Privacy

What we do with what you tell us

You’re telling us about someone you love, and about your family. Here is exactly what happens to that.

What we keep

What we use it for

When you speak your answers

Speech is turned into text by your own browser’s speech service (Google’s in Chrome, Apple’s in Safari). We receive the words, not the recording. If you’d rather that didn’t happen, type instead.

Who else handles it

The eulogy is drafted by an AI model that runs inside our own account in London, on Amazon Bedrock. Your words never go to a model vendor’s own service, and the contract forbids using them for training.

This is everyone who handles anything for us:

When your family adds a memory

If you ask someone for a memory, we email them once, and once more only if you send a reminder, because you asked us to. We don’t email them about anything else. Their address, and anything they write, is deleted with your eulogy. If they tell us not to write to them again, we keep a note of that for a year, so that nobody else can invite them either. It is a one-way code, not their address, and it is the only thing about them we keep. Only you, and the AI that drafts your eulogy, read what they write, and you decide whether it goes into the eulogy.

How long we keep it

Everything you’ve told us, and the eulogy, is deleted 30 days after your last visit. If you open the interview and leave without answering a question, and without saving it to your email with “Finish later”, we keep it for a day from when you opened it, instead of 30 days. That covers everything in it, including the name of the person you are writing about if you typed it to start, and the details of any advert you came from. After that day it can no longer be opened, and it is cleared from our database soon after and from our backups within 35 days. The cost record described below, which has nothing you typed in it, still says which page you started from and which group of our adverts, if you came from one. You can delete everything sooner from your private link, or by emailing us, and we’ll confirm when it’s done. It is removed from our systems straight away, and from our backups within 35 days. We cannot restore it for you.

Three things outlive it, and one of them is about you. We keep a record of what each eulogy cost us to write — numbers, dates, which page you arrived on, and which group of our adverts, if you came from one. It is filed under a one-way code, and it holds no name, no address and not one word that anybody typed — but the note in our inbox, below, carries that same code beside your address. And if you paid, we keep the payment record the law requires us to keep for seven years: a reference, a receipt number, an amount and the dates. That one has no name or address in it either.

The third sits in our own inbox. At four moments — when you sign up, when your opening is ready and we show it to you, when you open the checkout, and when you pay — we send ourselves a short note, so that we can see who is using this and know straight away when somebody buys. It says the address you gave us, the reference our dashboard uses for your eulogy, which step you reached, which page you arrived on, whether you came from one of our adverts, and the time. If you paid, it says the amount. The only thing of yours in it is that address: it never says a word you wrote, and never the eulogy. It sits in that mailbox the way any email does, so “delete everything” cannot reach it — write to hello@sayafewwords.co.uk and we will delete the note as well, and confirm.

If you write to us

Mail to hello@sayafewwords.co.uk is forwarded to a person, and it stays in that mailbox the way any email does. It is outside the deletion above: pressing “delete everything” removes what you told us for the eulogy, and it cannot reach into a mailbox. If you want an email you sent us deleted as well, say so and we will delete it and confirm.

Your private link

The link in our emails opens your eulogy straight away on a device where you’ve already signed in. On any other device we email you a code first, so a forwarded link on its own opens nothing. To let someone else read it, print it or send them a copy.

We do not use Google Analytics, or any other analytics service. We do some counting ourselves, described just below, and there is nothing in it to ask you about. The advert record, further down, is different, and you can refuse it.

There is one question, and only if you arrived by clicking one of our adverts. It is below, and you can change the answer whenever you like. If you say nothing, the answer is no.

What we count ourselves. On our own pages we count how many people visit each one, roughly how long they stayed, whether they read to the end, and whether they went on to start the interview and answer its first question. In the interview, if you leave while a question is on screen — you switch to another app or tab, close it, or your screen locks — we count which question it was, roughly how long it had been on screen, whether the answer box was empty, whether you had used the microphone (not what it heard), and whether you came from one of our adverts. If you then come back and answer that question, we count that someone did. When an interview is finished, we count how many of the questions that ask for your own words were answered, typed or spoken: none, one or two, or three or more — never what was said.

On the page where you sign up or sign in, we count that it was shown, whether you came to it at the end of the interview, to finish later, or to sign back in, and whether you came from one of our adverts. When you move away from it — to another app, perhaps to find the code in your email, to another tab, or by closing it or locking your screen — we count how far you had got (the email box, the code, or signed in), whether the email box was empty (never what was in it), which kind of error message, if any, we last showed you, roughly how long you had been on the page, and whether you came from one of our adverts. If you then come back to it, we count that someone did.

These counts hold no name, no address, no session and no word you wrote or said. Nothing is stored on or read from your device to make them. The interview and sign-up counts are added together with everyone else’s for the whole month, and all of these counts are deleted after about 13 months.

Adverts. If you arrived by clicking one of our adverts, we record which advert it was, so we can tell which ones are worth paying for. That record is a reference number from the advert and the page you landed on. It holds no name, no email, and not one word of what you tell us, and it is deleted with your eulogy like everything else. The note we send ourselves, above, also says which advert it was, and that one sits in a mailbox.

We do this without asking you, and you should know why: nothing is stored on your device to make it work, so there is nothing on your machine for you to allow or refuse. It is a note on our own side about which advert we paid for. If you would rather we did not, say so below or write to us, and we will delete the reference and stop.

We do not tell Google about your purchase. We could — advertisers usually do — and if we ever decide to, we will ask you first and it will be a plain yes-or-no question. Today the answer is simply that we do not. We never send your name, your email or anything you tell us to an advertiser, and we never let anyone build an advertising audience from people who come here.

Why we’re allowed to do this

For writing your eulogy and sending it to you, our reason in law is that you asked us to: it is what our agreement with you is for. For recording which advert you came from, our reason is our legitimate interest in knowing which adverts are worth paying for — the record is a reference and a page name, and you can object at any time and we will delete it. For the counting we do ourselves, the law allows it because it helps us find where the interview, and signing up or signing in, are hard to get through, and the counts hold no name, no address and no words.

We never ask you anything sensitive. We ask who they were, where their life happened, who to mention, how they spent their days, a story the family tells, and what you will miss. We do not ask about anyone’s health, religion, politics or private life. If you mention something like that in passing it is used only to write this eulogy, it is never used for anything else, and it is deleted with the rest. If you would rather leave something out, leave it out: the eulogy is simply written without it.

None of it is compulsory. Without an email address we cannot send you your eulogy, and without your answers there is nothing to write from.

Decisions made by software

Your eulogy is written by software and checked by software. Nothing here makes a decision about you that has a legal effect, or anything close to one. It writes words. You decide what to do with them, and you can change or discard every one.

Other people you tell us about

A eulogy is about someone who has died, and the law we work to protects the living. You will name living people too: family, friends, whoever is doing the reading. We use what you say about them only to write the eulogy you asked for, we never contact them because they were mentioned, and it is deleted with everything else. If you have named someone and they would like that removed, write to us.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of what we hold, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, ask us to stop or limit what we do with it, object to us doing it at all, or ask for it in a form you can take somewhere else. Where we rely on your consent you can withdraw it at any time. Any of these, whenever you like, to hello@sayafewwords.co.uk. We will not ask you why.

We do not have a data protection officer and are not required to have one. If we have got something wrong, please tell us so we can put it right; you can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Say a Few Words is a trading name of Datrics Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 12581068. VAT number 444557674. Registered office: 42 Edmondscote Road, Leamington Spa, England, CV32 6AQ. We are registered with the ICO, reference ZB090302.