Privacy notice

This notice explains what personal information BTLS keeps about you, why, who sees it and what you can do about it. We wrote it in plain language. If something is not clear, ask us.

Who we are

Market Leadership Systems International (MLS) runs BTLS (Business Thinking and Leadership Styles). MLS is responsible for your personal information on this website.

• Email: support@thinkingstyles.biz
• Address: 1301 Whistletree, Queenswood, Pretoria
• Information officer: Christiaan Mostert

What we keep

• Your name, email address and country.
• Your password, stored scrambled so nobody can read it, not even MLS.
• Details you choose to add on your account page: gender, birth date, industry, education and occupation.
• Your answers to the questionnaire, your scores and your reports.
• The organisation and teams you belong to, and the choices you made about sharing.
• Payment records when you buy a report: what you bought, the amount and the date. We never see or keep your card number.
• Technical records: sign-in times, your IP address and a log of important changes, to keep accounts safe.

Why we use it

• To work out your thinking preference profile and make your reports. BTLS describes how you prefer to think. It does not measure how well you think.
• To share your results with your employer, when you joined with a company code or invitation and agreed to share.
• To write personal tips with AI, only if you agreed. We send your scores only, never your name, email address or birth date.
• To run your account: sign-in, security emails and answers to your questions.
• To see, in totals only, how BTLS is used, so we can improve it.

We do this because you agreed, because we need it to give you the service you signed up for, or because the law asks us to keep certain records.

Who sees your results

• You. You can always see and download your own profile and reports.
• Your employer's BTLS administrators, when you joined through your organisation and agreed to share. They see your results and reports in BTLS. When you finish the questionnaire, they get an email with your reports attached. They may not use your results to decide on hiring, firing or pay.
• The MLS office. MLS runs BTLS and can see every profile to support you and your organisation. When your organisation has no administrator email address, the completion email and reports go to the MLS office instead.
• Colleagues, only if you agreed to working-together tips. They see tips about working with you, not your full report.

You can stop sharing with your organisation at any time on your account page. Your employer then no longer sees your results in BTLS. Reports that were already emailed to them cannot be called back by BTLS; ask your employer to delete them.

Companies that help us

We use a small number of service providers. They may only use your information to do this work for us.

• Hosting and email: the servers that run BTLS and send its emails.
• Payments: Stripe handles card payments for paid reports. Stripe has its own privacy notice.
• AI tips: Anthropic (Claude) writes the optional AI tips from your scores. It never gets your name, email address or birth date.
• Website statistics: Google Analytics, only if you accept cookies. See Cookies below.

Some of these providers store information outside South Africa. We only use providers that protect personal information to a standard similar to South African law.

Cookies

BTLS uses a few small files in your browser (cookies). Some are needed to keep you signed in and to protect forms. You cannot switch these off.

With your permission, thinkingstyles.biz and the BTLS portal also use Google Analytics cookies. They tell us, in totals, which pages people visit, where visitors come from and which steps they finish, such as creating an account or completing the questionnaire. Google Analytics never gets your name, email address, answers, scores or reports. In the portal it only sees the type of page you open, not the page address or the people on it. We do not use advertising cookies.

On the website, before you choose, Google gets only a count of visits without cookies. In the portal nothing is sent to Google until you accept. We keep your choice for up to a year.

Change your cookie choice

How long we keep it

We keep your account and results while your account is open, so you can come back to your reports. When you ask us to delete your account, we delete your personal information within 30 days, except records the law says we must keep, such as payment records.

How we keep it safe

Your name, email address and birth date are stored encrypted. Passwords are scrambled. BTLS administrators must use two-step sign-in. We log important changes and who made them.

Your rights

• See your information and download a copy (account page).
• Correct your details (account page).
• Change or withdraw any choice you agreed to (account page).
• Ask us to delete your account and information (account page).
• Object to how we use your information, by emailing us.
• Complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa (inforegulator.org.za) if you are not happy with our answer.

Changes to this notice

When we change this notice in a way that matters, we update the version date at the top of this page.

See also our terms of use.