Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

BestFarewell, Inc. ("BestFarewell," "we," "us," or "our") is committed to protecting the privacy and security of the personal information entrusted to us. We understand that our platform handles deeply sensitive information, including family details, end-of-life wishes, estate planning preparation, and memorials for loved ones. We take this responsibility seriously.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, store, and protect your information when you use the BestFarewell platform, including our website at bestfarewell.com and any associated applications (collectively, the "Service").

By using the Service, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy. Please also review our Terms of Service and Disclaimer.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Information You Provide Directly

When you use the Service, you may provide us with the following types of information:

Account Information: Your name, email address, phone number, and login credentials when you create an account.

Family Member Information: Names, email addresses, phone numbers, relationships, and biographical details of family members you add to the platform.

Biographical and Memorial Content: Information about deceased individuals, including names, dates of birth and death, life stories, personality details, career information, and other biographical content used for obituary generation and memorial pages.

Estate Planning Preparation Information: Asset inventories, beneficiary designations, professional advisor information, personal wishes, and other details entered through the Estate Planning Preparation Tool. This tool helps you organize information to bring to a licensed attorney or financial advisor; it does not create legal documents.

Photographs, Videos, and Audio: Media files you upload for memorial pages, tribute videos, or family records.

Farewell Plan Details: Service dates, funeral event details, venue information, and checklist progress.

Condolence Messages: Messages submitted by you or by visitors to memorial pages you have created.

Community Participation: Your separate community profile details, posts, comments, reactions, topic follows, saved items, and private notices related to community participation. Your account email, legal name, subscription, family, sponsor, organization, memorial activity, and private planning data are not part of your community profile.

Payment Information:Billing details necessary to process your subscription. Payment card information is transmitted directly to our payment processor, Stripe, and is not stored on BestFarewell's servers.

Communications: Correspondence you send to our support team or through feedback channels.

2.2 Information Collected Automatically

When you access the Service, we automatically collect:

Usage Data: Pages visited, features used, actions taken within the platform, timestamps, and session duration.

Device and Connection Data: Browser type and version, operating system, device type, IP address, and general location (city/region level).

Cookies and Tracking Technologies: We use cookies and similar technologies to maintain your session, remember preferences, and analyze usage patterns. See Section 9 for details.

2.3 Information from Third-Party Services

If you sign in using a third-party authentication provider (such as Google or Apple), we receive your name and email address from that provider. We do not receive or store your third-party account passwords.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

To Provide the Service: Creating and managing your account, storing your family information, generating AI-powered obituaries and tributes, displaying memorial pages, managing farewell checklists, and delivering the Estate Planning Preparation Tool.

To Process AI Features: When you use SageLink AI, Sage, MemoryReel, or other AI-powered features, we send the specific information you have provided for that feature (such as biographical details for an obituary) to our AI service providers for processing. Only the minimum information necessary to fulfill your request is transmitted.

To Process Payments: Facilitating subscription billing and payment processing through Stripe.

To Operate the Private Community: Showing your community contributions to other eligible signed-in members, maintaining your community preferences, protecting members, and enforcing the Community Guidelines. We do not use community post or comment text for advertising, public search, or product analytics.

To Communicate with You: Sending account-related notifications, subscription confirmations, support responses, and service updates. We may also send you product announcements and educational content; you may opt out of non-essential communications at any time.

To Improve the Service: With your consent, we use optional browser analytics to understand product use, improve features, and fix issues. Depending on whether you are signed in, those analytics may use a pseudonymous browser identifier or your KinWell account identifier and limited account attributes.

To Measure Account and Purchase Operations: We also create limited server-side events when an account is created and when a checkout or subscription begins or completes. These events may use your KinWell account identifier and basic event details, such as sign-up method, plan, price, and payment mode. They do not depend on optional browser cookies, and we do not include your email address or the content you enter into KinWell in these events.

To Monitor AI Operations: Server-side observability may record limited technical details about an AI request, such as the feature name, model, timing, token counts, finish status, and errors. We configure this telemetry not to record prompts, generated content, or your KinWell account identifier. It does not depend on optional browser cookies.

To Ensure Security: Detecting and preventing fraud, unauthorized access, and other security threats.

To Comply with Legal Obligations: Responding to lawful legal processes and regulatory requirements.

4. How We Protect Your Information

4.1 Encryption

Data transmitted between your device and our servers is protected with TLS (Transport Layer Security). Data stored in our primary infrastructure is encrypted at rest with AES-256.

4.2 Access Controls

Application access is scoped through account, family, relationship, and organization permissions. Personnel permissions are scoped to operational responsibilities such as maintaining or supporting the Service. Service providers also process the data needed to perform the purposes described in this policy.

For Business Users, including funeral homes and professional partners, organization and client relationships are used to scope access to the families connected to that organization.

4.3 Infrastructure Security

Our Service runs on cloud infrastructure providers. We configure application access controls and use the transport and storage protections described above. We assess and manage providers according to the services they perform and the information they process.

4.4 Limitations

While we implement commercially reasonable security measures, no method of electronic transmission or storage is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security. We investigate reported security incidents and respond based on the circumstances.

5. AI Data Practices

This section addresses how your data interacts with our AI-powered features. We understand this is a primary concern for our users and want to be as transparent as possible.

5.1 We Do Not Train Our Models on Your Content

We do not use your personal data, family information, obituary content, memorial page content, estate planning information, voice recordings, photographs, or any other User Content to train, fine-tune, or improve our own AI models. When you request an AI-powered feature, the selected content is processed by the service providers needed to deliver that feature under the terms and data controls applicable to those services.

5.2 How SageLink AI Was Built

SageLink AI was developed using a dataset of over 10,000 publicly available memorials and obituaries. No private user data from the BestFarewell platform was used in its development. Your private content remains private.

5.3 How AI Processing Works

When you use an AI feature (for example, generating an obituary), here is what happens:

1. You provide biographical information through the platform.
2. Only the specific information needed for that request is sent to our AI service provider's API.
3. The AI provider processes your request and returns the generated content.
4. The generated content is delivered to you within the platform.
5. The provider handles the input and output under the API terms, retention settings, and data controls applicable to the configured service.

5.4 Third-Party AI Provider Commitments

We use provider API products and select providers based on their disclosed data handling practices, privacy commitments, and security controls. Contact us at privacy@bestfarewell.com if you need information about the terms or controls applicable to a particular feature.

5.5 Data Minimization in AI Processing

We practice data minimization when interacting with AI services. When generating an obituary, for example, we send only the biographical details relevant to that specific obituary, not your entire account profile, family tree, or estate planning information.

5.6 KinWell Circle Automated Screening

Before a KinWell Circle post, comment, question, or answer is published, the submitted text may be sent to a third-party AI moderation service for automated safety screening. We send only the content and technical policy settings needed for that screening, not your account email, legal name, family records, memorial content, or estate planning documents. Automated screening can hold or classify content, but the owner administrator makes the final decision in ambiguous or potentially harmful cases. Screening content and results are not used for advertising, public search, or AI model training.

6. How We Share Your Information

6.1 We Do Not Sell Your Data

BestFarewell does not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes. We have never sold personal data and have no plans to do so.

6.2 Service Providers

We share information with service providers that support authentication, payments, hosting and storage, communications, analytics, customer support, and optional AI features. They process data only for the operational purposes described in this policy and subject to applicable contractual and technical safeguards.

Analytics and Operational Telemetry: When you consent to optional browser analytics, our analytics providers may receive device and usage information, a pseudonymous browser identifier or your KinWell account identifier, and limited account attributes. Separately, the limited server-side account and purchase events described in Section 3 may be sent without optional browser cookies. These events can be linked to an account and are not necessarily anonymous or aggregated when collected. Server-side AI observability is also sent without optional browser cookies, but is configured to exclude prompts, generated content, and KinWell account identifiers as described in Section 3.

6.3 With Your Authorized Family Members

When you add family members to your account and grant them access, those individuals can view and interact with the information you have chosen to share with them. You control family member access permissions through the platform.

6.4 Private Community Members

Community content is shared only with eligible signed-in BestFarewell users who can access the private community. It is not displayed on public memorial or condolence pages and is not made available through public search, sitemaps, or previews. Authorized owner administrators may review held content and related moderation records to enforce the Community Guidelines. We limit that access to the information needed for the review.

Signed-in access limits who can view community content through BestFarewell, but it cannot prevent another member from taking screenshots, copying, saving, or repeating that content outside KinWell Circle. Consider this before posting sensitive information.

6.5 Memorial Page Visitors

If you create a public memorial page, certain information (such as the deceased's name, obituary, photographs, and funeral event details) will be visible to anyone who accesses the memorial page URL. Condolence messages on public memorials are visible to all visitors. You may set a memorial page to private at any time.

6.6 Funeral Home and Professional Partners

If your account was created through or is associated with a funeral home or professional partner, that partner may have access to information related to the services they are providing to your family. This access is limited to the scope of their service relationship with you.

6.7 Legal Requirements

We may disclose your information if required to do so by law, legal process, or government request, or if we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of BestFarewell, our users, or the public.

6.8 Business Transfers

In the event of a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, or sale of all or a portion of our assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you via email and/or a prominent notice on the Service before your information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

7. Your Rights and Choices

7.1 Access and Export

You may access the personal information we hold about you through your account dashboard. You may request a complete export of your data in a machine-readable format by contacting privacy@bestfarewell.com. We respond within the timeframe required by applicable law.

7.2 Correction

You may update or correct your personal information at any time through your account settings.

7.3 Deletion

You may delete your account and request permanent deletion of your personal data by contacting privacy@bestfarewell.com or through your account settings. After we receive and verify a deletion request:

• Your sign-in is removed and the deletion process begins.
• Your personal data and private community drafts, pending submissions, rejected submissions, follows, saves, and profile metadata are removed from active systems, subject to the exceptions below and the timeframes required by applicable law.
• Published community posts and comments may remain with a deidentified “Former community member” attribution when that is needed to preserve a conversation. They will no longer be linked to your account identity.
• Backup copies age out according to provider retention cycles and are not restored to the active Service except for disaster recovery or legal obligations.
• Public memorial pages will be taken offline unless you have transferred ownership to another account holder.
• We may retain the minimum community moderation, appeal, or safety record needed to comply with law, resolve a dispute, or enforce our agreements.

7.4 Opt Out of Communications

You may opt out of non-essential emails (such as product announcements and educational content) by clicking the "unsubscribe" link in any such email or by updating your notification preferences. You cannot opt out of essential account-related communications (such as security alerts, billing notices, and Terms updates).

7.5 California Residents (CCPA/CPRA)

If you are a California resident, you have the following additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act and California Privacy Rights Act:

Right to Know: You may request that we disclose the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you, the sources of that information, the purposes for collection, and the categories of third parties with whom we share it.

Right to Delete: You may request deletion of your personal information, subject to certain legal exceptions.

Right to Opt Out of Sale:We do not sell your personal information. If this practice ever changes, we will provide a "Do Not Sell My Personal Information" link on our website.

Right to Non-Discrimination: We will not discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights.

To exercise these rights, contact us at privacy@bestfarewell.com with the subject line "California Privacy Request." We will verify your identity before fulfilling any request and respond within 45 days.

7.6 Other State Privacy Laws

Residents of states with comprehensive privacy laws (including Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, and others) may have similar rights to access, correct, delete, and opt out. Contact us at privacy@bestfarewell.com to exercise your rights.

8. Data Retention

We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Service. Specifically:

Active Accounts: Your data is retained for the duration of your account.

Canceled Subscriptions: Account data is retained for a limited period to support reactivation and meet legal, accounting, fraud-prevention, and dispute-resolution needs.

Deleted Accounts: Personal data is removed from active systems subject to applicable legal exceptions. Backup copies age out under provider retention cycles.

Memorial Pages: Memorial pages for deceased individuals may be retained beyond account deletion if another authorized family member has assumed ownership or if the page is designated as a permanent memorial under a Lifetime plan.

Community Review Records: When community moderation is used, we retain held or rejected content and its minimum screening result for up to 30 days; reports and their review context for up to 180 days after resolution; and the minimum violation, appeal, and audit record for up to 24 months after resolution. We may keep a record longer when required by law or needed for a safety incident, appeal, dispute, or enforcement of our agreements.

Payment Records: Transaction records are retained for 7 years as required for tax and accounting compliance.

Aggregated Data: Anonymized, aggregated data that cannot identify any individual may be retained indefinitely for analytical purposes.

9. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

9.1 Cookies We Use

Essential Cookies: Required for the Service to function, including session management and authentication. These cannot be disabled.

Analytics Cookies: With your consent, these help us understand how people use the Service. They may collect device and usage information and use a pseudonymous browser identifier or a KinWell account identifier.

Third-Party Pixels: With the relevant consent, we may use advertising pixels for campaign measurement. These pixels may collect information about your visit. You can also use provider privacy settings or browser-based opt-out tools.

User-Requested Embeds: Some third-party features connect only after you request them, such as opening a demo video or following an external scheduling link. Those feature-initiated connections are separate from optional analytics consent and are disclosed when the relevant feature is used.

Private Community: We exclude private community routes and community content from advertising pixels, session replay, and product analytics. We do not place community text, titles, searches, reports, moderation notes, or screening results in analytics events or public URLs.

9.2 Managing Cookies

Most web browsers allow you to manage cookie preferences through browser settings. Disabling essential cookies may impair the functionality of the Service. For more information about managing cookies, visit allaboutcookies.org.

10. Children's Privacy

The Service is not directed at individuals under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13, we will take steps to delete that information promptly. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, please contact us at privacy@bestfarewell.com.

Users may add information about minor family members (such as names and relationships) to the Family Management System for family coordination purposes. This information is provided and controlled by the adult account holder.

11. International Users

The Service is operated from the United States. If you access the Service from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States. By using the Service, you consent to this transfer. We implement the data protection measures described in this policy regardless of where our users are located.

12. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email to the address associated with your account and by posting a notice on the Service at least 30 days before the changes take effect. The "Last Updated" date at the top of this page indicates when the policy was most recently revised.

We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of any changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.