Neuroviq WhatsApp AI Assistant — Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 2026

This policy explains how the Neuroviq WhatsApp AI Assistant platform ("the Platform") handles personal information. It applies to the Platform itself — the software that powers AI-assisted WhatsApp messaging for Neuroviq's business clients — and is separate from the privacy policy on our main website (neuroviq.co.za).

Our role

Neuroviq (Pty) Ltd operates this Platform on behalf of businesses ("Clients") who use it to manage WhatsApp conversations with their own customers. In most cases, the Client is the data controller responsible for their customers' information, and Neuroviq acts as a data processor, handling that information solely to provide the Platform's services to the Client.

What information we process

When a Client's customer sends a WhatsApp message to that Client's connected business number, the Platform receives and processes:

  • The customer's name (as set in WhatsApp) and phone number
  • The content of their messages
  • Structured details the AI identifies from the conversation (for example, a budget, appointment date, or area of interest, depending on what the Client has configured)

Imported WhatsApp Business App history. If a Client connects an existing WhatsApp Business App number to the Platform (Meta's "Coexistence" feature) and chooses to share their chat history, the Platform also receives, once, when the number is connected:

  • The contacts saved in that WhatsApp Business App (name and phone number)
  • Up to the last 180 days of one-to-one chat history with those contacts (the message text, who sent it, and when). Photos, audio, documents and other media are not downloaded — they are stored only as a text placeholder such as "[Image]" plus any caption. Group chats are not included.

This is stored separately from live conversations as read-only "Imported History". Numbers a Client has added to their Personal Contacts list are never imported, and are deleted if they were imported before being added.

How this information is used
  • To generate AI-assisted replies on the Client's behalf
  • To extract and organize relevant structured details for the Client's own reference
  • To let the Client review, manage, and respond to their conversations through the Platform's dashboard
  • To show the Client their imported history (read-only). When the AI first replies to a customer who has imported history, it is given up to the 40 most recent imported messages from that same customer's own chat, once, so it has context. It is never given another customer's history, and imported history is not used to fill in structured details.
  • If a Client chooses to turn on AI-based weekly insights (described below), a limited, redacted set of that Client's own conversation content is analysed to identify patterns.
Third parties involved in processing
  • Meta Platforms (WhatsApp and Facebook): every WhatsApp message between a Client's customers and the Client's business number is transmitted and delivered through Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform, so Meta handles those messages in transit under its own terms and privacy policy. Meta also provides the step where a Client connects their WhatsApp number to the Platform: the setup page loads Meta's Facebook JavaScript SDK and the Client signs in through Facebook Login for Business (WhatsApp Embedded Signup), which Meta operates under its own terms and privacy policy. If a Client's arrangement with Neuroviq ends, Meta's own record of message content and webhook payloads is governed by Meta's own data policy, not this one.
  • OpenAI: message content is sent to OpenAI's API (a) to generate replies and extract structured information, and (b), only for Clients who opt in, to generate the AI-based weekly insights described below. OpenAI processes this data under its own API data usage terms. OpenAI's published default is to retain API inputs and outputs for up to 30 days for abuse-monitoring purposes, and not to use this data to train its models by default.
  • Railway: our hosting provider, where the Platform and its database run. Our current hosting plan does not include database backups, so once data is deleted from the Platform, it is not recoverable from a backup afterwards.
  • Sentry: an error-monitoring service. Sentry is configured to receive only technical error details (e.g. which part of the system failed) — never message content, passwords, or API keys. Error events are retained by Sentry for 90 days before being automatically removed.

Because some of these providers process data outside South Africa, this may involve cross-border transfer of personal information. We take reasonable steps to ensure these providers maintain appropriate data protection standards.

Data storage and security

The Platform and its database are hosted on Railway. The following protections are in place:

  • Separation between Clients: a Client's data is looked up using that Client's own ID, and every request for a specific conversation or record is checked to belong to the logged-in Client — if it doesn't, it is refused. A Client account can therefore only see its own data, never another Client's. Records are also linked to their Client in the database, so permanently deleting an account removes everything that belongs to it.
  • Login required: every page of the dashboard and the admin area requires a login. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes (never in readable form) and must be at least 8 characters, an account is locked for 15 minutes after 5 failed login attempts, and form submissions are protected against cross-site request forgery.
  • Encrypted connections: the Platform is served over HTTPS, and requests made over plain HTTP are redirected to HTTPS. Login session cookies are marked Secure, so browsers only send them over encrypted connections, and HttpOnly, so scripts running on a page cannot read them.
  • Verified WhatsApp messages: messages arriving from WhatsApp are accepted only if they carry a valid cryptographic signature from Meta, so requests that did not come from Meta are rejected rather than added to a Client's conversations.

Neuroviq's administrators can see a summary list of a Client's conversations — the customer's name, their phone number with all but the last four digits hidden (for example +27 ** *** 9654), and counts and times (such as how many messages there are, how many were sent by the AI or by the Client, and when the latest one arrived) — regardless of the Client's account status. Conversation content itself (message text, Lead Info values, imported WhatsApp history) is private to the Client by default, and administrators never see it unless the Client approves, as described next.

Weekly summaries. Every Monday the Platform stores a summary of the week that just ended (Monday to Sunday, South African time) for each Client whose account is active or paused. It is made only of counts: how many conversations had activity and how many of them were new, how many messages there were and how many came from customers, how many replies the AI sent and in how many conversations, how many times the AI could not reply and why, how many replies the owner sent (from the dashboard or from their own phone), how many conversations the owner took over from the AI, how many conversations ended with a customer message and no reply, how many conversations were paused by spam protection, and, for each of the Client's Lead Info fields, how many of the week's conversations had it filled in. It contains no message text, no customer names or phone numbers, no Lead Info values and no breakdown by customer. It is shown to the Client on their Weekly Reports page and to Neuroviq's administrators, and it is not sent to OpenAI or to any other third party. It is not generated for a Client whose account is being offboarded (described below).

AI-based weekly insights. Separately from the counts-only weekly summary above, a Client can choose to turn on a further, AI-generated report that reads that Client's own conversations to identify patterns — such as weak AI answers, recurring reasons the AI could not reply, and why the Client took over from the AI — and suggests possible additions to the Client's AI instructions for the Client and Neuroviq to discuss. This feature:

  • is off by default, and only the Client can turn it on, from their own dashboard;
  • only ever covers messages sent from the moment the Client turns it on — nothing from before is analysed, even if the feature is turned off and on again later;
  • is only generated, and only visible to Neuroviq's administrators, while the Client's account is active — it stops and hides existing reports from administrators the moment the account is paused or enters offboarding, and resumes automatically if the account is reactivated;
  • shows the Client every report before Neuroviq's administrators can see it, and the Client can delete any report at any time, which hides it from administrators permanently while leaving the Client's own weekly summary unaffected;
  • if the Client turns the feature off, immediately hides all of that Client's existing content-based reports from Neuroviq's administrators (the Client can still see and delete their own);
  • before analysis, removes phone numbers, email addresses and links from the conversation content, and refers to customers only by a placeholder label (e.g. "Customer A") — never their real name or number;
  • records suggested additions to the Client's AI instructions as suggestions only, for the Client and Neuroviq to review together; they are never applied automatically;
  • logs every time a Neuroviq administrator opens one of these reports, visible to the Client.
Access requests

To see a conversation's content — its messages, Lead Info, or imported WhatsApp history — an administrator must send the Client an access request with a reason. The Client sees the request, the reason and which customer it concerns in their dashboard (with a notice on every page while it is waiting), and can approve or deny it. If the Client approves:

  • the administrator gets view-only access to that one conversation and its Lead Info — and to the imported WhatsApp history with that same customer — and to no other conversation;
  • access lasts exactly 24 hours from the moment of approval and then ends automatically; the Client can end it sooner at any time;
  • the administrator cannot reply, pause the AI or change anything — access is view-only — and can export that conversation only while access is approved; and
  • each time the administrator opens the conversation is logged and shown to the Client.

If a request is denied, or an approval is ended early by the Client, the administrator cannot ask again for that conversation for 24 hours. A request nobody answers lapses after 7 days. Every request, decision and revocation is recorded.

If a Client's account is paused, the Client can still sign in to answer access requests and end approvals (and nothing else), and pausing does not cancel a request or an approval. When an account is archived, or enters the offboarding process described below, any approved access ends immediately and any pending request is cancelled, and no new request can be made until the account is reactivated.

Client WhatsApp credentials. When a Client connects their WhatsApp number, the Platform stores the access token Meta issues for that number in its database, which is hosted on Railway. The token is used only to make requests to Meta's WhatsApp API on the Client's behalf, such as sending messages and managing the WhatsApp connection, and is deleted when the Client's account is permanently deleted.

Client-controlled privacy features

Clients using the Platform have direct control over the privacy of their own conversations:

  • Personal Contacts exclusion: Clients can mark specific phone numbers (e.g. their own family or friends) so the Platform never logs or responds to messages from them (and never imports their history).
  • Delete imported history: Clients can permanently delete the imported history of any contact from the Imported History page at any time. Only the phone number is kept afterwards, so the same history is not imported again. That phone number is kept until the Client's account is permanently deleted (pausing, archiving, or entering offboarding does not remove it), and is then deleted along with the rest of the account's data.
  • Access requests: every conversation is private by default. Clients approve, deny or revoke Neuroviq's administrators' requests to see a conversation (described above), and can see every request and every time a conversation was opened under an approval.
  • AI-based weekly insights: off by default; only the Client can turn it on, sees every report first, and can delete any report or turn the feature off at any time (see above).
Ending your account

When a Client's arrangement with Neuroviq ends, one of two processes applies. Both are started by Neuroviq at the Client's request; a Client cannot start either one themselves from the Platform.

Standard offboarding (30-day hold). The account enters a 30-day hold. During this time:

  • the AI stops replying to the Client's customers, and any pending or approved administrator access to the Client's conversations ends immediately;
  • the Client can sign in only to a single page showing their remaining time and a button to export their own data (conversations, Lead Info, imported history, and weekly reports), and cannot access anything else;
  • Neuroviq's administrators cannot see the content of the Client's conversations, Lead Info, or imported history during this time, though the same summary list of conversations (names, masked numbers, counts) described earlier in this policy remains visible, as it does for any account;
  • the Client's WhatsApp number itself stays connected during the hold — incoming messages continue to be received and stored, without an AI reply — and is only disconnected from Neuroviq at the end of the process, described next;
  • the Client can be reactivated at any point during the 30 days, which restores full access; a Client reactivated this way will need a fresh administrator access request for any conversation, as prior requests are not resumed;
  • at the end of the 30 days, the Client's WhatsApp number is disconnected from Neuroviq (their own WhatsApp Business App keeps working normally), and all of the Client's data is then permanently deleted.

Immediate deletion. At the Client's written request, and after the Client confirms in writing that they have taken an export (or do not want one) and understand deletion is irreversible, the account is disconnected from Neuroviq and deleted straight away, with no 30-day wait.

In both cases, deletion is permanent. Because our hosting provider's current plan includes no database backups, once data is deleted from the Platform it is not recoverable. We keep one internal record that a deletion took place — containing only the business's name, which of the two processes above was used, which administrator carried it out, and when — and this record contains no customer data and no conversation content.

A Client's account can also be archived without starting the 30-day deletion process. An archived account cannot be logged into at all (unlike the offboarding hold, which allows sign-in to one restricted page), the AI stops replying, and incoming messages continue to be received and stored. Archiving carries no deletion clock and no commitment to delete data.

Data retention

Information is retained for as long as the Client's account remains active, paused, or archived, or as needed to provide the service. Imported history is kept until the Client deletes it (per contact) or the Client's account is deleted; it is not deleted automatically. If a Client deletes a contact's imported history, the phone number kept to prevent that history being imported again stays for as long as the Client's account remains on the Platform, and is removed only when the whole account is permanently deleted. Weekly summaries and any AI-based weekly insights reports are kept until the Client's account is permanently deleted.

Your rights (POPIA)

If you are a customer who has messaged one of our Clients via WhatsApp, and you have questions about your information, please contact that business directly, as they are responsible for your data. For questions about how the Platform itself processes information, or to exercise your rights under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (access, correction, deletion), contact us at info@neuroviq.co.za. Neuroviq (Pty) Ltd is registered with the Information Regulator, and Aadam Ebrahim is our registered Information Officer.

Children's information

The Platform is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly process information belonging to minors. Clients are responsible for ensuring their own use of the Platform complies with applicable laws regarding minors.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the Platform evolves. The "last updated" date above reflects the most recent change.

Contact

Neuroviq (Pty) Ltd — info@neuroviq.co.za — Pietermaritzburg, South Africa