Privacy Policy

Who we are

Successionly is the “controller” of your personal information under UK and EU data protection law.

Contact us about privacy at privacy@successionly.com.

The short version

• Successionly is a map, not a vault. We never ask for, and try to refuse, passwords, PINs, account numbers, card numbers or copies of documents.
• We keep what you write down, the people you choose, and any messages you record, so we can show them to you and, when you decide, to the people you’ve chosen.
• We don’t sell your information, we don’t show adverts, and we don’t use your records for marketing.
• You can see, change, download or delete your information at any time. Deleting your account deletes everything in it.

What we collect

Your account. Your name, email address, the country you choose (to tailor guidance), your password (stored only as a salted hash, never in readable form), your plan, and your settings, such as how often we check in with you.

Your records. Whatever you write in Successionly: titles, where things are, who to contact, instructions, links and the extra details each type of record asks for, plus the categories you create and who you’ve chosen to see each record.

Messages you record. Video and voice messages, and written transcripts of voice messages.

Your trusted contacts. The names, email addresses, relationships and roles of the people you add, whether they’ve accepted, and any access requests, questions and answers between you.

Activity. A log of what happens on your account (for example “Jane viewed your shared records”), which you can see and clear on your dashboard.

Technical information. A session cookie that keeps you signed in. A short list of recent emails we sent (with the address partly hidden) so we can check delivery. If a request to our site looks like an attack, we briefly keep its address, browser details and the page it asked for, keeping only the most recent twenty.

What we never want

Please don’t put passwords, PINs, bank account numbers, card numbers, national insurance or social security numbers, or copies of documents into Successionly. We don’t need your home address either: “the cabinet in the living room” means something to your family and nothing to anyone else. Our software checks for many of these and refuses them, but it can’t catch everything. Say where something is kept and who to ask instead.

How we use it, and why we’re allowed to

What we do	Lawful basis
Run your account: store your records, show them to you, and share them with the people you choose, when you choose	Contract: it’s the service you signed up for
Check-ins, access requests and releasing access to your trusted contacts according to your rules	Contract
Send service emails: invitations, check-ins, reminders, yearly reviews, password resets	Contract
Transcribe voice notes and draft records from your answers when you use those features	Contract
Keep the service secure, prevent misuse, and fix faults	Legitimate interests
If your subscription stops without you cancelling and we haven’t heard from you, let your trusted contacts know so they can ask for access	Legitimate interests: protecting what you left for them
Keep records we’re required to keep, for example for tax once we take payments	Legal obligation

Sensitive information

We don’t ask for health information or other “special category” data. But your records might include it, for example a funeral wish that mentions an illness, or a note about a power of attorney for health decisions. If you choose to include it, we rely on your explicit consent to store it and share it with the people you choose. You can remove it at any time.

Information about other people

When you add trusted contacts, you give us their names and email addresses. We use these only to invite them, to send them the emails your settings call for, and to let them see what you’ve chosen to share. Please tell the people you add that you’ve done so. Being someone’s trusted contact is free, and a contact can ask us at any time to remove their details.

If you link a household with your partner, records either of you marks as shared can be seen and edited by both of you.

Who we share it with

The people you choose. Your trusted contacts see exactly the records you’ve allowed, when you’ve allowed it: now, later, or never.

Our service providers. We use Cloudflare to host Successionly and to store your records and recordings, send our emails, turn speech into text and draft records for the “Interview me” feature, and create PDF reports. Cloudflare processes this only on our behalf and under our instructions. Our pages also load fonts from Google Fonts, which means Google receives your browser’s internet address when a page loads.

When we start taking payments, a payment provider will handle card details. We’ll never see or store your card number, and we’ll update this policy first.

No one else, except where the law requires it, such as a valid court order. We don’t sell personal information, and we don’t share it with advertisers.

Speech-to-text and “Interview me”

When you use Transcribe or “Interview me”, the audio or text you provide is sent to an AI model running on Cloudflare’s network, and the result comes back to you to check before anything is saved. For quick notes, the audio is used only to produce the text and isn’t kept. Audio messages you record are stored, with their transcript, like any other record. We check what comes back for passwords and account numbers in the same way as anything you type.

Where your information is stored

Cloudflare runs a global network, so your information may be processed outside the UK and the EU, including in the United States. Cloudflare is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and its UK extension, and also uses standard contractual clauses approved for this purpose.

How long we keep it

Information	How long
Your account, records, contacts and recordings	Until you delete them or your account. If a subscription ends, see below.
Activity on your account	12 months, or until you clear it
Session cookie	30 days, or until you sign out
Password reset links	1 hour
Links in check-in and review emails	Until used, or up to 13 months
Our admin log (for example, that an account was deleted)	2 years
Email delivery and security logs	Only the most recent twenty entries of each

If a subscription ends, the account moves to the free plan, which keeps one record and one trusted contact. You have 90 days to choose which; everything else is then deleted. If payments stopped without you cancelling, nothing is deleted while a trusted contact has asked for access or been given it. See what happens if you die and your subscription stops.

If you delete your account, we delete your records, recordings, contacts and activity straight away. Copies in Cloudflare’s backups are overwritten in the normal course of its operations.

Keeping it safe

• Everything travels over encrypted connections, and Cloudflare encrypts stored data. Your records, categories, trusted contacts, questions and activity are also encrypted by Successionly itself (AES-256), with a key unique to your account, derived from a master key kept separately from the database.
• Passwords are stored as salted hashes. We check new passwords against commonly used ones and against the Have I Been Pwned list of leaked passwords. Only the first five characters of a scrambled version of the password are sent, never the password itself.
• Our admin tools are built so they don’t show your records, trusted contacts or messages. The person running Successionly has technical access to the underlying storage, as any service operator does, but won’t look at your records unless you ask us to, for example to fix a problem, or the law requires it.
• We’re adding two-factor sign-in before Successionly opens to the public.

If we ever have a security breach that affects you, we’ll tell you, and the ICO where required, without delay.

Your rights

You have the right to:

• See your information. Everything we hold about you is in your account, and My Report gives you a copy as a PDF.
• Correct it. Edit any record, contact or profile detail yourself.
• Delete it. Delete any record, or your whole account from Your profile → Delete my account.
• Take it with you (data portability). Ask us and we’ll send your information in a commonly used format.
• Object to, or ask us to restrict, how we use it, and withdraw consent at any time.

Email privacy@successionly.com for anything you can’t do yourself. We’ll reply within one month. If you’re a trusted contact rather than an account holder, you can ask us the same.

If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your information, please tell us first. You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk, or, in the EU, to your local data protection authority.

Cookies and similar technology

We use one essential cookie, which keeps you signed in. We don’t use advertising or tracking cookies, and we don’t use analytics that follow you around the web.

Your browser also remembers a few display choices on your own device, such as which dashboard sections you’ve collapsed and whether you’ve dismissed the “add to home screen” tip. These never leave your device.

Children

Successionly is for adults. You must be 18 or over to create an account.

Changes to this policy

If we make important changes, we’ll email account holders before they take effect. The date at the top shows when this policy last changed.