Privacy Policy | AngelFur

# Privacy Policy | AngelFur

Policy version: 3.1 Effective date: August 27, 2026 Last updated: August 27, 2026 Operator: Robert Hessler, Ontario, Canada Privacy Officer: Privacy Officer Privacy contact: Contact Us → Privacy

Plain-language summary

AngelFur collects the information needed to operate animal memorials, manage accounts and condolences, provide support, secure the Service, process voluntary donations, and provide optional features you request.

Key points:

AngelFur does not sell, rent, trade, or otherwise commercialize personal information.

Public memorial content can be seen and copied by anyone and may be indexed by search engines.

Guest condolence email addresses are not displayed publicly or shown to memorial owners.

AngelFur uses essential, security, preference, and necessary local browser storage at launch; it does not use analytics or advertising cookies at launch.

Hosting and outbound email are currently provided by Web Hosting Canada in Canada.

New photo uploads are processed into optimized display files and the temporary uploaded source is deleted after successful processing rather than retained indefinitely as an original upload.

Approved service providers may process information outside Canada, where foreign laws may apply.

Voluntary donations are currently handled by Interac e-Transfer. AngelFur does not ask users to provide payment-card or bank-account numbers through the Service.

AngelFur may use approved third-party AI providers to provide optional features such as text and lyric assistance, music generation, image generation, audio processing, or other user-requested generated-media features. AngelFur does not necessarily use every approved provider for every request.

AngelFur seeks to provide each approved AI provider only the information reasonably necessary for the feature requested. Providers operate under their own terms, privacy practices, technical controls, and subscription plans, which may change over time.

You may request access, correction, deletion, consent withdrawal, export, or complaint review through the Contact Us form by selecting Privacy.

The complete Policy below provides more detail.

1. Scope

This Privacy Policy explains how AngelFur handles personal information through angelfur.com, authorized development or successor domains, account tools, memorials, condolences, support, reports, donations, and optional features.

This Policy works together with the Terms of Use and the Community Guidelines to form the complete set of policies governing your use of AngelFur. The Terms of Use govern your account, contractual rights, and the legal relationship between you and AngelFur. The Community Guidelines govern what content is acceptable to post. This Policy governs how your personal information is collected, used, and protected. Where this Policy references a rule that a document more fully addresses, that other document controls the operational detail.

Public AngelFur pages may be accessible from outside Canada. AngelFur account registration is available through the Service, subject to the eligibility requirements in the Terms of Use and any geographic or legal restrictions AngelFur may apply where required.

AngelFur currently uses one general Privacy Policy. Additional regional notices, supplemental terms, or consent mechanisms may be introduced where required before AngelFur actively offers account registration or other regulated features in additional jurisdictions. Local law may provide rights or protections beyond those described here.

2. Accountability and contact

AngelFur is operated by Robert Hessler in Ontario, Canada. AngelFur designates the role Privacy Officer as the person accountable for AngelFur's personal-information policies and practices.

Privacy requests, access requests, correction requests, consent withdrawal requests, deletion requests, and privacy complaints should be submitted through the Contact Us form by selecting Privacy.

A privacy request submitted through another AngelFur contact category may be forwarded internally, but Privacy is the designated contact route.

3. Who may use the Service

A person must be at least 18 to create an account, create a memorial, submit a condolence, or use an optional generated-media feature. See Terms of Use Section 3 for the full eligibility rule.

A person under 18 may still submit a legitimate privacy request, copyright complaint, legal notice, abuse report, or urgent safety report through the Contact Us channels described in Section 23. AngelFur may involve a parent or guardian where appropriate, but will not require one where that could prevent a legitimate or safety-sensitive report.

4. Information AngelFur collects

4.1 Account information

AngelFur may collect email address, display name, password hash, email-verification records, administrator multi-factor authentication secrets and recovery codes, preferences, account status, organization and representative information, policy-acceptance records, and proxy or successor information.

AngelFur does not store plain-text passwords.

4.2 Technical and security information

AngelFur may collect IP address or a hashed, truncated, or pseudonymized form of it; browser and device information; login and session history; request identifiers; rate-limit records; security events; and administrator audit logs.

Raw IP addresses are retained only where operationally necessary. Longer-term records use hashing, truncation, or other pseudonymization where practical. These techniques reduce identifiability but may not make information fully anonymous.

4.3 Memorial information

AngelFur may collect and store animal name, type, dates, general location, written tribute, photographs, captions, alternative text, owner-selected attribution, visibility and publication status, available revisions, generated media, and private ownership or authority records.

When a photograph is uploaded, AngelFur may temporarily process the source file to validate it, correct orientation, remove unnecessary metadata, resize it, and create optimized display versions such as WebP files. For new uploads using the current media pipeline, the temporary source upload is deleted after successful processing rather than retained as a separate original-resolution file.

Legacy media created under an earlier storage model may remain temporarily until it can be safely migrated or removed without causing loss of the retained optimized image.

AngelFur removes unnecessary image metadata, including GPS coordinates and device information, where technically practical. Technical information needed for correct rendering or secure processing may be retained.

4.4 Information about people contained in content

Users may submit photographs, names, relationships, written memories, voices, or other information involving identifiable people. The submitting user is responsible for having appropriate rights and permission. AngelFur may remove or restrict content that creates a privacy or safety risk. See the Community Guidelines for content standards governing identifiable people in submitted content.

4.5 Condolence information

For a guest or account-holder condolence, AngelFur may collect submitter name or chosen display name, email address, condolence message, IP or pseudonymized IP information, browser information, a secure management token, and moderation history.

A guest submitter's email address is never displayed publicly or shown to the memorial owner. It is accessible only to authorized administrators for moderation, support, security, abuse prevention, legal compliance, and necessary service communications.

4.6 Support, privacy, legal, and abuse reports

AngelFur may collect contact information, messages and attachments, report categories and reasons, verification information, internal administrator notes, evidence, and records of AngelFur's response.

Users should redact irrelevant information before sending documents.

4.7 Donation information

AngelFur currently accepts voluntary donations by Interac e-Transfer.

Depending on the transfer and financial institution, AngelFur may receive information such as the sender's name, email address or transfer identifier, amount, date, transaction or reference number, transfer status, and any message the sender chooses to include.

AngelFur does not ask users to submit full payment-card numbers, bank-account numbers, online-banking credentials, or similar financial credentials through the AngelFur Service.

Users should not include unnecessary sensitive personal information in an e-Transfer message.

See Terms of Use Section 14 for the terms governing donations.

4.8 Optional generated-media information

If you deliberately request an optional generated-media feature, AngelFur may process selected source content, prompts, questionnaire answers, finalized or draft lyrics, generation instructions, style or voice preferences, generated output, authorization or policy-version records, technical information, and safety or authenticity information relevant to the request.

AngelFur may use approved third-party AI providers to provide optional features such as text and lyric assistance, music generation, image generation, audio processing, or other user-requested generated-media features. AngelFur does not necessarily use every approved provider for every request.

AngelFur seeks to provide each approved AI provider only the information reasonably necessary for the feature requested. The full memorial, unrelated account information, support correspondence, unrelated questionnaire answers, private condolences, or other information should not be transferred merely because AngelFur possesses it.

Providers operate under their own terms, privacy practices, technical controls, and subscription plans, which may change over time.

Before a material transfer to an external AI provider, AngelFur provides contextual information about the provider or provider category where appropriate, the purpose of the processing, the categories of information involved, and material processing considerations.

See Terms of Use Section 13 for the contractual terms governing optional generated-media features and Community Guidelines Section 16 for the content standards that apply to generated and altered media.

5. Information AngelFur does not intentionally request

AngelFur does not ordinarily request or intentionally collect telephone numbers, street addresses, payment-card numbers, bank-account numbers, online-banking credentials, or other financial credentials, unredacted government identification, health information about people, precise geolocation, biometric identifiers, or information unrelated to operating the Service.

AngelFur may receive limited information in these categories if a user voluntarily includes it. AngelFur may redact, restrict, or delete unnecessary information.

6. How AngelFur uses information

AngelFur may use personal information to:

register, authenticate, and administer accounts; create, publish, display, search, and manage memorials according to visibility settings; receive, moderate, approve, reject, and manage condolences; provide support, exports, recovery, deletion, and ownership transfer; send mandatory service and security messages; send optional marketing only with affirmative consent; prevent spam, fraud, abuse, malware, and unauthorized access; enforce the Terms of Use and Community Guidelines; receive, record, reconcile, and where appropriate return voluntary donations; comply with legal obligations and lawful requests; investigate complaints, disputes, threats, or suspected illegal activity; respond to privacy or security incidents; provide optional user-requested generated-media features; and maintain, secure, troubleshoot, and improve AngelFur's own Service; and

AngelFur does not operate a general-purpose AI model trained on memorials, condolences, support messages, or Song Creation questionnaire responses. Optional processing of selected content by external AI providers is governed by Sections 10.3 and 13 and the contextual notice provided for the requested feature.

AngelFur will not use personal information for a materially new purpose without appropriate notice and consent where required.

7. Public, unlisted, and private information

Public memorials

Public memorial content is available to anyone. It may appear in AngelFur search, homepage features, internal recommendations, social-sharing previews, and XML sitemaps, and may be indexed, cached, copied, shared, or archived by third parties.

Unlisted memorials

Unlisted memorials are excluded from AngelFur search and marked noindex where supported, but anyone with the URL can access them. A noindex instruction is not an access control.

Private memorials

Private memorials are accessible only to the signed-in memorial owner and authorized administrators when access is reasonably necessary for support, security, moderation, legal compliance, or service operation.

Attribution

A memorial owner may choose a public attribution name or hide attribution. AngelFur does not automatically publish the account email address, legal name, or internal account identity.

See Terms of Use Section 7 for the full visibility-setting rules, including the effect of changing a memorial's visibility.

8. Cookies and browser storage

At launch, AngelFur may use essential session cookies, CSRF and security cookies, preference cookies or equivalent storage, and local storage needed for Service functionality.

AngelFur does not use analytics cookies, advertising cookies, or behavioural advertising at launch. The Policy will be updated before materially different tracking technology is introduced.

9. Mandatory and optional email

Mandatory operational messages may include email verification, password reset, condolence-management links, account deletion and recovery, memorial transfers, moderation and appeal notices, security alerts, export notices, and support responses.

Newsletters, promotions, donation requests, partner offers, and product announcements are off by default. AngelFur sends them only after affirmative opt-in. Commercial messages will identify the sender and include a working unsubscribe method where required.

AngelFur may retain records showing when affirmative marketing consent was provided and when an unsubscribe request was received or applied, as reasonably necessary to administer preferences and demonstrate compliance.

10. Service providers and disclosures

10.1 Hosting and email

Web Hosting Canada currently provides hosting and outbound email processing in Canada.

10.2 Donations

AngelFur currently accepts voluntary donations through Interac e-Transfer rather than through an AngelFur payment-card form.

Banks, Interac, and participating financial institutions involved in a transfer operate under their own terms and privacy practices. AngelFur receives only the information made available to the recipient of the transfer and does not receive the donor's online-banking password or full bank-account credentials.

See Terms of Use Section 14.

10.3 Optional AI providers

A provider receives selected content only when an optional feature requiring external processing is requested. AngelFur seeks to provide each approved AI provider only the information reasonably necessary for the feature requested.

Approved third-party AI providers operate under their own terms, privacy practices, technical controls, and subscription plans, which may change over time. Those terms and practices may permit uses of submitted content or activity information for service improvement, model development, security, or other disclosed provider purposes.

AngelFur maintains an internal approved-provider register identifying relevant information such as the provider, approved account or plan, intended processing purposes, material data-control settings, review date, retention or cleanup procedure, and other relevant restrictions or safeguards.

Where an available provider setting or plan reasonably allows optional model-improvement use to be disabled or restricted, AngelFur will use the approved configuration recorded for that provider. Where a material provider practice cannot reasonably be disabled, AngelFur will disclose that practice before sending selected user information to the provider where such disclosure or consent is required.

AngelFur does not authorize approved third-party AI providers to use AngelFur-supplied information for independent advertising or unrelated marketing on AngelFur's behalf.

See Terms of Use Section 13 for the terms governing optional generated-media features.

10.4 Other operational providers

AngelFur may use providers for hosting, email, backup, security, support, donation administration, or other necessary operations. Providers may process information only for the contracted purpose and must use safeguards appropriate to the information.

10.5 Legal, safety, and enforcement disclosures

AngelFur may preserve or disclose information where reasonably necessary to comply with law or legal process, investigate fraud or abuse, protect rights or safety, respond to a credible and imminent risk of harm, or establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.

AngelFur does not continuously monitor all content and cannot guarantee intervention.

11. No sale or sponsor disclosure

AngelFur does not sell, rent, trade, or otherwise commercialize personal information.

Sponsors and supporting partners do not receive users' personal information. A sponsor may contact a user only after the user separately requests or specifically consents to that contact. See Terms of Use Section 15 for the full terms governing sponsors and supporting partners.

12. Cross-border processing

AngelFur's current hosting and outbound email services are located in Canada.

Approved third-party AI providers and other operational providers may process selected information outside Canada where reasonably necessary to provide a requested feature or operate the Service.

Personal information processed in another country may be subject to that country's laws and may be accessible to courts, law-enforcement agencies, national-security authorities, or other lawful authorities in that jurisdiction.

AngelFur remains accountable for personal information under its control and uses provider review, contractual measures where available, technical controls, minimum-data-transfer procedures, contextual disclosure, and consent appropriate to the information and feature involved.

13. AI and automated processing

AngelFur does not use third-party AI systems to make final decisions about whether a memorial, condolence, report, or account violates AngelFur's rules.

AngelFur may use conventional rules-based controls such as rate limiting, blocklists, file validation, malware scanning, link restrictions, and temporary holds. Adverse moderation or account actions that are not automatically reversed within a short period require human review before being finalized, as described in Terms of Use Section 17.

Optional AI-assisted creative processing occurs only as part of a feature the user deliberately requests.

AngelFur's creative-service workflow includes human review or operator handling before generated output is delivered or published through AngelFur.

AngelFur maintains records of material AI-assisted processing sufficient to identify the request, provider, purpose, governing policy or notice version, categories of information transferred, processing date, relevant provider plan or configuration, and cleanup or deletion status where applicable.

See Terms of Use Section 13 and Community Guidelines Section 16.

14. Retention

AngelFur retains information only for as long as reasonably necessary, subject to legal obligations, investigations, disputes, and legal holds.

General retention periods and practices include:

Deleted memorial: 30-day recovery period, then permanent deletion from active systems, subject to backups and holds.
Deleted account: 30-day recovery period, then deletion or de-identification of ordinary account information, subject to required records and holds.
Temporary source photo upload: deleted after successful validation and generation of the retained optimized image under the current media pipeline.
Pending condolence: expires after 90 days if not reviewed.
Removed condolence: 30-day recovery period.
Cancelled Song Creation questionnaire draft: recoverable for 30 days, then permanently deleted.
Cancelled submitted Song Creation request: recoverable for 30 days, then permanently deleted, subject to legal or security holds.
Memorial revisions: last 10 available revisions.
Prepared account export: normally available for 7 days.
Pending account email-change request: normally expires after approximately 24 hours if not completed; related security/audit records may be retained separately.
Unused email-verification link: normally expires after approximately 24 hours; a fresh verification email may be requested.
Login and session history: 90 days.
Security-event logs: 2 years.
Closed support cases: 2 years after closure.
Detailed abuse reports and moderation evidence: 3 years after final resolution.
Minimal account-enforcement history: account lifetime plus 2 years.
Administrator audit logs: 1 year.
Email queue and delivery logs: 90 days.
Disaster-recovery backups: up to 90 days under the applicable backup schedule.
Privacy-breach records: at least 24 months.
Transfer-verification documents: normally deleted after the decision and appeal period.
Temporary AI-production working material: retained only as long as reasonably necessary to complete the requested feature, quality/revision work, provider cleanup, or an applicable dispute or hold.
AI-processing accountability records: retained as reasonably necessary to document the provider, purpose, policy/notice version, transfer categories, provider configuration, and cleanup status.

Generated output intentionally retained as part of a memorial or Song Creation record may remain until the associated content is deleted or another applicable retention rule requires removal.

Private condolence submitter contact information and security information are not made public or shown to memorial owners. Such information is retained only for moderation, management, security, abuse prevention, service communications, legal compliance, and dispute handling, and should be deleted or de-identified when those purposes no longer require it.

Information subject to a legal hold, fraud inquiry, safety investigation, credible threat, litigation, copyright dispute, unresolved privacy matter, provider dispute, or other legal requirement may be retained beyond the ordinary period.

These retention periods align with the corresponding recovery, appeal, and transfer timelines in Terms of Use Sections 18, 20, 21, and 22.

15. Account deletion and memorials

When account deletion is requested, AngelFur disables the account and may make associated memorials non-public during the 30-day recovery period.

Each memorial must be deleted or transferred to an eligible account. If the process is incomplete, AngelFur may keep the memorial non-public during recovery and then delete it, subject to legal holds, backups, and required records.

Some minimal records may be retained where necessary for security, fraud prevention, accounting, legal compliance, dispute resolution, or enforcement. Residual copies may remain temporarily in disaster-recovery backups and are not restored to active use except for recovery, security, or legal purposes.

See Terms of Use Section 21 for the full account-deletion and recovery-state process, including notice to the account holder when a recovery period begins.

16. Security safeguards

AngelFur uses administrative, technical, and physical safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information. Measures may include password hashing, administrator multi-factor authentication, role-based access, session controls, encrypted transport, controlled media processing, optimized retained image storage, and deletion of temporary source uploads after successful processing under the current media pipeline, metadata removal, audit logging, rate limiting, backups, and service-provider controls.

No system is completely secure. Users should use a unique password, protect access to their email account, and keep independent copies of important memorial content.

17. Privacy and security incidents

AngelFur maintains a documented breach-response process. The operator or delegate will contain the incident, preserve evidence, determine affected information and people, assess risk, document the incident, and notify individuals, regulators, organizations, or authorities where legally required or reasonably useful to reduce harm.

The AngelFur operator makes the final notification decision, with legal or privacy advice where appropriate. Breach records are retained for at least 24 months.

18. Access, correction, deletion, withdrawal, export, and complaints

You may request confirmation of whether AngelFur holds personal information about you; access; correction; deletion where applicable; withdrawal of consent; an available account export; or review of a privacy complaint.

Submit requests through the Contact Us form by selecting Privacy.

AngelFur will respond within the period required by applicable law. Where PIPEDA applies to an access request, AngelFur will generally respond within 30 calendar days of receiving the request, subject to any extension permitted by law and any required notice of that extension.

Other privacy requests will be handled as promptly as reasonably practicable and within any applicable statutory deadline.

AngelFur may charge only a fee permitted by applicable law and will provide any estimate or notice required before charging it.

See Terms of Use Section 22 for what an account export includes and excludes.

19. Identity verification

Account holders may be verified through authenticated access and control of the registered email address. A non-account user may be verified through control of the relevant email, a secure management token, submission details, or other proportionate evidence.

AngelFur may request additional identification only where reasonably necessary and legally permitted. AngelFur will not require a person to create an account merely to exercise a privacy right.

20. Complaints to the Privacy Commissioner

AngelFur encourages users to contact the Privacy Officer first so the issue can be investigated.

After internal review, a person may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or another regulator with jurisdiction.

21. Search-engine removal

Changing a memorial to unlisted removes it from AngelFur search and applies a noindex instruction where supported. Changing it to private or deleting it removes public access through AngelFur.

AngelFur cannot guarantee immediate removal from third-party search indexes, archives, caches, or social-media previews. A user may also need to contact the third party directly. See Terms of Use Section 7 for the full visibility-setting rules.

22. Changes to this Policy

Material changes will be communicated by email and an in-service notice, with reasonable advance notice where practicable. AngelFur may require renewed acceptance or obtain separate consent where a change materially affects privacy practices or where law requires it.

Minor corrections, formatting changes, contact updates, or changes that do not materially reduce rights may take effect without renewed acceptance.

AngelFur may preserve prior versions of this Policy and records showing the policy, notice, or consent version applicable to a user or processing activity.

This applies to changes to this Privacy Policy. Changes to the Terms of Use are governed by Terms of Use Section 32; changes to the Community Guidelines are governed by Community Guidelines Section 22.

23. Contact information

Privacy Officer Privacy requests and complaints: Contact Us → Privacy Business mailing address: General support: Contact Us → Support Legal notices: Contact Us → Legal Copyright complaints: Contact Us → Copyright Community and abuse reports: Contact Us → Abuse