Privacy policy
Draft of 19 October 2026
Draft - to be reviewed before launch. This page is not final legal text.
Who we are
Sealvane is a DNS protection service run by ZDNS (Pty) Ltd, South Africa (“ZDNS”, “we”). Sealvane is the international brand of the same service that ZDNS offers in South Africa at zdns.co.za. This policy covers three things: this website, the early-access list, and the Sealvane service itself. For all of them, ZDNS (Pty) Ltd is the responsible party under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and the controller under the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), where those laws apply to you. When a business or organisation uses Sealvane to protect its staff's devices, that organisation decides how its records are used, and we act as its operator or processor.
You can contact us at CONTACT_EMAIL_TBD.
What we collect, why, and for how long
| What | Why | Legal basis | How long |
|---|---|---|---|
| Early-access form: your name, email address, whether you are a home or a team, your country, how many devices, and an optional message. We also keep a keyed hash of your IP address, never the address itself, to limit abuse of the form. | To add you to the early-access list and email you when it opens. To reply to your message. | Your consent (the tick box on the form). You can withdraw it at any time. | Up to 12 months, then deleted automatically, or sooner if you ask. |
| Lookup records (once you use the service): the website name your device asked for, the time, what Sealvane did (allowed or blocked), the type of finding, and your device's label. Computer addresses appear only as keyed hashes that cannot be turned back into the address. Card numbers and ID numbers found inside a lookup appear masked. | To block scam, phishing and malware sites and data leaks, and to show you what was found. | Performing our contract with you (or taking steps before one), and our legitimate interest in running a secure service. | 90 days, then deleted automatically. |
| Account details (once the service opens): your name, email address, the devices on your account and your settings. | To run your account and contact you about it. | Performing our contract with you; legal obligations such as tax and accounting records. | While your account is active. How long we keep it afterwards will be set here before launch. |
| Messages to us by email. | To answer you. | Our legitimate interest in answering enquiries, or your consent. | Up to 12 months. |
| Backups of our database, which contain the records above. | To recover from a failure. | Our legitimate interest in keeping the service running. | Taken every 6 hours; backups older than 7 days are deleted. |
On this website we use no cookies, no analytics, no advertising or tracking pixels, and no third-party scripts. Our fonts are served from our own domain. Like any web server, ours may keep ordinary technical logs (such as the time and the address requested) for security and fixing faults.
We do not sell personal information, and we do not use lookup records for advertising. We may use totals that identify no one, such as the number of lookups checked, to describe and improve the service.
Who processes it
We use service providers to run Sealvane. They handle personal information only to do the job we give them, under an agreement with us. By type, they are: hosting and servers (today in South Africa only), and email delivery for the early-access notices and for messages to you. We will keep an up-to-date list of the named providers and provide it on request. We also share information when a court, regulator or other law requires it.
Where your information goes
Our servers and database are in South Africa. If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or elsewhere, your information is therefore transferred to South Africa when you use this website or the service. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards for that transfer, which we will describe here before launch. If a provider processes information outside South Africa, we send it only to providers bound by an agreement or law that protects it to a standard similar to POPIA and the GDPR.
How we protect it
The website uses encrypted connections. Computer addresses in dashboards and reports appear only as keyed hashes, and card and ID numbers appear masked. Dashboards show devices as labels, not browsing histories tied to people. Access to systems is limited to people at ZDNS who need it. No system is perfectly secure. If someone gets at personal information we hold, we will tell the people affected and the regulator as soon as reasonably possible, as the law requires, and say what happened and what to do.
Your rights
You can ask us to:
- tell you whether we hold personal information about you, and give you a copy (access);
- correct information that is wrong or out of date (correction);
- delete your information where the law allows (deletion);
- stop using it for a purpose you object to (objection), and withdraw any consent you gave;
- under the GDPR, restrict how we use it, or give you your data in a portable form.
Email CONTACT_EMAIL_TBD and we will answer within 30 days. If your employer or another organisation protects your devices with Sealvane, it decides what happens to those lookup records, so please ask it first; we will help it answer you.
Complaints
If you are not happy with how we handled your information, please tell us first so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa) at www.inforegulator.org.za, or to the data protection authority where you live or work.
Children
The early-access form is for adults. A parent or guardian may protect a child's device with Sealvane, but we do not knowingly collect information from children through this website.
Changes
We will update this policy when what we do changes, and show the date at the top. See also our terms.