Privacy notice

Who is responsible

Lunatic Labs is a trading name of Yield SPM (Pty) Ltd, registration number 2024/185151/07, with its place of business in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Yield SPM (Pty) Ltd is the responsible party for the personal information described here, under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA).

What we keep, and why

The coupon

When you subscribe we keep your name, your firm, your trade, the job you named, your email address, any clippings you chose to send with it, the country your connection came from, and the time. We use them to prepare your firm’s edition, for a person at Lunatic Labs to read it, and to write to you about it. We keep them only with your consent, which you give by ticking the box on the coupon.

Letters

Letters to the Night Editor are sent to an AI model to be answered and are then forgotten. We do not store them or log their contents. The name you sign with stays in your browser.

Your trade

When you ask the front page to reprint for your trade, the trade word is sent to an AI model and the resulting story may be kept for up to 30 days so the next reader in the same trade gets it straight away. The trade word is not linked to you.

Abuse limits

To stop the forms being flooded we count requests per connection using a hash that changes every day. We never store your IP address.

Analytics

Only if you tick the box and press “Save my choice” on the notice, we load Google Analytics 4 to count visits and the things readers do on the site, such as winding the date or sending a letter. It sets cookies (named _ga and _ga_ followed by an id). Nothing from Google loads before you choose, and advertising features are switched off. We do not use a Meta pixel.

Your browser

The site keeps a few small things in your own browser, never sent to us: your cookie choice, your clippings, the position of the lunacy dial, and which obituary you saw last.

Who else sees it

• Cloudflare, Inc., which runs the website, stores subscriptions in its D1 database and runs the AI model that answers letters (Workers AI). Cloudflare may process information outside South Africa.
• Google LLC, for Google Analytics, only if you consent. Google may process information outside South Africa.

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it with anyone else unless the law requires it.

How long we keep it

Subscriptions are kept for as long as we are preparing your edition or working with you, and are deleted when you ask. Cached trade stories expire after 30 days. Analytics data is kept under Google Analytics’ retention setting for this property.

Your rights

You may ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, withdraw your consent, or object to how we use it. You can change your analytics choice at any time with “Cookie choices” at the foot of every page. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you may complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa (inforegulator.org.za).

How to reach us about your information: the edition we send you comes from a person at Lunatic Labs; reply to it and your request goes to them. A dedicated address for privacy requests will be printed here once it is set up.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS only, with a strict content security policy. The forms accept only what they need and refuse anything larger. Subscriptions are readable only by the people at Lunatic Labs who prepare editions.