Privacy and removal

Last updated 3 October 2026.

What is shown

For each notice: the name of the person who died, their dates of birth and death, the estate number, the executor, and the Master's office. Each page links a web search for the gazette that printed it.

What is left out

ID numbers. Home addresses. Details of a surviving husband or wife. The executor's phone number, email address and street address. This site never shows them.

Search by ID number finds the notice for that number. The number is never shown on a page and is not kept.

Why they are left out

An estate notice is published so that creditors and heirs can learn of an estate. The same details can help a criminal pose as an executor or an heir and claim the estate's money.

So this site shows what a family or a creditor needs to recognise an estate and find the right Master's office. It leaves out the details that most help someone impersonate the people involved.

The site does not publish lists or rankings of estates by how long they have been open. The analysis reports totals, never a list of estates. Bulk matching is offered only to regulated institutions, and each one's registration is checked first. Protecting an estate from fraud gives the warning signs and how to protect an estate.

Executor pages

A page exists for an executor named on five or more estates. Most are firms of attorneys, trust companies and banks; a few are people who often act as executor. A person named executor once or twice, usually a family member, has no page here. A person named as a firm's nominee is not listed by name.

What is kept

The words typed into the search box, the date and time, and the number of results. A year of birth or death, when one was given. Not who typed it: no IP address, no cookie, no account. For an ID-number search, the number is not kept: only that a search happened, and any year typed beside it. Also what kind of number it was: how many digits, and whether it had dashes or spaces. Whether it is a valid ID number, and whether a number one digit different is in the gazette. This shows the mistakes people make typing an ID number, without keeping any number. A long number typed in a name search is not kept either. When a notice is opened from a page on this site, which notice and when. Also the kind of page it was opened from: the results page, a listing, or the home page. Not by whom, and not what was searched. When the gazette search link on a notice page is followed, that it was, and when. Purpose: to see which names people cannot find, and whether the results help. Deleted after 12 months.

Web server logs (IP address, page, time, browser type, referring page) are kept for a short time to run the site. The site runs behind Cloudflare and is hosted by Render, which handle these requests for us. Render's servers are in the United States (Oregon), so what a visitor sends, including searches, is processed there. POPIA section 72 allows this where the recipient is bound by an agreement that protects the information. Render is bound by its data processing addendum, which forms part of its terms of service. The search log line never includes what was searched for, and a referring page on this site is recorded without its search words. No cookies. Page counts are kept: how many times each page was opened each day. Each count says whether it was a person or a named crawler, and on a phone, tablet or computer. It also says which other website linked here, if any, and whether the page was found. A count, not a record of any visit: no IP address, no browser details, no search words. Deleted after 12 months.

Visits are counted the way Plausible and Fathom count them, without cookies. Each page a person opens is stored with a daily code, made from a secret, the IP address and the browser type. The secret changes every day and the old one is deleted. So the code cannot be turned back into an IP address, and one day's visits cannot be linked to another's. The IP address itself is never stored. With each page: the time, the browser and system names, the device type, the linking website, any campaign tag, and the country. The country comes from the IP address, using IP Geolocation by DB-IP; only the two-letter country code is kept. These rows are deleted after 30 days, leaving daily totals, which are deleted after 12 months.

Corrections and removal

If a page names you, names a living person by mistake, or shows something wrong, email graham@phasetransitions.ai with the page address. Pages are fixed or removed on request, usually within a few working days. A removal lasts: the notice does not come back when new gazettes are added. Removal here does not change the Government Gazette.

You can ask what is held about you, and ask for it to be corrected or deleted. If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Information Regulator.

Who is responsible

GazetteSearch is run by Phase Transitions (Pty) Ltd. Information Officer: Graham Rowe, graham@phasetransitions.ai. PAIA manual.