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Terms of use

Terms of use

Version 2026-09-10 · effective 10 September 2026

Draft — not yet in force

This document is incomplete and has not been reviewed by an attorney. It is published here so it can be reviewed, and it does not bind anyone.

  • · Still needed: the supplier's full name (ECTA s 43(1)(a))
  • · Still needed: the supplier's legal status (ECTA s 43(1)(b))
  • · Still needed: the registration number (ECTA s 43(1)(i))
  • · Still needed: a physical address (ECTA s 43(1)(c))
  • · Still needed: a telephone number (ECTA s 43(1)(c))
  • · Still needed: an email address (ECTA s 43(1)(d))
  • · Still needed: the Information Officer (POPIA s 55)
  • · Still needed: contact details for the Information Officer
  • · Still needed: confirmation that the Information Officer is registered with the Information Regulator (POPIA s 56)

The liability, indemnity and dispute-resolution clauses are marked below and have not been settled. Under the Consumer Protection Act both their wording and how prominently they are shown are legal questions.

1. Who provides this service

The provider's name, legal status, registration number, physical address and contact details are required here by section 43(1) of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002, and have not been published yet.

2. What Sentry does

Sentry records the firearm licence, renewal and competency applications you tell it about, checks their status against a public South African Police Service page on your behalf, and warns you before the statutory deadline for renewing a licence. It also keeps an inventory of your firearms, licences and related documents.

The deadline it counts down to is the one in section 24(1) of the Firearms Control Act : a renewal must be applied for at least 90 days before the licence expires.

3. What Sentry is not

  • Not SAPS. Sentry is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for the South African Police Service, and has no access to any system that is not public.
  • Not authoritative. Status information comes from a public page that updates periodically and can be incomplete or out of date. The authoritative source for your application is the Designated Firearms Officer at the station where you lodged it.
  • Not legal advice. Nothing in Sentry is legal advice, and using it does not create a professional relationship. What the Firearms Control Act requires of you is a question for an attorney or your DFO.
  • Not a substitute for your own records. Keep your licences, certificates and proof of posting as you would anyway.

4. Your account

You need an account, and you are responsible for keeping your password to yourself. Passwords must be at least 12 characters and are checked against known breached passwords. Resetting your password signs the mobile app out as well, which is deliberate: that is the one moment you expect everything else to lose access.

Confirming your email address is not required to use Sentry, but until you do, email reminders cannot reach you.

5. What you tell Sentry has to be right

Reminders are calculated from the reference numbers and expiry dates you enter. If those are wrong, the dates Sentry shows you will be wrong. Sentry cannot verify an expiry date against SAPS — no public source exposes one — so it takes yours as given.

6. Reminders are best-effort

Sentry schedules reminders on your device as well as sending them from the server, so that a reminder still arrives when the network does not. Even so, a reminder depends on things outside our control: a verified email address that accepts our mail, a device that is switched on, and push notifications that you have not disabled. Sentry does not promise that any particular reminder will arrive, and it remains your responsibility to renew on time.

7. Availability

Status checking depends on a SAPS page that goes offline periodically. When it stops responding, Sentry stops checking, tells you when it last succeeded, and resumes on its own. The service is provided as-is and without any promise of uptime.

8. Liability

Needs legal review

Any limitation of liability has to be drafted and positioned by a South African attorney. Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 s 49 requires a term that limits liability or assumes risk on a consumer's behalf to be conspicuous and in plain language, and drawn to the consumer's attention before the agreement is concluded; s 51 makes some exclusions void regardless of what the contract says. Because Sentry's purpose is to warn about a statutory deadline, what it may disclaim about a warning that does not arrive is precisely the question counsel must answer.

Until that clause is settled, treat Sentry as an aid to your own record-keeping and nothing more.

9. Indemnity

Needs legal review

Whether an indemnity is appropriate here at all, and in what terms, is for counsel. A broad indemnity given by a consumer is likely to be unenforceable under Consumer Protection Act s 48 and s 51, and presenting one as though it bound the user would be misleading.

10. Ending your use of Sentry

You can delete your account from Settings at any time. Deletion is immediate and permanent: your records and any documents you uploaded are erased, not archived. See the privacy notice for what that covers.

11. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa.

Needs legal review

The forum for disputes, and whether to offer an alternative dispute resolution route, still need to be settled — ECTA s 43(1) expects a site to say.

12. Changes

These terms carry a version. When the operative terms change, the version changes and you will be asked to accept them again rather than being bound by a change you never saw.