Effective Date: 11 March 2025
Last Updated: 20 September 2026
This Privacy Policy explains how personal information is collected and processed when you use TopHorrorBooks.com and its related forms and features. The website is operated from South Africa and is intended for an international audience.
1. Responsible Party
Top Horror Books is owned and operated by DotClick (Pty) Ltd (“Top Horror Books”, “we”, “us” or “our”), a company based in South Africa. DotClick (Pty) Ltd is the responsible party for personal information processed through this website.
Privacy enquiries and requests should preferably be submitted through the Top Horror Books contact form. If that form is unavailable, you may use the DotClick contact form.
2. Information We Collect
Depending on how you use the website, we may collect:
- Contact enquiries: your first and last name, email address, phone number, message, IP address and referring page.
- Newsletter subscriptions: your first name, last name if supplied, email address, subscription source, status, IP address and referring page.
- Comments: your display name, email address, optional website address, comment, IP address, referring page and moderation status. Your email address and IP address are not displayed publicly.
- Technical information: standard server-log information that may include your IP address, browser or device information, requested pages, dates and times, and referring URLs.
Supplying information through our forms is voluntary, but we cannot process a contact enquiry, newsletter subscription or comment if its required fields are not completed.
3. How and Why We Use Information
We process personal information only where we have a lawful reason to do so. We use it to:
- Respond to enquiries and provide requested assistance.
- Send horror-book newsletters to people who have subscribed.
- Publish, moderate and protect the integrity of reader comments.
- Operate, secure, troubleshoot and improve the website.
- Prevent spam, fraud, abuse and unauthorised access.
- Comply with legal obligations and establish, exercise or defend legal rights.
Our grounds for processing may include your consent, the steps required to respond to your request, our legitimate interests in operating and securing the website, and compliance with law. You may withdraw consent at any time, although this does not affect processing that was lawful before withdrawal.
4. Newsletter and Direct Marketing
We send newsletters only where you have actively subscribed or where another lawful basis applies. You can unsubscribe at any time using the unsubscribe facility in a newsletter or by submitting a request through our contact form. We may retain limited information necessary to record and respect an unsubscribe request.
5. Cookies and Local Storage
The public website may use essential browser storage required for features such as remembering that you have seen or dismissed the newsletter invitation. Protected staff areas use essential session cookies for security and authentication.
We use Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to understand website use and improve the site. Where consent is required, analytics and advertising storage are denied by default until consent is provided. Google may process technical information such as your IP address, browser, device and visited pages in accordance with its own privacy terms. You can remove cookies or local-storage data through your browser settings, but doing so may reset website preferences.
6. Service Providers and International Processing
We do not sell personal information. We may disclose only the information reasonably necessary to trusted service providers that help us host, secure, maintain or communicate through the website, as well as to professional advisers or authorities where required by law.
Some service providers may process information outside South Africa. Where this occurs, we take reasonably practicable steps to use providers and arrangements that offer appropriate protection for the information.
7. Retention
We keep personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, to meet legal or operational requirements, or to resolve disputes. In general:
- Newsletter details are kept until you unsubscribe, after which limited suppression information may be retained.
- Contact enquiries are kept while they are being handled and for a reasonable record-keeping period afterwards.
- Approved comments may remain while the related article is published; moderation and security records may be retained where reasonably necessary.
- Technical and security records are kept only for an appropriate operational or security period.
Information that is no longer required will be deleted, destroyed or de-identified where reasonably practicable and legally permitted.
8. Security
We use reasonable technical and organisational safeguards appropriate to the information we process. No internet service can guarantee absolute security. If a security compromise requires notification under applicable law, we will notify the Information Regulator and affected people as required.
9. Your Rights
Your rights depend partly on where you are located and which laws apply to the relevant processing. Subject to applicable law, you may ask us to:
- Confirm whether we hold personal information about you and request access to it.
- Correct inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, outdated, incomplete or misleading information.
- Delete information that we are no longer authorised to retain.
- Object to or restrict certain processing, or withdraw consent.
- Receive certain information in a portable format, or ask for it to be transferred, where the law provides that right.
- Stop sending direct marketing communications.
We may need reasonable proof of identity before acting on a request. You may lodge a POPIA complaint with the Information Regulator South Africa. Where EU or UK data-protection law applies, you may also complain to the relevant EU supervisory authority or the UK Information Commissioner’s Office.
10. International Visitors
DotClick (Pty) Ltd operates this website from South Africa and applies the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA) to its South African operations. Because the website is available internationally, additional mandatory privacy or consumer-protection laws may apply to particular visitors or processing activities, including the EU GDPR or UK GDPR where their territorial requirements are met.
Nothing in this policy is intended to remove rights or remedies that cannot lawfully be excluded. We will assess privacy requests under the laws applicable to the person and processing concerned.
11. Children’s Privacy
The website’s forms and subscription features are not intended for use by anyone under 18 without the prior consent or assistance of a parent, guardian or other legally competent person. If we learn that a child’s personal information was submitted without appropriate authorisation, we will take reasonable steps to delete it.
12. Third-Party and Affiliate Links
Our website contains links to third-party websites, including affiliate retailers. A third party processes information under its own terms and privacy policy once you visit its website. We are not responsible for a third party’s privacy practices.
13. Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy when our practices, service providers or legal obligations change. The revised policy will be published here with a new “Last Updated” date.
14. Contact Us
For privacy questions or requests, please use the Top Horror Books contact form. If it is unavailable, use the DotClick contact form.
