Privacy Policy

CandlePaws is operated by [OPERATOR LEGAL NAME AND ADDRESS — to be completed before commercial launch]. In the words of the GDPR, that operator is the “controller” of the personal data described on this page — the party responsible for how and why it is used. If you have any question about your data, the contact section below is the place to reach us.

Only what the service genuinely needs:

• Your email address, when you create an account. We sign you in with an emailed link — no passwords, and no other account details.
• The memorial you create:your pet’s name and details, the story you write, and the photos you upload. Published memorial pages — including the story and photos — are visible to anyone who has the link.
• Guestbook tributes and candles: visitors can leave a memory (the name they sign with and their message) and light a candle (with an optional name and the time it was lit) — no account needed. Tributes and candle counts appear publicly on the memorial page.
• Payment records, but never card details. Premium payments are handled entirely by Stripe; your card number never touches our servers. We keep only the order record: which memorial, the amount, and when.
• Technical basics: the short-lived server logs (such as IP addresses) that any website generates, used only to keep the service secure and to prevent spam and abuse.

What we don’t do: no advertising profiles, no tracking you across the web, and no selling of data — not now, not ever.

The GDPR asks us to name a legal basis for each use of your data. Ours are simple:

• To provide the service you asked for — hosting the memorial, signing you in, delivering the Premium upgrade you purchased (performance of a contract, Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
• To keep the service safe — preventing spam and abuse, and keeping security logs (our legitimate interest, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, in running a trustworthy service).
• With your consent, where we ever ask for it for something optional (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR) — anything like that will say so clearly, and you can withdraw consent at any time.

When you use “Help me shape this” while writing a memorial story, the notes you typed (plus your pet’s name and species, if you gave them) are sent to Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI model, to draft a story from them. Under Anthropic’s commercial terms, this text is not used to train their models. The draft comes back to you as an editable suggestion — nothing is published unless you choose to save it, and nothing is sent anywhere unless you use the feature.

A handful of carefully chosen providers process data on our behalf (as “processors”), each under a data-processing agreement and only for the purpose listed:

• Supabase — our database, sign-in system, and photo storage, hosted in Frankfurt, Germany (EU).
• Vercel — hosts and serves the website itself.
• Stripe — processes Premium payments; the only party that ever sees your payment details.
• Resend — delivers our emails, such as your sign-in links.
• Anthropic — provides the AI writing helper described above, only when you use it.

The heart of the service — accounts, memorials, stories, photos, tributes and candles — is stored with Supabase in Frankfurt, Germany, inside the EU. Some providers (payments, email delivery, the AI helper) may process data in the United States; where that happens, it is covered by recognised safeguards such as the EU standard contractual clauses or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.

• Memorial content stays until you delete it. Free memorial pages stay up for as long as you leave them there — that is the promise the service is built on. When you delete a memorial from your account page, its photos, guestbook and candles are permanently deleted with it.
• Deleting your account deletes everything — every memorial you look after, and then the account itself.
• Payment records are retained by Stripe, our payment provider, and in our bookkeeping for as long as tax and accounting law requires — even after an account is deleted.
• Security logs are short-lived and rotate automatically.

Under the GDPR you can, at any time:

• Access the personal data we hold about you, and receive a copy;
• Correct anything that is inaccurate;
• Delete your data — the delete controls on your account page do this directly, no request needed;
• Take your data with you (portability) in a common machine-readable format;
• Restrict or object to processing based on our legitimate interests;
• Withdraw consent wherever processing is based on it, without affecting what happened before.

To exercise any of these, use your account page or contact us. You also have the right to complain to a data-protection supervisory authority — for example, the one in the EU country where you live.

CandlePaws is not directed at children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their personal data. If you believe a child has given us personal data, please contact us and we will delete it.

We use only strictly necessary cookies: the session cookie that keeps you signed in to your account. That is the whole list. There are no analytics cookies, no tracking cookies, and no third-party advertising cookies — which is why you don’t see a cookie banner here.

If we ever add analytics to understand how the service is used, we will update this policy first and provide appropriate notice — and ask for consent where the law requires it.

When this policy changes, we will post the new version here with an updated date. If a change meaningfully affects how your data is handled, we will give account holders reasonable notice — by email — before it takes effect.

For anything about your data, this policy, or the service — or to report content — reach us at [contact email — goes live with our domain]. The operator’s full legal name and address will appear here before commercial launch.