Privacy policy

Who we are

SpareCrow helps people in Zambia find who sells the spare parts and supplies they need. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who we share it with and the choices you have. If you have any question about it, write to hello@sparecrow.com.

What we collect from buyers

When you search, we keep what you typed and your answers to any follow-up question, so we can find suppliers and improve our results. You don't need an account to search.

If you ask us to contact suppliers for you, we also keep your name, your email address and any message you write for the shops.

If you create an account, we keep your name, your email address and your password, which is stored scrambled so that nobody, us included, can read it.

What we collect about shops and suppliers

We list businesses that sell parts and supplies. We gather their business details from their own public websites and from open directories that allow it: the business name, address, phone numbers, email, opening hours and what it sells. We respect robots.txt and the terms of the sites we read, and we skip sites that do not allow it.

We aim to keep only business contact details, not personal ones. A listing found this way stays hidden until our staff have checked it.

When a shop adds itself or claims its listing, we also keep the details it gives us and the names and email addresses of the people who manage it. A shop that adds itself stays hidden until our staff have checked it too.

How we use it

We use this information to run searches, show buyers which shops are likely to have a part, contact suppliers on a buyer's behalf, send the emails you asked for, keep the service safe from abuse and make our matching better. We use it only for these purposes, and we never sell it.

What we share, and with whom

When you ask us to contact suppliers, we send them your name, what you are looking for and any message you wrote for them. We do not give them your email address. When a supplier says it has your part, we email you that supplier's contact details.

We use trusted service providers to run SpareCrow: hosting, our database and sign-in, email delivery, a check that keeps bots out, and AI services that read search requests and shop websites. They handle information only to provide their service to us. Some of them store data outside Zambia, and we choose providers that protect it.

We may also share information when the law requires it.

Emails to shops

When a buyer asks for a part, we may email shops that are likely to have it. Every email says why the shop received it and carries a link to remove the shop from SpareCrow. Once removed, we stop contacting it.

Claiming or removing a listing

A shop can add itself by creating an account, claim its listing from the link in any email we send it, or write to hello@sparecrow.com. It can ask us to correct or remove its listing at any time.

Cookies

We use a few cookies that SpareCrow needs to work: one keeps you signed in and one remembers your light or dark choice. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies.

How long we keep it

We keep information only as long as we need it for the purposes above, or as long as the law requires. You can ask us to delete yours sooner.

Your rights

Under Zambia's Data Protection Act 2021 you can ask what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, and object to how we use it. Write to hello@sparecrow.com and we will reply as soon as we can. If you are unhappy with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner in Zambia.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as SpareCrow grows. When we do, we change the date at the top, and we tell account holders about important changes by email.