Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

LifeMuseo ("we", "us") provides an online service for recording, organising and sharing personal life stories, memories, photographs, recordings and family information (the "Service"), available at lifemuseo.com. For any privacy matter, contact us at hello@lifemuseo.com or via our contact page.

2. What we collect

Account information: your name and email address. If you sign up with a password, it's stored in hashed form — we never see or store your actual password. If you sign in with Google or Microsoft instead, we receive your name, email address, and (where the provider shares it) a profile photo — we never see your Google or Microsoft password.

Content you choose to add: memories, life stories, biographies, photographs, video, voice recordings, dates, locations, family tree information, guestbook messages, time capsules, and — for Plus members — hobbies, education, music and film preferences recorded in a profile's Interests section, including profiles you create for others.

Payment information, if you upgrade to Plus: card and billing details are collected and processed directly by Stripe, our payment processor. We never see or store your full card number — we only receive confirmation of payment and a reference we use to manage your subscription.

Technical information necessary to operate the Service: authentication session data, essential cookies (see section 6), and — purely to prevent automated abuse of public pages such as guestbooks — a temporary log of IP addresses and timestamps for certain actions, kept only briefly and never used to identify or track you for any other purpose.

We do not collect data for advertising, we do not use tracking or analytics cookies, and we do not profile you.

3. How we use your data

Solely to provide the Service: storing your content, showing it to the people you choose, and operating features such as sharing, friend connections, collaboration, and printing.

We do not sell your data. We do not share your data with advertisers or data brokers. We do not use your memories, photographs or recordings for any purpose other than displaying them back to you and the people you explicitly authorise.

We send service emails where relevant to your use of LifeMuseo: confirming your address, resetting your password, important account or billing notices, birthday and anniversary reminders for profiles you've chosen to enable this for, a weekly writing prompt, delivery of a time capsule you've sealed for someone, and replies to messages you send us. Birthday/anniversary reminders and the weekly prompt can be turned off — reminders per profile in that profile's settings, and you can reply to any prompt email to ask to be unsubscribed from it.

A small number of authorised staff can access account information solely to help with support requests you raise with us — for example, fixing a billing issue or reviewing a legacy handover request. This access is logged, and is never used to view your content out of curiosity or for any purpose other than the support request itself.

4. Who can see and edit your content

You control visibility. Profiles are private by default. Content is visible only according to the settings you choose: private (only you), connections (people you have accepted as friends), or public (anyone with the link).

You can also invite specific people ("contributors") to add content to a profile you manage, and choose whether their contributions publish instantly or wait for your approval first. Contributors can only add content — they cannot change the profile's own settings, and you can remove their access at any time.

These rules are enforced at the database level, independent of the application, so a bug in the app cannot expose private content.

5. Legacy handover

If you name a legacy contact, we keep their name and email on file only for the purpose of a future handover — we don't contact them for any other reason.

Anyone can submit a request to take over a deceased person's account, providing their own account details, the account they're requesting, and their relationship to that person. We review each request individually, typically requesting proof such as a death certificate or grant of probate before approving it. Approving a request transfers the relevant profiles — and the content attached to them — into the requester's own account.

6. Where your data is stored, and who else processes it

Your data is hosted with Supabase (database and file storage) and the website is served via Vercel. Both are established infrastructure providers with industry-standard security. Files such as photographs and recordings are stored in private storage and are only accessible through expiring, signed links generated for authorised viewers.

A small number of specialist providers process specific parts of the Service on our behalf, only for the purpose stated: Stripe for payment processing, Resend for sending the emails described in section 3, and Google or Microsoft if you choose to sign in using one of those services. None of these providers use your data for their own advertising or marketing.

7. Cookies

We use essential cookies only: a session cookie that keeps you logged in, a cookie remembering which profile you are managing, and a cookie recording that you have acknowledged our cookie notice. None of these are used for tracking or advertising, and no third-party marketing cookies are set.

8. Your rights

Under UK and EU data protection law (UK GDPR / GDPR) you have the right to access, correct, export and erase your personal data, and to object to or restrict certain processing.

You can exercise both export and deletion yourself, at any time, from Settings: "Download my data" gives you a copy of everything attached to your account in a standard file format, and "Delete my account" permanently removes your account, every profile you manage, and all associated content — including the underlying photos, video and recordings, not just the records referencing them. For any other request, contact us via our contact page and we will respond within one month.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

9. Content about other people

The Service allows you to create profiles and record memories about family members, including people who have passed away. You are responsible for ensuring you have an appropriate basis to share information about living people, and for respecting their wishes regarding visibility. If you believe content about you has been published without an appropriate basis, contact us and we will review it.

10. Data retention

We keep your content for as long as your account exists. When you delete a memory, story or profile, it is removed from the Service; when you delete your account, all of your data is permanently deleted, including anything held by profiles you managed. Sealed time capsules are held until their chosen unlock date (or until you delete them), after which the message is delivered and then retained only as long as the capsule itself exists in your account.

11. Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to this policy we will notify you by email or by a notice on the Service before the changes take effect.