Privacy notice

Place a Stone is run and sold by Codama Advanced Engineering, Inc. (“Codama”), a corporation incorporated in Delaware, USA, with its registered office at 8 The Green, Ste A, Dover, DE 19901, USA. Place a Stone is run from Israel; to write to us there, use Codama – Advanced Software Solutions Ltd. (company no. 516756517), Oren 32/2, Harish 3760101, Israel. Email, for anything in this notice: info@codama.dev.

Codama is the controller of all the personal information in Place a Stone (accounts, payments and what is published on pages) under the Israeli Privacy Protection Law, 5741-1981, and for the purposes of the GDPR. A page’s stewards decide what goes on it and are responsible for what they publish there, as the terms explain.

An account: your email address, a display name if you give one, and the language you read in. Our sign-in provider also keeps a record of each sign-in (the time, the internet address and the kind of browser) for security.

A page: the name, dates, places, life story, photographs, recordings and documents its stewards add (which can include information about relatives and friends who are alive) and the memories, photographs, recordings and documents other people add to it.

A memory: its text and files, the writer’s name and how they knew the person, and, if they give them, their email address and when it happened.

A page about yourself: each entry you write, with the audience you chose for it (see “Your own story”).

A code made from the internet address of anyone who writes without an account, lights a candle, reports something or asks to cancel a purchase. It is a keyed hash: the address cannot be recovered from it without a secret key only we hold, and we do not do so. It exists only to stop one person flooding a page. The candle code described under “Cookies” is kept the same way.

A payment: the plan, the amount and currency, the date, the name on the card and its last four digits (the record of who bought the page). The card number goes to Stripe and never reaches us.

An invitation: when a steward invites someone by email, the address it is sent to.

Requests to take over a page and reports about content: what was asked or reported, the relationship claimed, any documents sent, and what was decided. And a history of each page: who approved, edited, removed or deleted what, and when.

What you agreed to: the exact sentence you were shown, the language it was in, and the version of these documents.

A scan of a page’s code: when it happened, and the city and country of the network used, not who scanned it, their device or their address.

There is no advertising identifier, no behavioural profile, and no third-party tracking or analytics on Place a Stone.

To give you an account, send you sign-in codes and keep the account secure. Basis: our contract with you; for the sign-in records, our legitimate interest in protecting accounts.

To keep each page and show it, with its memories, to the audience its stewards chose. Basis: our contract with the steward. For other people a page mentions, the family’s and our legitimate interest in remembering someone who has died, weighed against theirs by the steward’s review, the reporting route, and every page staying private until it is opened.

To pass a memory to the family, publish it if they approve, and tell its writer the outcome. Basis: the writer asked us to send it.

To stop flooding and abuse, check content before it appears, and deal with reports. Basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the service safe.

To take payments, open the page, make refunds and keep accounts, and to keep the name on the card as evidence that a real, identifiable person opened the page. Basis: our contract with you, our obligations under tax and accounting law, and our legitimate interest in preventing false pages.

To send the emails the service needs: sign-in codes, decisions on memories, notices about requests to take over a page, the yearly archive, and, on a page that keeps the Hebrew calendar, a reminder before each yahrzeit. The reminders, the notices about memories and the yearly archive can each be switched off in “Your notifications”. Basis: our contract with you.

To write to you a few times at most, to ask how Place a Stone is working for you and, if you started a page, to point you back to it: the day after you sign up if you have not started a page, a few days later if a page is still empty, the day after a payment that was not completed, and twice after you open a page. These letters sell nothing, and the link at the foot of each one stops them all; they can also be switched off in “Your notifications”. Basis: our legitimate interest in improving the service.

To write a draft when you press “Draft it for me”. Basis: you asked us to.

To decide requests about who keeps a page. Basis: our legitimate interest, and, for documents sent with a request, establishing and defending legal claims.

To keep a record of what was agreed and what happened to each page, in case it is ever questioned. Basis: our legitimate interest, and our duty to be able to show consent.

We do not use personal information for marketing, and we do not sell it. Where we rely on a legitimate interest, you can object (see “Your rights”).

No law obliges you to; it is your choice. But without an email address you cannot have an account or keep a page; without a name you cannot send a memory; and without paying you cannot open a page to other people. An email address with a memory is optional: without it we simply cannot tell you whether it was published.

Everyone who can see a page, as its stewards chose: only the stewards, anyone with the link, or anyone at all, including search engines. A page that search engines have indexed can stay in their results for a while after it is made private or deleted.

A page’s stewards: the memories sent to it, with their writers’ names and relationship to the person, never their email addresses.

Railway, which runs our application servers: they handle every page and request, and process the photographs you upload. In the United States (Virginia).

Cloudflare, which delivers every page and request on placeastone.com and protects the site from attack, and so sees your internet address. A worldwide network.

Supabase, which holds our database and the files you upload and runs sign-in. In the European Union (Frankfurt). Photographs and recordings on a page reach your browser directly from Supabase.

Infobip, which sends our emails: it receives the recipient’s address and the message.

OpenAI, only when you press “Draft it for me”: it receives what you wrote and the person’s name, and returns a draft. In the United States. Under its terms for business customers it does not use them to train its models.

Stripe, which takes payments. It receives your account email, the plan, the name of the person the page is for, and whatever you type on its payment page, and it also uses payment and device information for its own purposes, such as preventing fraud, under its own privacy policy at stripe.com/privacy.

Courts or authorities, where the law requires it.

We update this list before a new company starts receiving personal information.

We are a US company. Our application servers are in the United States; our database and the files you upload are stored in the European Union. So when you use Place a Stone, your information is processed in the United States, which the EU, the UK and Israel do not regard as protecting it as their own law does. To ask about the safeguards that apply, write to info@codama.dev.

Information is encrypted in transit and at rest, and only the people at Codama who need it can reach it. Codama staff look at content, including private content, only when that is needed to deal with a report, to keep the service secure or because the law requires it, and only as far as needed.

Your account: until you ask us to delete it.

A page and everything on it: until a steward deletes it, or asks us to. It disappears at once, and thirty days later it is erased for good, with every photograph, recording and file, its history, and any requests about who keeps it. The thirty days are there so that a deletion made by mistake can be undone.

A memory that the family declined, that its writer took back, or that was removed: erased thirty days after that happened.

The email address of someone who wrote a memory: until thirty days after the family decided about it. It exists to tell them the outcome.

An invitation: until thirty days after it was used, expired or was withdrawn.

An archive we prepare for download: seven days. Copies you have saved are yours.

A file no page uses: thirty days after it was uploaded.

The codes made from internet addresses and from candle codes: ninety days.

Payment records: seven years from the payment, even if the page is deleted, because tax and accounting law requires it.

Records of what you agreed to: while your account or the page exists, and seven years after, because we rely on them if a dispute arises.

Scans of a page’s code: while the page exists.

Deleted information can remain for a short time in our providers’ encrypted backups before they are overwritten.

If you write about your own life, each entry has its own audience. An entry marked “Only me” is seen by you alone: it is not shown to the people who keep the page with you, and it is left out of every archive of the page that anyone else downloads or receives.

You may see the information about you that we hold (not only what is on a page) and ask us to correct or delete it if it is not correct, complete, clear or up to date (sections 13 and 14 of the Israeli Privacy Protection Law). You may also ask for what you gave us in a reusable format, ask us to hold it without other use while a question is settled, and object where we rely on a legitimate interest, including if you are mentioned on a page and do not want to be.

These rights belong to anyone whose information is in the service, including people mentioned on a page who have no account.

A page’s stewards can download its full archive at any time, and delete the page. If you wrote a memory on someone else’s page, you can ask us to remove it or to take your name off it. For anything else, deleting your account included, write to info@codama.dev from the address you use with us. It is free. We answer within 30 days and may ask you to confirm who you are. If we refuse, we will tell you why, and you may appeal to the Magistrates’ Court in Israel.

The person a page remembers: privacy law does not usually protect people who have died, but some countries give close relatives rights over what is held about them. If you are a close relative and want something corrected or removed, write to us. If you believe the page should be in your care, see “Who keeps a page” in the terms.

If you think we have mishandled your information, please write to us first. You may also complain to the Privacy Protection Authority at the Israeli Ministry of Justice or, if you live in the EU or the UK, to the data-protection authority there (in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office).

Place a Stone is not meant for children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you think a child under 16 has given us their details, write to info@codama.dev and we will delete them.

If something on Place a Stone is abusive or untrue, infringes your rights, or invades the privacy of someone who is alive, use “Report” beside it or write to info@codama.dev. We aim to deal with a report within 72 hours, not counting Shabbat and Jewish holidays. How reports are handled is set out in the terms.

We use only what the site needs in order to work, so we do not ask for cookie consent.

Cookies: a sign-in cookie while you are signed in, and a cookie that remembers the language you are reading in, which is deleted when you close your browser.

Your browser’s own storage, which stays on your device and is not a cookie: if you light a candle, a random candle code and a note of when you lit one on that page (we receive the code only when you light a candle, and keep only the keyed code made from it, for ninety days); and answers you are in the middle of giving, in the create form and in a memory until you close the tab, and in the guided setup until you finish it. The candle code and the notes stay until you clear your browser’s storage.

There are no analytics, advertising or social-media cookies, and nobody else places cookies through our pages. We do not track you across other websites, so we treat every visitor the same whether or not their browser sends a “Do Not Track” or Global Privacy Control signal. If we ever add analytics, it will be self-hosted, in the EU and with no cross-site tracking, and this notice will say so before it happens.

When we change this notice we change the date at the top. If a change affects how we use information we already hold, we email account holders at least thirty days before it takes effect.