Tribute Studios is operated from Western Australia. We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988. This page is written to be read, not to protect us. If anything here is unclear, ask us.
The short version
- We collect only what a tribute needs: an account email, the story you write, and the photographs, clips and recordings people add.
- Photographs are seen only by people who hold the right link, and by us only when we need to fix a problem or answer a request.
- We do not sell personal information, we do not show advertising, and we do not use your photographs or words to train artificial intelligence.
- You can ask us to delete a photograph, a tribute or a whole account, and we will.
- Tribute Studios is in preview. It does not take live payments, so we hold no card details.
What we collect
When you write a song
The song studio needs no account. Your draft, including the story and the lyrics, is saved in your own browser on your own device. It is not sent to us unless you ask for writing help or carry the draft into a tribute. Clearing the draft in the studio, or clearing your browser's site data, removes it.
When you create an account
Your name, your email address and a password. Passwords are stored only as a salted hash, so we cannot read them. A funeral home account also holds the funeral home's name, suburb and state.
When a tribute is opened
The name of the person being remembered, their dates, how their name is pronounced, the biography, the song draft if there is one, and the choices made about the film. Under Australian privacy law, information about a person who has died is generally not personal information, but it is deeply personal to their family and we treat it with the same care.
When guests add photographs
The photographs and clips themselves (up to 8 MB and 30 MB each), and, only if the guest chooses to give them, a name, a caption and a memory. Guests do not create an account and we do not ask for their email address. Photographs often show living people. Please add only photographs you are happy for the family to see.
When you send us a message
The details you type into a form on this site: your name, email address, and for a funeral home enquiry, the funeral home's name, location and phone number if you give them. We use them to reply to you.
What we collect automatically
Our hosting provider records ordinary technical logs, such as the time of a request and the address it came from, to keep the service running and to stop abuse. To limit repeated sign-in attempts and form submissions we store a one-way hash of the connecting address for a short time, not the address itself.
Who can see a tribute
- The account holder, a family member or a funeral home, sees the whole tribute. One account cannot see another account's tributes.
- Anyone with the family link can edit the story, choose photographs and prepare the film. Treat it like a key and share it only with people you trust.
- Anyone with the guest link can add photographs and a memory. They cannot see what others have added.
- The memorial page is unpublished until the account holder shares it. Once shared, anyone with its address can view it. We ask search engines not to list it. It can be unpublished at any time.
- We open a tribute only to fix a fault, to act on a request from the account holder, or where the law requires it.
Artificial intelligence
Writing help is optional. If you ask for it, the words you have typed for that step (for example your notes about the person, or the lyrics so far) are sent to Anthropic, the maker of the Claude models, to produce a suggestion. That text may be processed in the United States. Under its commercial terms it does not use this text to train its models.
- Photographs, clips and recordings are not sent to an AI model today. Automatic photo retouching uses AI, and that service is not connected in this preview, so nothing is sent to it. When it is connected, a photograph will be sent only to be retouched, the print you added is always kept, and this page will name the provider first.
- Nothing is sent unless you press a button that asks for help.
- If writing help is not switched on for the service, the studio works only from your own notes and sends nothing anywhere.
- We do not use your tribute to train any model, and we do not create a voice or likeness of the person who has died.
Recorded song generation is not connected in this preview. When it is, the lyrics and musical direction for your song will be sent to a music provider to produce the recording, and this page will name that provider before it happens. More detail is on the trust and safety page.
Where it is kept, and who helps us
We use a small number of service providers. Each handles information only to provide its service to us.
- Cloudflare hosts the website, the database and the stored photographs, clips and films. Cloudflare operates data centres in Australia and overseas, so information may be stored or processed outside Australia.
- Anthropic provides optional writing help, as described above, in the United States.
- Stripe will process payments when they open. Card details go straight to Stripe and never reach our systems. Today checkout runs only in Stripe's test mode.
Because some of these providers operate overseas, mainly in the United States, using Tribute Studios means your information may be handled outside Australia. We choose providers with strong security practices and take reasonable steps to make sure they protect it.
Cookies and measurement
- We set one cookie when you sign in, to keep you signed in, and one when you open a family link, so your browser can load that tribute's photographs. Neither is used for advertising or tracking.
- The song studio keeps your draft in your browser's local storage.
- Where measurement is switched on, public pages such as this one use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts visits without cookies and without building a profile of you. It is never loaded on a dashboard, a family link, a guest link or a memorial page.
How long we keep things
- A tribute, with its photographs and film, is kept until the account holder asks us to delete it or closes the account. We do not delete tributes automatically, because families return to them.
- Photographs left out of the film stay with the tribute until it is deleted, so the family can change their mind. Ask and we will remove them sooner.
- Messages and enquiries are kept for up to two years, then deleted, unless you ask us to remove them earlier.
- Sign-in sessions expire on their own, and the short-lived records used to limit repeated attempts are overwritten.
- Backups made by our hosting provider may hold deleted material for a short time before they are overwritten.
Deleting and correcting
The account holder can leave any photograph out of the film at any time. To have a photograph, a tribute or an account permanently deleted, or to get a copy of what we hold, send us a request from the account's email address. We will confirm it is you, act within 30 days, and tell you when it is done.
If you are a guest and want a photograph you added removed, or you appear in a photograph and want it taken down, ask the family, or ask us and we will pass it on and help. If you are a family member and a funeral home holds the tribute, you can ask the funeral home or ask us directly.
You can also ask us to correct anything we hold about you that is wrong.
Tribute Studios does not send automated email today. If you send us a message, a person replies. We will only ever send news or reminders to people who have asked for them, every such email will say who it is from, and every one will carry a way to stop them.
Children
Accounts are for adults. Family photographs often include children. Please think about whether a child, or their parent, would be comfortable with a photograph being shown at a service or on a memorial page.
Security
Connections are encrypted. Passwords are hashed. Sign-in cookies are signed and cannot be read by scripts. Private links use long random addresses that cannot be guessed. No system is perfect, and if we learn of a breach that is likely to cause serious harm we will tell the people affected and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, as the law requires.
Questions and complaints
Write to us first and we will try to put it right within 30 days. If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.
Changes to this page
When we change how we handle information, we will change this page and its date before the change takes effect. We will not make a tribute less private than it was without asking the account holder first.