Legal Buddy is a service operated by Oduduwa Muziq (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2023/250283/07, South Africa). You can request deletion of any personal data we hold about you, including chats with our AI intake assistant (Zara), voice recordings, WhatsApp messages, document drafts, and account details.
How to request deletion
Send an email to hello@legal-buddy.co.za with the subject line “Delete my data” and include:
- The phone number or email address you used with Legal Buddy
- If you used WhatsApp, the WhatsApp number you messaged from
- The approximate date you first contacted Legal Buddy
What gets deleted
- All chat transcripts (website, WhatsApp, voice)
- All voice recordings and transcriptions
- Document drafts you generated
- Signup form submissions
- Stored memory and preferences associated with your account
What we may retain
We may retain a minimal record (such as your phone number on a suppression list) for the limited purpose of honouring your deletion request and preventing re-collection. We may also retain anonymised, aggregated analytics that cannot be linked back to you. Where the law requires us to keep records (for example, billing records, fraud prevention, or court orders), we will retain only what is legally required and delete the rest.
How long it takes
We will confirm receipt within 2 business days and complete the deletion within 30 days, in line with POPIA (South Africa), the NDPR (Nigeria), and the GDPR where applicable. If we cannot complete the request in 30 days for a legitimate reason, we will tell you why and give you a new estimate.
Third-party processors
When you ask us to delete your data, we will also instruct our processors to delete copies they hold:
- Anthropic — chat model provider; deletion follows their data retention policy
- OpenAI — voice model provider (Phase 2 only)
- ElevenLabs — text-to-speech provider
- Vapi — voice telephony orchestration (Phase 2 only)
- Twilio — WhatsApp message routing
- Resend — transactional email delivery
- Vercel — hosting and request logs
- Neon — database storage
Some processors may keep operational logs for a short period after we delete your data. These logs are not used for any further processing and are purged on each processor's standard rolling schedule.
If you contacted us via Facebook or WhatsApp
Meta (Facebook and WhatsApp) is a separate data controller for the messages held on its platform. We can delete the copy of your WhatsApp messages on our servers. To delete the copy on Meta's servers, you will also need to follow Meta's instructions.
Questions
If you do not receive a response within 5 business days, or if you have any other privacy concerns, contact hello@legal-buddy.co.za.