Privacy policy
NetCheck (netcheck.co.za) respects your privacy. This policy explains what information is processed when you use our website and tools, and your rights under South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).
The short version
- You don’t need an account, and we don’t ask for your name, email or phone number to use any tool.
- Your speed-test history is stored only in your own browser.
- We don’t store your IP address with your results.
- We show Google ads, which use cookies. You can control these (see below).
Speed test and diagnosis
When you run a speed test, your browser exchanges test data with Cloudflare’s speed-test servers (speed.cloudflare.com), or with our own backup servers if Cloudflare can’t be reached. Like any website, these servers receive your IP address in order to send data back to you. We have switched off the speed-test engine’s optional result logging. Cloudflare’s handling of data is described in its own privacy policy.
The diagnosis also checks whether your browser can reach popular services (such as Google, WhatsApp and Netflix) by requesting a small icon file from each. Those services receive a normal request from your browser, without cookies.
Your results, history, package speed and settings are saved in your browser’s local storage on your device. You can delete them with the “Clear history” button or by clearing your browser data.
What’s my IP
To show your IP address, provider and approximate location, our server reads the information your connection already sends to every website (provided by our hosting provider, Cloudflare). We display it to you and do not store it.
Website down checker
When you check a website, we store the domain name you checked, the result (up or down, response code and time) and when it was checked. This powers the “recently checked” list and lets us share results for a short time, so the same site isn’t checked many times a minute. We do not store who checked it. Your IP address is held briefly in memory to prevent abuse (rate limiting) and is not saved. Checks are deleted after 30 days. Some domains are automatically kept off the public list.
Your browser also tries to reach the website directly to tell you whether it’s “just you”. That website will receive a normal request from your browser.
Cookies and advertising
We use Google AdSense to show ads. Google and its partners use cookies to serve ads based on your visits to this and other websites. You can opt out of personalised advertising at Google Ads Settings, and learn more at How Google uses information from sites that use its services. Visitors in some regions will be asked for consent before personalised ads are shown.
We may use privacy-friendly analytics (such as Cloudflare Web Analytics) that count visits without using cookies or tracking you across sites.
Hosting and security
NetCheck is hosted on Cloudflare. Requests to our site are processed by Cloudflare’s network, which may log technical data (such as IP addresses) for security and to keep the service running.
Children
NetCheck is a general-audience website and does not knowingly collect personal information from children.
Your rights
Under POPIA you can ask what personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct or delete it. Because we don’t link stored data to individuals, in most cases we won’t hold anything that identifies you. Contact us at hello@netcheck.co.za. You may also contact the Information Regulator of South Africa.
Changes
We may update this policy. The date at the top shows when it last changed.