Privacy

What we hold, why we hold it, and how to get it back or have it erased.

This platform is subject to the Privacy Act 2020. Everything below describes what the software actually does. If any of it turns out not to match the behaviour, that is a defect and we want to hear about it.

If you only read one part

You can ask for everything we hold about you and get it as a file. You can ask us to correct it. You can erase yourself from your account page, without asking anybody — with one honest exception explained below. Nothing here is sold, and there is no advertising network watching you.

What we collect, and why

If you only read the site: nothing that identifies you. There are no advertising trackers and no third-party analytics scripts.

If you use “what’s near you”: a region or a postcode needs no permission from your browser, which is why both are offered before the one that does. A postcode is resolved to about a kilometre, which is as precise as a postcode gets. If you share your location instead, the coordinates are rounded to that same kilometre before they leave your browser, used to run the search, and then stored nowhere — no cookie, no database row, no counter. We could not tell you afterwards where you searched from, because we never had it.

If you create an account: your email address, a display name, your region, a phone number, your date of birth, and whatever else you choose to put in your profile. The email address is how you sign in and how we can reach you; the display name is shown beside anything you write publicly.

The last two are asked for a stated reason and used for nothing else. The phone number is what stops one person holding five accounts — a number can be on one account, and that is all we do with it. The date of birth is because organic wine, beer and cider are producers like any other, and a sixteen-year-old should not be shown a cellar door. Neither is published, neither appears beside anything you write, and neither is shown to a producer.

If you write a review or a question: what you wrote, when, and which account wrote it. Reviews are public by design — that is the point of them.

If you manage a farm: your name and email against that farm, so the producers and staff can see who is responsible for a page. A farm is often three people, and “who do I ring” needs a name.

If you pay us: the amount, the date and a reference. Card numbers never reach this platform — they go to Stripe, who are the ones qualified to hold them.

What we never do with it

• Sell it, rent it, or share it with advertisers.
• Use it to train anything.
• Email you things you did not ask for.

Who else can see it

Running this site means other companies necessarily handle some of the information in order to do their job — storing the database, serving the pages, sending the email you have asked for. They act on our instructions and may not use it for anything of their own. They are not parties we sell to, because there are none.

Some of them hold data outside New Zealand. The law treats information held by a supplier on our behalf as still held by us, so it remains our responsibility wherever it physically sits, and we are required to take reasonable steps to keep it safe there. If you want to know who they are for a particular purpose, ask us and we will tell you.

How long we keep it

Account and profile information: while the account exists. Reviews and questions: while they are published. Financial records: seven years, because Inland Revenue requires it. Our internal record of who changed what — the audit log — is permanent, and the next section explains why that matters to you.

Getting a copy, and getting corrections

Under the Act you may ask what we hold about you and ask us to correct it. Write to privacy@organicmatters.nz. The answer is a file containing every row this platform holds about you, including any section that could not be read — listed rather than silently left out. The legal deadline is twenty working days; it will not take that long.

Erasure, and the one thing that survives it

You can erase yourself, from your account page — there is nobody to write to and nothing to wait for. When you do, your name, email address and profile are cleared, and anything you wrote publicly is either removed or detached from you.

Writing to us still works if you cannot sign in. It is not the ordinary way to do this and it never should have been.

Private messages go with you. Anything you sent in a private thread is cleared, the blocks you made are removed, and so is any standing request to be told when an event comes round again. The thread itself stays where the other person can still read it, with your side gone — what they wrote is their own record of a conversation they had, and erasing you should not erase them.

What cannot be erased is the record that something happened. This platform keeps an append-only log of every change to the data it holds — who verified which certificate, who removed which review — and that log is what makes the whole thing accountable rather than merely confident. It is never edited, by anyone, including us. After erasure it retains an identifier that is no longer attached to a name.

We would rather say that plainly than promise a deletion we cannot perform.

Cookies

One, and only when you sign in: the cookie that keeps you signed in. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to.

If something goes wrong

If personal information is exposed in a way likely to cause serious harm, we will notify the people affected and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, as the Act requires. If you think we have mishandled your information, tell us first at privacy@organicmatters.nz — and if we do not put it right, you can complain to the Privacy Commissioner, who is independent of us.

Last updated 12 August 2026. When this page changes in a way that affects you, the change is described here rather than quietly applied.