
The services currently in use are:
- Google AdSense: advertising, including Google DoubleClick cookies used to deliver, measure and, where you allow it, personalise ads
- Google's consent message: asks for and records your consent choices if you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland
- CookiePal: asks for and records your consent choices if you are in the United States or Canada
- Google Analytics: how the site is used, in aggregate
- YouTube (Google): Featured Release videos. Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play.
- Cloudflare: security, bot protection and performance
- Apple: chart data and cover artwork. Artwork images load from Apple's servers, which receive standard technical information such as your IP address.
- Billboard: music news headlines. Story images load from Billboard's servers, which receive standard technical information such as your IP address.
Your consent choices
If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, Google's consent message asks for your choice before advertising or analytics cookies are used. You can change that choice at any time with the Manage Cookie Preferences button on our Cookie Policy page.
If you are in the United States or Canada, CookiePal's banner lets you accept or reject non-essential cookies.
Anywhere, you can block or delete cookies in your browser and the charts will still work. You can opt out of Google Analytics with Google's browser add-on, and manage ad personalisation in Google's My Ad Center. How Google uses information from sites that use its services is explained at business.safety.google/privacy.
When you click through to Apple and other sites
Every chart entry links to Apple, with our affiliate tag attached. Once you leave this site you are covered by Apple's privacy policy rather than ours. We never see what you listen to, what you buy or who you are. We are only told, in aggregate, that referred activity happened. The same applies to Billboard and the other merchants we link to: each sets its own cookies under its own policy.
See our Affiliate Disclosure for how those links work.
What we deliberately do not do
We do not log visitor IP addresses or browser details to our own servers. Our diagnostics record counts and timings only, how often a chart was served from cache, how long a fetch took, and never anything that identifies a person. This is a design decision, and the code is built so that it cannot happen by accident.
Who holds what
Technical information sits with the analytics, hosting, security and advertising providers listed above. Some are outside South Africa, so your information may be processed abroad. POPIA allows this where the receiving country or provider offers comparable protection. We share personal information with nobody else unless the law requires it.
How long we keep it
Email is kept while it may still be needed to answer a follow-up, then deleted. Analytics data follows the retention setting in our Google Analytics account. Consent choices are stored in a cookie on your device for the periods shown on our Cookie Policy page. Our own caches hold chart data from Apple and nothing about you.
Security
The site runs over HTTPS. Data files sit outside the public web directory and cannot be reached by URL. We apply reasonable technical measures to the little we hold, though no internet-connected system is ever completely secure.
Your rights under POPIA
You may ask what personal information we hold about you, have it corrected, have it deleted where we have no reason to keep it, and object to how it is processed.
Email [email protected] and we will respond within a reasonable period. If you are unhappy with our response, you can complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa at inforegulator.org.za.
Children
This site is not aimed at children under 18 and we do not knowingly collect information from them.
Changes
We update this policy when our practices change. The date at the top shows when that last happened.
Contact
Information Officer: Olaf S
iCharts
PO Box 5278
Cresta 2118
South Africa
[email protected]