Privacy Policy

Effective date: August 21, 2026

Noqu-I-Sema (the "Platform," "we," "us," or "our") is operated by Reef Monkey Studios. This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use and share it, and the choices and rights available to you.

By creating an account, browsing the Platform, or otherwise using our services, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with it, please do not use Noqu-I-Sema.


Contents
  1. Information We Collect
  2. Information About Family Members and Other Individuals
  3. How We Use Information
  4. How We Share Information
  5. Payment and Activation Fee Information
  6. Cookies and Similar Technologies
  7. Data Retention
  8. Data Security
  9. Your Rights and Choices
  10. Children's Privacy
  11. International Users
  12. Changes to This Policy
  13. Contact Us

1. Information We Collect

We collect the following categories of information:

Account information

Email address, password (stored as a one-way cryptographic hash, never in plain text), display name, avatar/profile photo, date of birth, gender, phone number, address, a short biography, qualifications/occupation, and your home village (Koro, Tikina, Yasana).

Family tree and community content

Details you add about family members and relationships (parent, child, spouse, marriage status), village roles (member, Vasu, Vakawati), photos uploaded to your profile, family galleries, or village galleries, and any bio or notes attached to these records.

Communications and activity

Direct messages and village chatroom messages, event RSVPs and event photos, fundraiser listings and donations you make or receive, support tickets, contact form submissions, badges earned, and notifications.

Technical and security information

IP address, login timestamps and login attempt records (to detect abuse), session cookies, and an internal audit log of account and administrative actions used to protect the integrity of the Platform.

2. Information About Family Members and Other Individuals

Noqu-I-Sema is a family tree and village community platform. As part of using it, you may add information about relatives or other community members who are not themselves registered users of the Platform, including deceased individuals. We process this information on the basis that you, as the contributor, have a legitimate interest in recording your family history and community connections, and that such records are a customary and expected part of a genealogy and village-community service.

If a person you have added later registers an account and recognises their own profile, they may request to "adopt" that profile through our built-in claim process, which requires approval from the person who originally added the record. Any living individual (or the authorised representative of a deceased individual) who believes information about them has been added inaccurately, or who wishes to have it corrected or removed, may contact us using the details in Section 13 and we will review the request in good faith.

3. How We Use Information

  • To create and administer your account and authenticate you when you sign in
  • To operate core features: family trees, village pages, events, fundraising, chat, search and notifications
  • To process the one-time Account Activation Fee and any fundraiser donations
  • To communicate with you, including transactional emails, support responses and, where relevant, marketing about the Platform
  • To detect, investigate and prevent fraud, abuse, unauthorised access and violations of our Terms of Service
  • To maintain the accuracy, safety and reliability of the Platform, including through the audit log and rate limiting
  • To comply with applicable law and respond to lawful requests from public authorities

4. How We Share Information

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only in the following circumstances:

  • Other users, according to your privacy settings. Your profile includes visibility controls for your email, phone, address, date of birth and qualifications, and for whether your family tree is shown and whether other members may direct-message you. Your display name, village, and family tree connections are generally visible to relevant community and family members so the Platform can function as intended.
  • Payment processors. When you pay the Account Activation Fee or make a donation, your payment details are transmitted directly to and processed by Fulcrum Payment Gateway, MPaisa, and/or PayPal, as applicable. We receive and store only transaction status and reference information, not your full card or account credentials.
  • Service providers. We use third-party infrastructure to operate the Platform, including our web hosting provider, Google Workspace (for outbound transactional email delivery), and content-delivery networks that serve fonts, icons and front-end libraries (such as Google Fonts, Font Awesome and Bootstrap's CDN). These providers may receive limited technical data, such as your IP address, in the course of delivering these resources to your browser.
  • Legal and safety reasons. We may disclose information if required by law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request, or where we believe disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Noqu-I-Sema, our users, or the public.
  • Business transfers. If Reef Monkey Studios is involved in a merger, acquisition, restructuring or sale of assets, information may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to this Privacy Policy or a policy at least as protective.

5. Payment and Activation Fee Information

Registration on Noqu-I-Sema requires payment of a one-time Account Activation Fee (unless waived by a valid coupon code), used to offset the costs of processing registrations and activating accounts. This fee is non-refundable, as described in our Terms of Service. Donations made to fundraisers are a separate transaction from the Account Activation Fee and are subject to the terms of the relevant fundraiser and payment processor.

We do not store full payment card numbers or bank account credentials on our servers. Card and account details are collected and processed directly by our payment processors, which maintain their own privacy and security safeguards.

Payments and the Account Activation Fee are processed through Fulcrum Payment Gateway, a payment processing service operated by Fulcrum Pte Limited, a company registered in the Republic of Fiji, of which Reef Monkey Studios is a service.

6. Cookies and Similar Technologies

We use a session cookie to keep you signed in and to protect forms from cross-site request forgery. This cookie is set to be inaccessible to client-side scripts (HttpOnly) and is restricted from being sent with cross-site requests (SameSite=Strict). We do not currently use third-party advertising or analytics tracking cookies. Third-party resources loaded from content delivery networks (see Section 4) may set their own minimal technical cookies or log requests under their own privacy practices.

7. Data Retention

We retain account information for as long as your account is active. Because family tree and village records form part of a shared community and genealogical record, information about individuals (including relationships added by other users) may continue to exist on the Platform after a contributor's own account is closed, so that the historical record is not broken for other connected family and community members. You may request review, correction or removal of specific records at any time as described in Section 9. Security and audit logs are retained for a limited period as reasonably necessary to detect and investigate misuse.

8. Data Security

We apply industry-standard safeguards appropriate to a platform of this size, including password hashing, enforced HTTPS, hardened session cookies, rate limiting on sensitive actions such as login and contact form submissions, and an internal audit log of account and administrative activity. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. Your Rights and Choices

  • Access and update. You can review and update most of your account and profile information at any time from your profile settings.
  • Privacy controls. You can control the visibility of your email, phone, address, date of birth, qualifications, family tree and your availability for direct messages from your privacy settings.
  • Correction or removal. You may ask us to correct or remove information about you, or about a family member you believe was recorded inaccurately, by contacting us (Section 13).
  • Account closure. You may request that your account be deactivated or deleted. Certain shared community records may be retained as described in Section 7.
  • Communications. You may manage notification preferences from your account, and may opt out of non-essential email communications.

10. Children's Privacy

Noqu-I-Sema is not directed at, and account registration is not intended for, individuals under 18 years of age. Family tree profiles for children or other minors may be added to the Platform by an adult relative as part of recording family history, but such minors may not register their own account. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information through an account registration in violation of this policy, please contact us so we can investigate and remove it.

11. International Users

Noqu-I-Sema is operated from Fiji for a primarily Fijian and Fijian-diaspora community. If you access the Platform from outside Fiji, your information will be transferred to and processed in Fiji, and possibly in other countries where our service providers operate, which may have data protection laws different from those of your own country. By using the Platform, you consent to this transfer and processing.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or for legal, operational or regulatory reasons. We will update the effective date at the top of this page when we do. Material changes will be communicated through the Platform or by email where appropriate. Continued use of Noqu-I-Sema after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

13. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, or wish to exercise any of the rights and choices described above, please contact us:

Reef Monkey Studios
Suites 8 & 9, 17 Westfield
Nadi, Fiji
Email: bula@noqusema.com
Or use our Contact form.

See also our Terms of Service.