Who we are
This Privacy Policy explains what information Pet Legacy Guide collects, why, and how it's handled. Pet Legacy Guide is a small, independently run site, and it is the party that decides how information is used (the “controller” under laws such as the GDPR). You can reach us through the contact page with any question about this policy or your information.
Information you provide for a memorial
When you submit a memorial, we collect:
- Your pet's name, species or breed, birth and death dates (partial dates are fine), and the story you write
- A photo of your pet
- The language of the page you used to submit
- A salted, one-way hash of your IP address (not the IP address itself), used only to help prevent abuse of the submission form
- We don't ask for your name, email address, or any account details for a memorial
What becomes public
If your memorial is approved, its page shows your pet's name, species, dates, story, and photo, and it can be found by search engines and shared by anyone. The published photo file also carries your pet's name and your story as embedded text, and any hidden location data in your original photo is removed. The IP hash and our internal review notes are never published. Because the page is public, please don't include information about yourself or others that you wouldn't want anyone to read, and check the background of your photo.
Contact form and email
If you use the contact form or email us, we receive your name, email address, and message, and whatever else you choose to tell us. The form message is delivered to our inbox by email and isn't otherwise stored on the site. We keep correspondence only as long as needed to respond and to keep a reasonable record, and we use it only to reply to you.
Information we don't collect
We do not use accounts, logins, analytics scripts, or advertising trackers, and we don't set any cookies ourselves. We don't build profiles of visitors. Our hosting provider, like any web host, processes technical request data such as IP address, browser type, and the page requested in order to deliver the site and keep it secure; we don't use that to identify you.
Embedded and third-party features
A few features load from third parties, which can see your IP address and set their own cookies under their own policies:
- Maps on directory pages load tile images from OpenStreetMap (tile.openstreetmap.org)
- The contact form uses Google reCAPTCHA, and the memorial form may use a Cloudflare Turnstile challenge, to tell people from bots
- Links to Google Maps and other sites send you to those sites only if you click them
How we use your information
We use submitted information to review, publish, and display a memorial page, to reply to you if needed, to protect the site from spam and abuse, and to keep the site running securely. If you are in the EEA, the UK, or a similar region, our legal bases are your consent when you submit a memorial, our legitimate interest in running and securing the site, and compliance with the law where it applies. We do not sell your information, and we do not use it for advertising.
Automated screening and human review
Every submitted photo is automatically screened for content that violates our prohibited-content policy (see Terms of Service) and scanned for malware, using Google's Gemini API and VirusTotal, before a person reviews the submission. This means a submitted photo is sent to Google and to VirusTotal for analysis. Google's terms for its free API tier allow it to use content sent through the API to improve its products, and VirusTotal may keep the files it scans and share them with its security partners. We therefore send only the photo and, where needed, the story text, never contact details.
These automated steps help us flag content; they do not publish anything. A person reviews every submission from a visitor before it is published, and automated results are not the final decision.
Generated content
Our editors occasionally add example memorials for fictional pets, written and illustrated with the help of AI. They don't contain information about real people or real owners, and no visitor information is used to create them.
Who we share information with
We don't sell or rent your information. We use a small number of service providers to run the site, each processing information only on our behalf:
- Cloudflare: hosting, content delivery, and our database (Cloudflare D1), which stores submission and memorial data, and, if enabled, bot-protection challenges
- Oracle Cloud (OCI Object Storage): storage of submitted photos
- Oracle Cloud (OCI Email Delivery): delivering messages sent through the contact form
- Google (Gemini API): automated screening of submitted photos, and drafting and translation help for the directory and guides
- Google (reCAPTCHA): spam and bot protection on the contact form
- VirusTotal: automated malware scanning of submitted photos
- OpenStreetMap Foundation: map tile images on directory pages
- Authorities or advisers, only where the law requires it or to protect our rights or the safety of others
How long we keep information
Published memorial pages are intended to be permanent, lasting tributes, so please keep that in mind before submitting. Submissions that are never approved, or that are rejected, including automatically, remain in our review queue and in photo storage until we manually clean them up; we don't yet have an automated deletion job for this, so if you'd like something removed sooner, contact us. The IP hash is kept with the submission record. Backups and provider logs may keep data for a short time after deletion, according to those providers' own schedules.
Your choices and rights
Because there are no accounts, we can't offer a self-service way to edit or delete a submission. Instead, send us a message through the contact page and we'll act on your request as quickly as we can, usually within 30 days. We may ask for details that only the submitter would know before changing or removing a memorial.
Wherever you live, you can ask us to access, correct, or delete your information, or to remove a published memorial. If you are in the EEA, the UK, or a similar region, you may also have the right to restrict or object to processing, to data portability, to withdraw consent, and to complain to your local data-protection authority. If you are in California, you have the rights described in the CCPA/CPRA: we don't sell or share personal information as those laws define it, and we won't treat you differently for exercising your rights. You may use an authorised agent. We honour valid requests regardless of where you're located.
Removed memorials and copies
When a memorial is removed, it disappears from the site at the next rebuild, usually within a day, and its photo is deleted from our storage. Copies held elsewhere, such as search-engine results, browser or network caches, social media previews, and web archives, are outside our control; we can ask a search engine to refresh its index, but we can't force other copies to go.
Security
Photos are stored in private cloud storage and served through our own domain, and the IP address is stored only as a salted one-way hash. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee the security of information. If you find a security problem, please tell us through the contact page.
Children's privacy
Pet Legacy Guide is not directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone we know to be under 13 (or the relevant minimum age in your country). If you believe a child has submitted information to us, or that a photo shows a child you want removed, please contact us and we'll remove it.
International visitors
Pet Legacy Guide is reachable worldwide, and our hosting and service providers may process information in countries other than your own, including the United States. Where required, those providers rely on recognised safeguards for international transfers. By using the site, you understand your information may be processed outside your home country.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as the site changes. The “last updated” date at the top always reflects the current version, and meaningful changes will be reflected here directly since there are no accounts to notify individually.
Contact
Questions about this policy or your information? Send us a message through the contact page.