Privacy Policy - AstroGear

You can change your optional analytics and advertising preferences at any time.

1. What We Collect

We collect personal information when you:

•Browse our website or place an order
•Sign up for notifications or contact us
•List items on the Marketplace
•Complete seller verification (includes banking details for payouts)

This may include:

Name, email, address, phone

Payment details (via secure gateway)

Order and listing information

Device type, browser, IP address

2. How We Use Your Info

→Process and ship your orders
→Send order updates or respond to messages
→Facilitate Marketplace transactions securely
→Improve our website and service

We do not sell your personal information. With your advertising permission, we share limited shopping and purchase information with Meta to measure and improve our advertising, as explained below.

3. Email Communications

We send essential service emails when needed to operate your account, process an order, provide payment or delivery updates, respond to support requests, and protect account security.

Where permitted, we may also send optional product announcements about AstroGear products, previews, pre-order openings, and launches that may be relevant to our customers. You can stop these optional emails at any time by using the unsubscribe link in an announcement or changing your email preferences in your profile.

Opting out of product announcements does not affect essential account, order, payment, security, or support emails. We retain your communication preference so we can honour your choice.

Manage email preferences

4. Payment Security

All payments are securely processed through trusted gateways like PayFast. We don't store (or even see) your full credit card or bank details.

5. Cookies

Essential cookies and storage support your cart, sign-in, security and saved privacy preferences. Our own operational analytics help us understand site usage and troubleshoot problems. Optional Google Analytics and Meta advertising tools are controlled separately by your privacy choices. Refusing optional tracking does not prevent shopping or using My Library.

6. Your Rights

You're in control of your data. You can:

✓Ask what personal info we have on file
✓Request corrections or updates
✓Ask us to delete your info (unless required for legal reasons)
✓Object to direct marketing or withdraw a previous preference

7. Third-Party Services

We work with trusted service providers to operate AstroGear and fulfil your orders:

Payment processors (PayFast)

Courier services (The Courier Guy)

Email delivery providers

We limit operational providers to the information needed for their services. Optional analytics and advertising providers are described separately below.

8. Optional Analytics & Advertising

If you allow optional analytics, we use Google Analytics to understand visits to our public shopping pages. If you allow advertising measurement, Meta Pixel and Conversions API help us measure Facebook and Instagram advertising and reach people likely to be interested in our products.

With advertising permission, we also use a first-party cookie to remember affiliate product links for up to 30 days. The last eligible referral for each product can earn a commission if you buy it. We store a hashed browser identifier, your privacy-choice identifier, the link and referral dates. Affiliates see the referred product, order reference, date and commission, but not your name, contact details, address or order access link. Withdrawing permission stops future referral attribution; existing order commission and payout records remain part of our accounting history.

Meta may receive shopping-page visits, viewed or added product identifiers, checkout starts, and confirmed purchases including products, quantities, currency and order value. Matching information can include a browser preference identifier, Meta browser and ad-click identifiers, browser information, and a normalised, hashed email address. Hashing disguises the email in transit but does not make it anonymous: Meta may match it to an account. We do not send payment-card details, private library contents or support-message text through this integration. After consent, your browser connects directly to these providers, which also receive connection information such as your IP address.

Optional tools remain off until you agree. Advertising consent applies to both browser and server events; Conversions API is not used to bypass your refusal. With your advertising permission, shopping events can be sent from our server even when Meta’s browser script does not load. You can withdraw or change your choices using Manage privacy choices at the top of this page, accessible through Privacy in the footer. Withdrawal stops future sharing from this browser and suppresses pending linked server conversions; it cannot recall events already sent. Choices apply to this browser, so review them on other devices too.

We remember your choices for up to 180 days. We link saved choices to browser sessions for privacy reporting; these links are retained for up to 90 days after the session was last observed. Shopping-event delivery, checkout advertising attribution and conversion delivery records are retained for up to 90 days; queued matching payloads are cleared once delivered, suppressed or permanently failed. Purchase/account records needed to fulfil orders and meet record-keeping obligations are retained separately. Meta and Google apply their own retention policies to data they receive.

Meta and Google may process information outside South Africa, subject to their privacy policies and applicable safeguards. See Meta’s Privacy Policy and Google’s Privacy Policy for their uses, controls and international processing. For privacy questions or requests about information held by AstroGear, contact support@astrogear.co.za.

We may update this policy from time to time to keep it accurate. Any important changes will be posted right here.