Privacy policy
Last updated: 24 October 2026
WhatToDrive respects your privacy. This policy explains what information we handle when you use the site, and your rights under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).
The short version
You don't need an account to use WhatToDrive. We don't ask for your name, phone number or email to browse, compare cars or use the calculators. We don't use advertising trackers or cookies, and we count visits with a privacy-friendly analytics tool that doesn't identify you.
What's stored in your browser
- Your province. When you choose a province, it's saved in your browser's local storage so we can show dealers and offers near you. It never leaves your device, and you can change it at any time.
- Your last car listing. While a tab is open, we remember the listing you came from so "Back" returns you to the same filters. It's cleared when you close the tab.
You can clear both through your browser settings. We don't use cookies on the public site.
Visitor statistics
We use Umami Cloud to understand how the site is used, for example which cars people look at, which filters they use, and how often dealer contact details are tapped. For each page view it records the page address, the site you came from, your browser, operating system, device type and country. It doesn't use cookies, doesn't store your IP address, and doesn't track you across other websites. If your browser sends a "Do Not Track" signal, nothing is recorded.
Umami stores this data in the European Union, whose data-protection laws are similar to POPIA. We use these statistics only to improve WhatToDrive and to report total visits and clicks to sponsoring dealers, never to identify individual visitors.
Information our hosting provider records
Like any website, our servers receive technical details with each request, such as your IP address, browser type and the page you asked for. Our hosting provider, Google Cloud (Firebase), keeps these in short-lived logs to run the site and protect it from abuse. We don't use them to identify you. Google may process this information outside South Africa, under its own data-protection commitments.
Contacting a dealer
When you call, email or visit a sponsored dealer's website from WhatToDrive, you deal with that dealer directly, and their own privacy policy applies. Online enquiry forms on WhatToDrive are not live yet, so nothing you type into them is sent or stored. We'll update this policy before that changes.
Emails to us
If you email us, for example about sponsorship, we use your message and contact details only to reply to you, and keep them only as long as we need to.
Your rights
Under POPIA, you have the right to:
- ask whether we hold personal information about you, and see it
- ask us to correct or delete it
- object to us processing it
- complain to the Information Regulator if you're unhappy with how we handle it
Changes to this policy
We'll update this policy when the site changes how it handles information. The date at the top shows when it last changed. See also our terms of use.