Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

TributeWords (“we”, “us”, “our”) is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, and handle information when you access our website and use our AI-assisted personalised eulogy and funeral tribute generation service (the “Service”). This policy covers tributewords.com (eulogy and tribute writer). By using the Service, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy.

2. Information We Collect

When you use TributeWords, we process the following categories of information:

• Intake Form Data. The names, relationship details, memories, and preferences you enter into the intake form to generate your eulogy or tribute. This information is provided voluntarily and is necessary to deliver the Service.
• Payment Information. Payment transactions are processed securely by Paddle, our merchant of record. We do not receive, store, or process your full credit card number, billing address, or other payment credentials. All payment data is handled exclusively by Paddle and is subject to their Privacy Policy.
• Technical Information. When you visit our website, our hosting provider (Vercel) automatically collects certain technical information, including your IP address, browser type, operating system, and page access timestamps. This data is collected and retained by Vercel for security and operational purposes in accordance with Vercel's privacy practices. TributeWords does not independently collect or store this information.

3. How We Use Your Information

Your intake form data is used exclusively to generate your eulogy or tribute via an AI model. It is transmitted to the AI model at the time of generation. Your data is used once for generation and is not retained beyond temporary processing and technical operations required to operate the Service.

We do not use your personal information, including the content of your intake form submissions or generated eulogies, to train, fine-tune, or improve our AI models or those of our third-party AI providers.

4. Third-Party Service Providers

We share your information with the following third-party service providers solely as necessary to deliver the Service.

• Paddle. Paddle acts as our merchant of record and handles all payment processing. When you complete a purchase, your payment information is transmitted directly to Paddle. Paddle's collection and use of your payment data is governed by Paddle's Privacy Policy.
• Anthropic. Anthropic provides the Claude AI model used to generate your eulogy or tribute. Your intake form data is transmitted to Anthropic's API at the time of generation. Provided our account maintains the necessary commercial configuration, Anthropic operates under a Zero Data Retention (ZDR) policy for the Messages API, meaning that your data is not stored at rest by Anthropic after the API response is returned, and is not used for model training. See Anthropic's Privacy Policy.
• Resend. Resend provides transactional email delivery. After payment, your email address (obtained via Paddle) is used to send you a form link and, after generation, a copy of your generated eulogy or tribute. Resend processes your email address solely to deliver these transactional messages. See Resend's Privacy Policy.
• Vercel. Vercel hosts our web application. Standard server logs, including IP addresses and access timestamps, may be retained by Vercel in accordance with their standard data retention practices. TributeWords does not have direct access to or control over these logs.

5. Data Retention

We do not retain your intake form data after generation, except for temporary processing and technical logs required to operate the Service. We do not maintain a database of user-submitted personal information.

A session identifier is temporarily stored in a Redis cache solely to prevent duplicate submissions during a single session. This session data does not contain your personal information and is automatically purged after a short period.

Payment records, including transaction identifiers and purchase history, are retained by Paddle for billing, tax compliance, and fraud prevention purposes in accordance with Paddle's data retention schedules.

6. Security and Safeguards

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational measures to protect the limited information we process against unauthorized access, loss, or misuse. However, no internet-based service is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your information.

7. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

TributeWords does not use tracking cookies, analytics cookies, or advertising cookies. We do not share your browsing activity with advertising networks or analytics platforms.

We may use essential session cookies that are strictly necessary to maintain the state of your session during the eulogy generation process. These cookies do not track your activity across other websites and are deleted when your session ends. Because we do not use non-essential cookies, we do not display a cookie consent banner. If you have questions about our cookie practices, please contact us at tribute@tributewords.com.

8. Your Privacy Rights

Depending on your state of residence, you may have certain rights regarding your personal information under applicable state privacy laws (including, for California residents, the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act). Note that the CCPA applies to businesses that meet specific revenue or data volume thresholds (e.g., gross annual revenue over $25 million, or buying, selling, or sharing personal information of 100,000 or more consumers). If TributeWords does not meet these thresholds, CCPA rights may not legally apply, but we strive to honor reasonable privacy requests regardless of legal mandate.

While we process information temporarily to deliver the Service, we do not maintain long-term databases of personal information on our servers to access, correct, or delete.

Do Not Sell or Share.

We do not sell or share your personal information as defined under applicable state privacy laws.

If you wish to exercise rights regarding payment data held by Paddle, please contact Paddle directly through their privacy contact channels. For questions about data processed by Anthropic, please refer to Anthropic's Privacy Policy.

For any other privacy inquiries, contact us at tribute@tributewords.com.

9. EU/EEA Privacy Rights (GDPR)

If you are located in the European Union or European Economic Area, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) may apply to the processing of your personal data.

Legal basis for processing.

We process your intake form data on the basis of performance of a contract (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR) — specifically, to generate the eulogy or tribute you have purchased. We process your email address (obtained via Paddle) to send transactional messages on the same basis. We do not rely on consent as a legal basis for these core processing activities.

Your rights under GDPR.

As an EU/EEA data subject, you have the right to:

• Access — request a copy of personal data we hold about you;
• Erasure — request deletion of your personal data;
• Rectification — request correction of inaccurate personal data;
• Restriction — request that we limit processing of your personal data;
• Portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format;
• Objection — object to processing based on legitimate interests.

Because our Service is stateless and we do not retain intake form data after generation, most of these rights are satisfied by design. For payment data held by Paddle, please contact Paddle directly. For any other GDPR requests, contact us at tribute@tributewords.com. We will respond within 30 days.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority (supervisory authority) if you believe our processing of your personal data infringes GDPR.

10. Legal Compliance and Disclosure

We may disclose your information if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (i) comply with a legal obligation or a valid request from law enforcement; (ii) protect and defend the rights or property of TributeWords; (iii) act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of the Service or the public; or (iv) protect against legal liability.

11. Children's Privacy

The Service is not directed to children under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from individuals under 18. In compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), we do not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from anyone under the age of 13. If you are a parent or guardian and believe that your child has provided personal information to us, please contact us at tribute@tributewords.com and we will take steps to delete such information promptly.

12. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or applicable law. If we make material changes, we will notify you by updating the “Last updated” date at the top of this policy. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.