Privacy Policy
Last updated: August 2026
Introduction
Cherished Book is operated in the United Kingdom and is committed to protecting your privacy and personal data. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and safeguard information when you use our services.
Data we collect
We collect information you provide directly: name, email address, the memorial content you create, and any messages you submit. We also collect minimal technical data (IP address, browser type) for security and service reliability.
IP addresses and contributions
When you submit a contribution to a memorial (a memory, eulogy, prayer, condolence, announcement, or event), we record the IP address the submission came from alongside the contribution itself. The IP is shown to the memorial owner and moderators in their moderation dashboard, together with an approximate location (city and country) derived from that IP using ipinfo.io. We do this for one reason: to help memorial owners spot and stop abuse, including spam, impersonation, harassment, or coordinated misuse of public memorials. The IP is not sold, not shared with advertisers, and not used to build a profile of you. It is stored against the contribution for as long as the contribution exists; if the contribution is deleted, the IP is deleted with it.
Visitor statistics
We keep a simple count of how many people visit each memorial, so the people who care for it can see that loved ones are still coming by. This is counted on our own servers — we do not use Google Analytics or any third-party tracking, and we do not set any advertising or tracking cookies, so there is no cookie banner to click through. We do not store the IP addresses of visitors for this purpose. A visit is counted once per browser session per day using the ordinary session cookie that keeps the site working; repeat views on the same day are not counted again. The numbers shown to memorial owners are totals only (for example, visitors this week or this month) and cannot identify any individual visitor.
How we use your data
Your data is used to operate the platform, deliver memorial pages to those you authorise, and communicate with you about the service. We do not sell your data and we do not share it with advertisers.
When you contact us
When you use our contact form, we receive your name, email address, your message, and any extra details the form asks for depending on your reason for writing. That might be an organisation name and address for a partnership enquiry, or a link to a memorial for a content report.
We use this information only to deal with your enquiry. The legal basis depends on why you are writing:
- for general questions, help with a memorial, and problem reports, our legitimate interest in answering the people who contact us;
- for partnership enquiries, taking steps at your request before entering into a contract;
- for data and privacy requests, meeting our legal obligations under data protection law.
If you report content on a memorial, we may need to share what you tell us with the person who created that memorial so we can look into it fairly. For a data or privacy request, we may ask you to confirm your identity first, so we do not release information to the wrong person.
We keep your message and our reply only as long as we need to deal with your enquiry and any follow-up, then we remove it. Where the law requires us to keep a record for longer, such as a data protection request, we keep only what is necessary.
Your rights (GDPR)
You have the right to access, correct, export, and delete your personal data. Get in touch to exercise these rights.
Data retention
Memorial content is kept for as long as your account is active. You can delete your account at any time from your profile settings. Deletion runs after a 28-day cooling-off period, which you can cancel from the emails we send. After that we permanently remove your account and the memorials you alone own. Some records may be kept where the law requires it, such as financial records for tax, and copies can remain in routine backups until those backups are rotated.
Security
We use encryption in transit and at rest. Hosting infrastructure is GDPR-compliant and UK-based.
Contact
For privacy-related questions, please get in touch.
This policy is a working draft for the beta site and will be replaced with the finalised legal text prior to general availability.