Legal / Privacy
Privacy Policy
What this website collects, why, who processes it, and what you can ask us to do about it.
Who this policy covers
This policy explains how Forward Deploy handles personal information collected through forwardploy.ai. It applies to this website only. It does not replace the terms of any consulting engagement, proposal or contract.
Forward Deploy is a forward-deployed AI engineering consultancy. Our public website exists to explain what we do and to let you start a conversation about a workflow.
Information you choose to provide
The only personal information this website asks for is what you type into the workflow enquiry form. That form collects:
- your organisation;
- your name;
- your work email address;
- the business area closest to the workflow;
- your current stage with AI;
- the challenge you consider most significant;
- the description of the workflow you write in your own words.
Sending us an enquiry is entirely your choice. If you do send one, all of those fields are required, because we use them to judge whether we are a sensible fit before replying. We ask you not to include confidential, proprietary, credential, customer or other sensitive information in an initial enquiry — an early conversation does not need it, and a public web form is not the right place for it.
Why we collect it
We use enquiry information for one purpose: to read, assess and respond to your enquiry.
That includes understanding the workflow you have described, deciding whether we are a sensible fit, and replying to the work email address you gave us. We do not use enquiry details to build marketing lists, and submitting the form does not subscribe you to anything.
How the enquiry form is processed
The enquiry form is delivered by Web3Forms, a third-party form-processing service. When you submit the form, the information you entered is transmitted to Web3Forms, which forwards it to Forward Deploy as an email notification. Web3Forms acts as a processor of that information on our behalf.
Because Web3Forms is an external service, your submission is processed on infrastructure we do not operate, and that infrastructure may be located outside South Africa. Their own published policies govern how they handle data in transit and at rest. We have not reproduced their retention periods, hosting regions or sub-processors here, because we will not state as fact anything we have not verified directly with the provider.
Web3Forms publishes its terms and privacy information at web3forms.com (opens in a new tab).
Technical information and analytics
Serving a web page necessarily involves technical information such as your IP address, the request made, the browser user-agent and the time of the request. This website is hosted and delivered by Cloudflare, which processes that information to serve the site and to keep it secure and available. Cloudflare operates a global network, so the server that answers your request — and therefore this technical processing — may be located outside South Africa.
We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to see how the site is used in aggregate — how many people visit, which pages are read, which sites referred them, and how quickly pages load. It works through a small script loaded in your browser from Cloudflare, which measures page timing and sends those measurements to Cloudflare. We chose it over the more common analytics products specifically because it is designed not to identify you.
Cloudflare states that Cloudflare Web Analytics does not collect or use visitors’ personal data, and that Cloudflare does not track individual end users across the websites it serves. That is Cloudflare’s description of its own product rather than something we can independently verify, so we attribute it to them; their documentation is published at cloudflare.com/privacypolicy (opens in a new tab).
This website runs no advertising pixels, no session recording, no chat widgets and no third-party marketing scripts. It sets no analytics or advertising cookies, which is why you are not asked to accept any. Cloudflare may set a strictly necessary cookie to protect the site against automated abuse; that is a security measure, not a way of tracking what you read. If we ever add something that does require your consent, this page will change first, and that consent will be asked for properly rather than assumed.
Security
The site is served over HTTPS, applies a restrictive content security policy, and sends form submissions over an encrypted connection. No transmission over the internet can be guaranteed absolutely secure, which is the practical reason we ask you to keep sensitive material out of a first enquiry.
How long we keep enquiries
We keep enquiry correspondence only while it remains useful for the purpose it was sent — responding to you, and any engagement discussion that follows — and for as long as we are required to keep business records. When an enquiry no longer serves a purpose, it is deleted. We have not published a fixed retention period here because we will not commit to a number we have not operationally verified.
Your rights
Under South African data protection law, including the Protection of Personal Information Act, you have rights over the personal information we hold about you. In general terms you may:
- ask what personal information we hold about you;
- ask us to correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
- ask us to delete information we no longer have a reason to keep;
- object to particular processing;
- complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa.
To exercise any of these, use the enquiry form on the home page and say plainly what you would like us to do. The form is built for workflow enquiries, so it asks for an organisation, a business area and a description before it will send. For a privacy request those fields do not matter — put “privacy request” in the description and give us only what you need to. We will not treat anything you put there as a business enquiry.
Your request reaches us the same way any enquiry does, which means it passes through Web3Forms and then our email provider, as described above. If you would rather not send a privacy request through a third-party form, say so in a short message and we will reply with a direct address you can use instead.
Children's information
This website is aimed at organisations and the people who work in them. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from them.
Changes to this policy
If how we handle information changes, we will update this page and the date shown at the top of it. Material changes will be reflected here before they take effect.
Contacting us about privacy
For any privacy question, use the enquiry form on the home page and mark your message as a privacy enquiry. It is read by the same small team that answers everything else sent through this site.