Your story is yours. Only you decide who sees your videos, your book and your family website. We never share them on our own. You can choose people in your family to read and watch the chapters you share with them, or make a link for a gathering that you can turn off at any time.
We don’t sell your information, and we don’t use it for advertising.
You can delete anything, any time — ask Rosa, or email us.
heardandkept.com is run by Heard and Kept (David Hanson and Mark Otten) (“we”, “us”), the data controller for the personal information described here, under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
Heard and Kept is run by David Hanson and Mark Otten, trading as Heard and Kept, in England. It is not a company yet, so there is no registered office: please write to us by email.
Write to us at hello@heardandkept.com about anything on this page, including any request about your information. We aim to reply within one month, as the law requires.
What we keep
Your account: your email address, and your name and picture if you sign in with Google or Apple. If you set up a passkey, we keep the public half of it; the private half never leaves your device.
Your conversations with Rosa: the sound of your voice, and the words, written down (a transcript). If you type instead of talking, what you type.
The free trial’s hour: a voice recording of your hour with Rosa, kept for you. During the trial you don’t see or hear it — what you get is the chapter written from it; the recording is there for you if you carry on with a full story, and it is deleted with your account, or sooner if you ask.
Recordings on camera: your picture and voice, only when you choose to record with the camera on.
Rosa’s notes: so she can remember you — the people, places and stories you’ve mentioned, a short summary of your conversations, and the chapters you plan.
Photographs and anything you email in. We remove the hidden location details from photographs before we store them.
What we make for you: your videos, your book and your family website.
Other people: if someone else in the room takes a turn at the microphone, their name, how they’re related, and what they say. If you keep a story for someone else — a parent, say — what you tell us about them.
Technical details: your internet (IP) address, browser and device; when you sign in; error reports; how quickly pages load; and which pages and features are used — never what you say. If something goes wrong on a page, the error report can include a replay of the screen with every word hidden and all pictures and video blocked out.
Usage amounts: how much talking time and behind-the-scenes work your account has used, as numbers only, so we can run the free trial and keep an eye on our costs.
If you ask to hear when stories go on sale: your email address, whether you said it would be a gift, and the country you asked from (never a more exact location). You don’t need an account for this.
Private things, and other people
Life stories often touch on health, religion, politics or sexuality — what the law calls special category data. We handle it only on the basis of your explicit consent, which you can withdraw at any time by deleting it or closing your account.
Please take care with other people’s details. Avoid things that would identify someone — children’s full names, addresses, schools — without their agreement. You can also ask Rosa to keep someone’s name out of it: from then on she says something like “my brother” instead, and so does everything written or made from your story (a recording already made still has the name).
Why we use it, and the law
The law asks us to name a reason (a “lawful basis”) for each thing we do with your information:
Running your account and the service you asked for — the conversations, Rosa’s notes, your videos, book and website, and the emails that go with them — such as sign-in links, a welcome, a note when a recording is ready, and a reminder of a conversation you agreed to. Basis: our agreement with you.
Recording on camera. Basis: your explicit consent, which you give on screen before the camera starts.
Special category details in your story. Basis: your explicit consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
Keeping the service working and safe — fixing errors, measuring speed, seeing which features are used, and preventing misuse. Basis: our legitimate interest in a working, safe service. You can object at any time (see Your rights).
Telling you when stories go on sale, if you asked us to. Basis: your consent — ask us to take you off the list at any time, or use the unsubscribe link in the email. Either way we delete your address.
Keeping records the law requires, and answering lawful requests. Basis: a legal obligation.
Who can see your story
You. A story you pay for (or are given) is kept online: you read and watch it here rather than downloading it, and a copy of everything is yours whenever you ask us. Before then — in the free trial — you can download what you make yourself.
The people you choose. You can name people in your family — up to ten — and share a finished chapter with them, or every chapter as you finish it. They sign in with the email address you gave and read only what you shared, as the book has it — and, while your story is kept online, watch its films and see its photographs. Nobody can read a chapter until you say it is ready, and you can stop sharing or take someone off at any time. Anyone in your family can pay to keep your story online. They can’t download it, change it or see anything else — unless you let them see how you’re getting on: how many conversations, which chapters are done and the time left, never what you said. They can leave a heart and a few words on a chapter, which only you see.
Anyone with a link you made. For a funeral or a family gathering you can make a link that opens without signing in. It shows only the chapters you have marked ready (and, while your story is kept online, their films and photographs), and anyone you give it to can pass it on — so it stops working the moment you turn it off or make a new one.
Anyone taking a turn at the microphone hears the conversation while they’re there, but gets no way in afterwards. Before they start, the screen tells them that what they say becomes part of your story, and that you keep the recording.
Our staff. Our staff tools don’t show your recordings, or your conversations word for word. One tool, for a very small number of senior staff, shows a summary of how a story is going — the kind of notes Rosa keeps, such as names, places and which parts of a life have come up — with any names you’ve asked her to leave out kept out.
The companies that help us, listed below, only to run the service for us.
No one else — unless the law requires it, or it’s needed to protect someone’s safety.
Because nobody reads your conversations, nothing you tell Rosa reaches anyone who could help. If you tell her that you, or someone else, are being harmed or are in danger, she shows you the numbers of people who can, and keeps no note that she did.
The companies that help us
We don’t sell your information, and we don’t share it for advertising. These companies handle it on our instructions, only to run the service:
Vercel — hosts the website, stores the raw recordings and photographs and the spoken copy of each chapter Rosa reads aloud to you, turns each recording into its finished film (in a sealed machine in your region, deleted as soon as the film is made), runs the work done in the background after a conversation, measures how quickly pages load, and passes requests on to our AI providers.
Neon — the database holding your account, the written words and Rosa’s notes — and, kept in London whatever region you choose, a copy of any email you send us, encrypted, until a year after we have finished answering it.
Anthropic — the AI behind Rosa’s questions and notes, descriptions of your photographs, the writing in your book, and the first draft of our reply when you email us. If Anthropic’s own service is down, the same Claude models answer from Google Cloud or Amazon Web Services instead. None of them keeps what it is sent.
OpenAI and Microsoft Azure — OpenAI’s models, run by OpenAI or by Microsoft Azure: they make a search index of what you’ve said, so Rosa can find something you told her before, and answer for Rosa in a conversation when our main AI provider can’t. Neither keeps what it is sent.
Inworld and Cartesia — Rosa’s voice, and turning what you say into written words.
Daily — the video call when you book a session with one of our interviewers: it carries the call, writes down what each of you says as you speak (through its transcription partner, Deepgram) so Rosa can follow and help, and records the call into our own storage in your region.
Amazon Web Services — holds the recording of a call with one of our interviewers for the few minutes until it is copied into your story, then deletes it.
Google — sign-in, if you choose Google.
Apple — sign-in, if you choose Apple.
Paddle — sells blocks of time with Rosa once they’re on sale as our reseller: it takes your payment details, sends your receipt and handles the tax. We see your email, name, country and what you bought, never your card details.
Resend — sends sign-in links and emails about your story and our replies to your emails, keeps the list of people waiting to hear when stories go on sale, and receives anything you email in, and a copy of what you write to us so we can answer it.
Zoho — the inbox for hello@heardandkept.com and our team’s own mailbox, so anything you write to us there, what you tell us in the trial’s feedback form, and our replies. Kept in its EU data centre.
Upstash — short-lived counters, and a queue for work done in the background.
Sentry and Axiom — error reports and service logs.
Some of these companies are based outside the UK, mainly in the United States. When your information goes abroad, we rely on the safeguards UK data protection law allows — the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or a finding that the country protects data adequately. Ask us if you’d like the detail for a particular company.
How long we keep it
Your videos, photographs, words and notes stay until you delete them or close your account. We deliberately don’t delete them on a schedule — the point is that they last.
One exception, for videos only. When a story’s time is up — a year from its first conversation, longer if you keep it online — and it isn’t reopened with another block of time, or kept online, its camera videos are deleted — never sooner than 60 days after the time is up. We email you three times first — 30 days, a week and the day before the videos go — each time with a way to keep them online. Your words, your book, your photographs and any voice-only recordings are never deleted for this, and the family you share them with can still read them.
Two things tidy themselves away. If you record a part twice and choose one, the other take goes after seven days. And the raw sound or video of a conversation you walked away from — left untouched for a week and never saved as a recording — is deleted a month after that. What you said is kept, in its transcript.
Deleting a video (“I have my copy, please delete”) removes its video files, usually overnight. Its written transcript stays until you close your account. To have something Rosa remembers removed, ask her to forget it — it’s deleted properly, not hidden.
Closing your account (ask Rosa and she’ll show you how, or email us) deletes everything here: recordings, photographs, words, notes, and every story you keep. A few things remain: your sign-in — tell us if you’d like that deleted too — the usage amounts above, and any hours of conversation you were given or bought, so they’re still yours if you come back. These are numbers only, and none of your words. If you delete your whole account, we remove or anonymise your personal information within 30 days, apart from anything the law makes us keep.
Technical logs (what the service did, never what you said) are kept for 30 days, and error reports for up to 90 days.
Backups. Our database keeps a rolling copy of the last 24 hours so it can be restored after a fault; something you delete is gone from it within a day.
Emails to us are kept for 12 months after the conversation is closed. A copy of your story we make for you on request is kept for 30 days, for you to collect.
If you die, nothing changes on its own, and we don’t open your account for anyone — so download copies and keep them where your family will look. Someone dealing with your affairs can ask us to close it.
“Tell me when it’s ready” addresses — until we’ve sent that one email, or until you ask us to remove yours, whichever comes first.
Cookies and your device
We use a few strictly necessary cookies and similar storage, and no advertising or tracking cookies:
A secure sign-in cookie that keeps you signed in, and a short-lived one that protects the sign-in form.
Your preferences, kept in your browser — things like text size, captions, and that you’ve read our note about this being an early version.
Only if you choose it: pieces of a recording kept on your own device for up to a day, until they’ve safely reached us — so nothing is lost if the connection drops.
Counting visits and page speed, with Vercel Web Analytics and Speed Insights. They set no cookie and store no identifier on your device, and the page address they record has anything that could identify you taken out first.
Because these are needed for the service you’ve asked for, the law doesn’t require a cookie banner for them. You can clear cookies in your browser, but you’ll be signed out.
Keeping it safe
Everything travels encrypted (HTTPS), and our database is encrypted.
The words of your story — transcripts, notes, photo captions — are also locked with a key of their own for your account.
We never store passwords: you sign in with an emailed link or code, with Google or Apple, or with a passkey — your face or fingerprint, checked by your own device.
Hidden location details are removed from photographs.
Access to our systems is limited to those who need it.
No online service can promise perfect security. If a breach put your rights at risk, we would tell you, and the Information Commissioner’s Office, as the law requires.
Children
Heard and Kept is for adults. You must be 18 or over to make an account. If we learn we hold an account for someone under 18, we delete it and its information.
Your rights
Under UK GDPR you have the right to:
See a copy of the information we hold about you.
Correct anything that’s wrong.
Delete your information (the “right to erasure”).
Restrict or object to what we do on the basis of our legitimate interests.
Take it with you. Ask us for a copy and we’ll send you everything — your videos, transcripts, book and website — as a link to download.
Withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on it. This doesn’t undo anything done before.
To use any of these rights, email hello@heardandkept.com. It’s free, and we’ll reply within one month.
If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk, helpline 0303 123 1113). We’d be grateful for the chance to put things right first.
Changes to this page
We’ll update this page as the service changes. The date at the top always shows the current version. If a change makes a real difference to your rights, we’ll tell you directly rather than expect you to re-read it. Our terms explain the rest of our agreement with you.