Privacy Policy

CIERA (Ciera Solo app) · Effective 15 September 2026 · South Africa

CIERA is a business assistant for solo operators. You connect your own WhatsApp number, and CIERA helps you answer customers, watch your calendar, and manage invoices — always under your control. This policy explains what data the app handles, why, and the choices you have. We built CIERA local-first on purpose: your device is the source of truth for your messages, not our servers.

Who we are

CIERA is operated from South Africa. For anything in this policy, contact walbertyn@ciera.co.za.

What we collect and why

• Account: your email address and password (used to sign in) and a display name.
• Messages: your WhatsApp conversations, 1:1 and the groups you are in, are mirrored into the app so CIERA can show them to you and find what is still open. Message content passes through our server only in transit and is deleted from the server once your device confirms receipt. A group's name, member list and the notes you write on it can be linked to one of your businesses.
• Contacts: names and numbers of the people you chat with, and the relationship labels you assign them.
• Business data: your business names, catalogs, working hours, and website content you ask CIERA to read.
• Money: invoices you create, their status, and payment confirmations. CIERA does not store card numbers or bank credentials.
• Billing: if you subscribe, Paystack holds your card and CIERA keeps only what it needs to show you your plan: the card's brand, last four digits and expiry, your Paystack customer and subscription references, the dates of your free period and paid period, every charge with its Paystack reference, any coupon codes you redeem, and a count of what CIERA read for you each month against your plan's limits.
• Media: photos, documents and voice notes you attach, stored privately to your account.
• Usage: per-feature AI usage metering so your plan and costs are transparent to you.

AI processing

To generate answer suggestions and business insights, relevant message text and business facts are processed by one AI model provider, OpenAI, through its API, whose terms prohibit using data sent through the API to train its models. No other AI provider, gateway or aggregator is used. In-chat answers are information cards shown to you only — CIERA never sends or drafts messages to your customers without your explicit action, and every automated action is gated by your approval settings.

Google user data

Connecting your Google Calendar is optional, and CIERA works without it. If you connect it, you are asked for two permissions and CIERA uses them for exactly two things:

• See your calendars and events (calendar.readonly) — so CIERA knows when you are already busy and never proposes a time that clashes.
• Create and change events (calendar.events) — so a booking you confirm in CIERA appears in your own calendar, and a change or cancellation follows it there.

CIERA stores the event times, titles and attendee names needed to show your day and to keep the two calendars in step, plus the access and refresh tokens that keep the connection alive. Tokens are encrypted at rest. We do not read calendars belonging to anyone but you, and we never write to your calendar except as the direct result of a booking you approved.

Limited Use. CIERA's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Specifically: Google user data is used only to provide and improve the calendar features described above; it is never sold, never used for advertising, and never used to train generalised AI or machine-learning models. When CIERA answers a question about your schedule or prepares your daily briefing, the titles, times and locations of your calendar events are included in the request to OpenAI so it can answer accurately and avoid double-booking you; that data is covered by the same no-training API terms and is not retained by OpenAI for model improvement. Humans at CIERA do not read your calendar data, except where you have explicitly asked us to help with a support issue, where it is required by South African law, or where it is necessary for security (for example, investigating abuse).

Disconnecting. You can disconnect Google Calendar at any time from Settings in the app, which deletes our copy of your tokens and stops all access immediately. You can also revoke CIERA's access directly at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Deleting your CIERA account removes the connection and its stored calendar data along with everything else.

Gmail

Connecting a Gmail mailbox is optional, and CIERA works without it. If you connect one, you are asked for two Gmail permissions and CIERA uses them for exactly two things:

• Read your email messages and settings (gmail.readonly) — so mail from the people you deal with appears in Chats next to your WhatsApp conversations, and so CIERA can answer your questions about those conversations and notice a question, booking or payment you still need to act on.
• Send email on your behalf (gmail.send) — so a reply, quote or invoice you approve in CIERA goes out from your own address. Nothing is ever sent without your explicit approval of that message.

CIERA reads only mail from people: newsletters, notifications, receipts and other automated mail are recognised by their headers and are never stored; only the sender's address and a count are kept so you can choose to see a sender after all. For a message from a person, CIERA stores the sender, recipients, subject, date and the new text of that message (quoted earlier messages are removed, and the text is capped at about two thousand characters), plus the names and sizes of attachments. Attachment contents are not stored. Access and refresh tokens are encrypted at rest. Under the local-first design above, message text is kept on our server only until your device has received it, then deleted.

The Limited Use commitments above apply to Gmail data in full: it is used only to provide the mail features described here, never sold, never used for advertising, and never used to train generalised AI or machine-learning models. When CIERA answers a question about a conversation or prepares a suggestion for it, the relevant conversation text is included in the request to OpenAI under the same no-training API terms, and is not retained by OpenAI for model improvement. Humans at CIERA do not read your mail, with the same narrow exceptions listed above.

Disconnecting Gmail. You can disconnect a mailbox at any time from Settings → Mailboxes in the app, which revokes CIERA's access with Google, deletes our copy of your tokens and stops all access immediately. Mail already delivered to your device stays on your device under your control. You can also revoke CIERA's access directly at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Deleting your CIERA account removes the connection along with everything else.

Instagram data

Connecting an Instagram account is optional, and CIERA works without it. The account must be a professional (business or creator) account, and you connect it by signing in to Instagram itself. CIERA never asks for your Instagram password and never posts as you.

You are asked for four Instagram permissions, and CIERA uses them for exactly these things:

• Basic account access (instagram_business_basic) — to know which account you connected and show its handle in the app. Instagram requires this alongside every other permission.
• Direct messages (instagram_business_manage_messages) — so messages from people who write to your business appear in Chats next to your WhatsApp and email conversations, and so a reply you type in CIERA goes out from your own account. Instagram allows a reply only within 24 hours of that person's last message, and CIERA refuses outside it.
• Comments (instagram_business_manage_comments) — so comments on your posts are visible with the rest of your conversations. CIERA reads them; it does not reply to them. A public reply is yours to make on Instagram.

CIERA also reads the public list of your own recent posts — when each was posted, its caption and its comment count — so it can tell you when a particular post brought you enquiries. That comparison is made against your own messages; CIERA reads nothing about the people who saw the post, and asks for no analytics permission.

Someone who sends you a direct message becomes a contact in your book, named from their public profile, so their conversation has a person attached to it like any other. Someone who only comments does not: no contact is created for them. Their comment keeps their public handle and the account id Instagram sends with it, so that a reply could reach them — and nothing else. CIERA does not look up their profile.

What CIERA never does with Instagram: it never messages anyone who has not written to you first, never collects follower lists, never searches hashtags or discovers businesses, and never stores the media in a message. A photo or voice note is recorded only as its kind, and the file itself is left with Instagram.

The same AI terms above apply in full. Instagram data is used only to provide the features described here, never sold, never used for advertising, and never used to train generalised AI or machine-learning models. When CIERA answers a question about a conversation, the relevant conversation text is included in the request to OpenAI under the same no-training API terms.

Disconnecting Instagram. You can disconnect an account at any time from You → Instagram in the app, which stops all access and deletes our copy of your tokens. You can also remove CIERA from Instagram's own settings, under Settings → Website permissions → Apps and websites. Deleting your CIERA account removes the connection along with everything else. See Deleting your data for how to have the data itself erased.

What we never do

• No advertising, no tracking across other apps or websites.
• No selling or renting your data to anyone.
• No sending from your WhatsApp number without your instruction.

Paying for CIERA

The first stage is free and asks for no card: connect WhatsApp and email, see what CIERA finds, handle one item. If you then choose to keep CIERA running, you add a card through Paystack and start 14 free days. To put the card on file Paystack takes a R1 verification charge, which CIERA refunds straight away; the first real charge is on day 14 and then every month, at the plan you chose. Paystack processes every charge under its own terms and emails you a receipt; CIERA never sees your card number. You can cancel any time in the app under You → Plan.

Retention

Message content is deleted from our servers when your device acknowledges delivery. Business records, contacts and invoices are kept while your account is active so the app can function.

If you cancel, or a payment fails and is not resolved, you keep access to the end of the period you paid for. After that you have 30 days to view and export your information from the app. When those 30 days are over, CIERA deletes what it holds for you: your conversations, contacts, groups, bookings, business notes and media. Two kinds of record are kept longer because the law requires it: tax invoices and payment records (five years under South African tax law) and the billing log of your own subscription. When you delete your account yourself, everything is erased at once, with the same two exceptions.

One exception: if you WhatsApp our feedback line (+27 61 095 0821), we keep what you sent, along with your number and WhatsApp name, so we can act on it. Voice notes, screenshots and files are kept as sent, not only as text, because hearing the actual complaint is the point of writing in. Ask us and we will delete it.

Deleting your account

In the app: You → Delete account. This permanently erases your account, chats, contacts, businesses and media from our systems, keeping only the tax and payment records the law requires. You can also email walbertyn@ciera.co.za and we will do it for you.

Security

All traffic is encrypted in transit (TLS). WhatsApp session credentials are stored encrypted per owner. Access to production systems is restricted to the operator.

Your rights (POPIA)

Under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act you may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information, and you may object to processing. Contact us at the address above; you may also lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za).

Children

CIERA is a business tool and is not directed at children under 18.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, we will tell you in the app before the change takes effect.

Questions? walbertyn@ciera.co.za