Privacy Policy
Last updated: September 2026
Who is responsible
Commodity Intelligence (commodity.spatialsusty.com) is operated by Spatial Sustainability Hub (“spatialsusty”), a company established in Ghana, which is the data controller for the processing described here. Our Data Protection Officer is Jedidiah Tetteh Madjanor. Contact for anything privacy related: support@spatialsusty.com.
We process personal data under Ghana's Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) and, where it applies to visitors in the EU/EEA, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Where both apply we follow the stricter rule.
You can use the whole platform — dashboards, comparisons, risk intelligence, the public API and embeds — without creating an account and without giving us any personal data. Personal data only enters the picture if you choose to subscribe to the newsletter or post a review.
What we process, why, and for how long
| Activity | Data | Lawful basis | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Site usage analytics | Page path, timestamp, and a keyed one-way hash of your browser's user-agent string (used only to count unique visitors). No cookies, no IP address, no identifier. | Legitimate interest — understanding which pages are used | 180 days, then deleted automatically |
| Newsletter (Executive Brief) | Your email address, your chosen frequency and commodities, the date you subscribed, and an unsubscribe token. | Consent (you subscribe yourself; withdraw any time) | Until you unsubscribe (kept as a suppression record) or erase your address (deleted permanently) |
| Reviews | The name, organisation (optional), rating and comment you submit — shown publicly once approved — plus a keyed one-way hash of your IP address used solely to detect abuse. | Consent (you submit the review); legitimate interest for abuse prevention | Until you ask us to remove it or we remove it |
| Product analyzer | The product attributes you enter (name, brand, price, segment). | Legitimate interest — providing the analysis you requested | 90 days, then deleted automatically |
| Error and security reports | Technical details of a page error or a blocked script (error message, page URL, a truncated browser string). No form contents. | Legitimate interest — keeping the site working and secure | Short-lived rotating server logs (days) |
| Server logs | Request path, status, timing and a request ID for each API call; the client IP is used in memory for rate limiting only and is not written to the analytics database. | Legitimate interest — security, abuse prevention, reliability | Short-lived rotating server logs (days) |
“Keyed one-way hash” means the value is run through a secret-keyed hash before storage; we cannot recover the original from what we store, and the stored value is not linked to any name or account.
Newsletter and reviews in detail
Newsletter. We store your email address in our own database — no third-party mailing service — to send the brief you asked for. Every edition carries a one-click unsubscribe link (stops sending; keeps your address so we don't email you again) and an erase link (permanently deletes your address). You can also email us to do either.
Reviews. Submissions are held privately until a moderator approves them; approved reviews are public and show the name and organisation you entered. We keep a keyed hash of the submitting IP address only to spot abuse of the form. Email us to correct or remove a review.
Sharing and hosting
We do not sell or rent personal data, and we do not share it with advertisers. Data is stored on infrastructure we operate. The market data itself is compiled by our servers from public sources (World Bank, FAOSTAT, ICCO, ICO, Fairtrade, Open-Meteo, Global Forest Watch and others) — those requests carry no information about you.
Your rights
Under the GDPR and equivalent laws you can, free of charge:
- Access the personal data we hold about you and get a copy.
- Rectify inaccurate data (for example a review or your newsletter preferences).
- Erase your data — self-serve for the newsletter via the erase link in any edition; email us for reviews.
- Withdraw consent at any time (unsubscribe), without affecting prior processing.
- Object to processing based on legitimate interest, and ask us to restrict it.
- Portability of data you gave us, in a machine-readable form.
- Complain to a supervisory authority if you believe we have not handled your data lawfully — the Ghana Data Protection Commission (dataprotection.org.gh) or, if you are in the EU/EEA, your national data-protection authority.
To exercise any right, email support@spatialsusty.com. We aim to respond within 30 days and may ask you to confirm which email address or review is yours. We do not make automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects.
Security, children, changes
Traffic is encrypted in transit (HTTPS). Admin functions are protected by a secret key, personal data is limited to the fields listed above, and identifiers are hashed with a secret key before storage. The platform is not directed at children under 16 and we do not knowingly collect their data.
We will update this page when our processing changes; the date at the top is the current version.
Data sources and licensing
Public datasets are used in line with their terms:
- World Bank Commodity Markets — CC BY 4.0
- FAOSTAT — FAO Open Data terms of use
- ICCO / ICO — public statistics
- Fairtrade International — public minimum price tables
- IDH Sustainable Trade Initiative — living income benchmarks
- Global Forest Watch — CC BY 4.0 (Hansen et al.)
- Open-Meteo — CC BY 4.0
- BASIC — 2022 German chocolate value chain study