Privacy policy
What we hold, why we hold it, and how to get it back.
MySentinel records when learners arrive at and leave school, and tells their guardians. That means it holds information about children, which is the most sensitive category there is. This page sets out exactly what is collected, how long it is kept, who else sees it, and what you can ask for.
MySentinel is a product of Binary Solutions, a registered South African company.
Last updated 6 August 2026.
Kort opsomming in Afrikaans
MySentinel teken aan wanneer leerders by die skool aankom en vertrek, en laat weet hul voogde. Ons hou net wat daarvoor nodig is: die leerder se naam, klas en foto (indien die skool dit gebruik), en die voog se naam en kontakbesonderhede — alles geënkripteer gestoor. Geen geboortedatums, adresse of finansiële inligting nie. Die skool bly regtens verantwoordelik vir die inligting; MySentinel verwerk dit net namens die skool. Jy kan deur die skool vra om te sien wat oor jou gesin gehou word, om dit reg te stel, of om dit uit te vee — en jy kan enige kennisgewingkanaal enige tyd self afskakel. Boodskappe op WhatsApp of SMS word net gestuur na 'n nommer wat jý bevestig het, en 'n STOP-antwoord word oral, dadelik, gerespekteer. Vrae of klagtes: ons inligtingsbeampte, Abe Moshou (am@binary-solutions.co.za). Jy het ook die reg om by die Inligtingsreguleerder van Suid-Afrika te kla.
Isifinyezo esifushane ngesiZulu
I-MySentinel ibhala ukufika nokuhamba kwabafundi esikoleni, futhi yazise abazali nababheki babo. Sigcina kuphela okudingekayo: igama lomfundi, ikilasi nesithombe (uma isikole sisisebenzisa), negama nemininingwane yokuxhumana yomzali — konke kugcinwe kubethelwe. Azikho izinsuku zokuzalwa, amakheli, noma imininingwane yezimali. Isikole sihlala sinesibopho ngokomthetho ngale mininingwane; i-MySentinel iyisebenza kuphela egameni lesikole. Ungacela ngesikole ukubona okugcinwe ngomndeni wakho, ukukulungisa, noma ukukususa — futhi ungazivalela noma yisiphi isiteshi sezaziso noma nini. Imiyalezo ye-WhatsApp noma i-SMS ithunyelwa kuphela enombolweni oyiqinisekisile wena, futhi impendulo ethi STOP ihlonishwa yonke indawo, masinyane. Imibuzo noma izikhalazo: isikhulu solwazi sethu, u-Abe Moshou (am@binary-solutions.co.za). Unelungelo futhi lokukhalaza kuMlawuli Wolwazi waseNingizimu Afrika.
Your school decides. We carry it out.
Under POPIA your school is the responsible party. The school decides which learners are enrolled, which guardians are linked to them, and what the notification and retention settings are. Binary Solutions is the operator: we process that information on the school's instruction and for no other purpose.
In practice this means a request about a specific child usually goes to the school first, because the school holds the relationship and the authority to act. We give the school the tools to answer it, and we act on the school's instruction. If you cannot get a response from the school, contact us directly and we will help.
What is collected
Only what the service needs to work. There is no advertising, no profiling, and no sale of information to anyone, ever.
Learners
- Name, class or grade, and the school-issued badge number.
- Check-in and check-out records: the time, the gate, and the officer who scanned.
- A photo, where the school chooses to use photo verification at the gate.
- Attendance derived from those check-ins, and any absence a guardian reports.
So the school knows who is on site, and so a guardian is told when their child arrives and leaves.
Parents and guardians
- Name, relationship to the learner, phone number and email address.
- Notification preferences, and which channels have been confirmed.
- Requests made through the parent portal — early pickup, sick notes, collection delegations.
- Delivery records showing whether a notification reached them.
So the school can reach the right adult about the right child, and show that it did.
School staff
- Name, email address, role, and authentication credentials.
- An audit record of every action taken in the system.
So access is controlled, and so every change can be attributed to a person.
Visitors
- Name, phone number, who they are visiting, and the reason for the visit.
- A photo, and a one-way fingerprint of the last four digits of an ID number.
So the school has a register of who was on site. The ID number itself is never stored.
How it is protected
- Photos are encrypted before they are stored, with a key belonging to that school alone.
- Guardian and visitor contact details are encrypted at rest.
- Schools are walled off from each other. A learner, guardian or visitor at one school is invisible to every other school on the platform.
- Every change is recorded — who did it, when, and what changed. Audit records cannot be edited or deleted.
- Sensitive staff actions require a second factor beyond a password.
- A visitor's ID number is never stored — only a one-way fingerprint of the last four digits, which cannot be reversed.
- Everything is encrypted in transit, between the officer's phone, the school dashboard, and our systems.
How long it is kept
These are the defaults. Each school's POPIA officer can shorten them. Records older than the window are deleted automatically — retention is enforced by the system, not by someone remembering to do it.
Check-in and check-out records
395 daysThirteen months, so a year-on-year comparison is possible. Older records move to cold archive.
Audit records
730 daysTwo years. Audit records are append-only and cannot be edited.
Notification delivery records
14 daysDaily totals are kept for reporting; the individual send records are not.
Parent messages
365 daysMessages a guardian sent to the school, and the school's replies.
When a school stops using MySentinel, its data is deleted on the school's instruction. A parent portal link expires 30 days after it is issued, and a school can revoke any guardian's links immediately.
Who else sees it
Delivering a notification means handing it to whoever carries that channel. These are the only third parties involved, and each sees only what it needs to deliver the message:
Cloudflare
Hosting, databases, and file storage. All of the system runs on Cloudflare's network.
Meta Platforms (WhatsApp Business Platform)
Delivers WhatsApp notifications. Sees the recipient's phone number and the message.
Email delivery provider
Delivers email notifications. Sees the recipient's address and the message.
BulkSMS
Delivers SMS, where a school has switched SMS on. Sees the recipient's number and the message.
Nobody else. Information is not sold, rented, or shared for advertising, and it is not used to train anything.
Where it is stored
MySentinel runs on Cloudflare's global network. There is no South African database region, so the databases and file storage that hold school records are pinned to the European Union — a deliberate choice, made because the EU's data-protection regime is the closest analogue to POPIA among the regions available. A small amount of operational data (delivery logs with identifiers hashed, configuration caches) rides Cloudflare's global network without a region pin, and notification providers may process a message outside South Africa in order to deliver it.
We say this plainly because POPIA requires it and because a school's governing body should know before it signs, not afterwards. These transfers are covered by the contractual terms our providers are bound to, and the protections described above — encryption at rest, encryption in transit, per-school isolation — apply wherever the data physically sits.
Your rights
POPIA gives you these rights, and the product has a working console for each of them — not a mailbox that promises to get round to it.
Access
Ask the school for a copy of what is held about you or your child. The school assembles it through the POPIA console and hands it over as a packaged export.
Correction
Ask for a record to be corrected. The request is logged and tracked, so the school can show it was acted on.
Deletion
Ask for records to be erased. An erasure enters a mandatory 30-day cool-off before anything is deleted, and can be cancelled during it — protection against a mistaken or malicious request.
Objection
Object to how information is being used. Guardians can also switch individual notification channels off at any time from the parent portal, without contacting anyone.
Deleting your data
To have information about you or your child deleted, ask your school's POPIA officer. They raise the erasure in the console, and it covers the learner's records, the guardian contact details, notification history and any stored photos.
Every erasure has a mandatory 30-day cool-off before anything is removed, and can be cancelled during it. That is deliberate: deletion is irreversible, and a request made in error or by someone acting maliciously should not destroy a child's safety record instantly.
If your school will not act, or you no longer have a relationship with the school, email am@binary-solutions.co.za and we will handle it directly.
You can stop notifications without deleting anything: every guardian can switch individual channels off from the parent portal at any time. Emergency and lockdown alerts are the exception — those always send, because a school cannot responsibly let a parent opt out of being told their child is in danger.
Children's information
Nearly everything MySentinel holds concerns a child. POPIA treats that as special personal information, and processing it depends on the consent of a competent person — in practice the parent or guardian, through the school.
Children do not have accounts and cannot log in. A learner's only interaction is having their badge scanned at the gate. The parent portal is reached through a private link sent to the guardian; it needs no password, so guardians should treat the link as private and not forward it.
Changes, and how to reach us
If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected or how long it is kept, we will tell the schools using MySentinel before it takes effect. The date at the top always reflects the current version.
For any privacy question, or to escalate one your school has not answered, email our information officer, Abe Moshou, at am@binary-solutions.co.za.
You also have the right to complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa, which supervises POPIA compliance.
Procurement
Need this reviewed by your governing body?
We'll walk your POPIA officer and IT contact through the data protection, the audit trail, and the subject-rights console.