How we look after your memories

People tell How We Saw It things they may never have told anyone. This page says what we keep, who can see it, what happens to it, and how to have it removed. If anything here is unclear, write to us at hello@howwesawit.com.

What we collect

If you start an experience (the creator), we keep your email address, so you can sign in with a link instead of a password, and the details you give it: its title, the kind of occasion, and any date, place, description or cover photograph you add.

If you add memories (a contributor), you don't need an account. We keep the name you give, how you know the group if you tell us, your email address if you choose to give it (only to let you know when the collection is ready; it isn't shown to the creator or other contributors), what you write, any photographs you add, and any voice recordings with their written transcripts. We also keep the three choices you make about the finished story (below). A small cookie on your device lets you come back and add more without starting again.

We also count anonymous events, such as a page being viewed or a memory being added, to understand how people use the service. These counts never include what anyone wrote or said. We also use Vercel Web Analytics, which counts page visits without cookies and without identifying you.

Who can see what

• Every experience is private. Only its creator and the people they send the invitation link to can open it. Nothing is listed publicly or shown to search engines.
• The creator can see, correct, leave out or delete the memories in their experience. When they correct one, your original words are kept alongside the correction.
• Photographs and recordings are kept in private storage. They are only ever shown through links that expire after a short time.
• A finished story is shared by a private link the creator sends. The creator can switch a link off at any time. A PDF that someone has already downloaded can't be called back, so we tell creators that before they share.

Your choices as a contributor

When you add memories, you choose separately:

• whether your memories may be included in the finished story at all;
• whether your name appears in it, or you appear as “one of the group”;
• whether your photographs may be used in it.

You can change these at any time before the story is published, from the same link you used to add your memories. Your memories stay in the collection whatever you choose.

How AI is used

If a finished story is written, the memories that may be included are sent to an AI model to write it. We use OpenRouter to reach Anthropic's Claude models for this. If you record a memory by voice, the recording is sent to OpenAI's Whisper model, usually through OpenRouter, to turn it into text.

Your memories are sent only to produce your group's story or transcript, and for no other purpose. Where a provider lets us choose, we choose settings that do not allow your content to be used to train their models. We do not use your memories to train any model of our own.

AI never replaces what anyone wrote. Every original memory, recording and photograph stays in the collection, and the creator reads and approves the story before anyone else sees it.

How long we keep things

We keep an experience, its memories and its finished story for as long as the experience exists, unless it is deleted. We don't promise to keep anything forever. If we ever need to change how long we keep things, we will tell creators well in advance so they can download what they want to keep. To be decided: a fixed retention period, if any

Deleting and downloading

• Before a story is published, a contributor can ask the creator to remove a memory, or ask us directly, and it will be left out of the story.
• After a story is published, write to us and we will remove your memories, and the passages and quotations drawn from them, from the online story. We can't recall copies already downloaded.
• A creator can delete their whole experience, and anyone can ask us for a copy of what we hold about them. To be decided: how quickly we respond, and the export format

The law

How We Saw It is run from Canada, and we aim to handle personal information in line with Canada's privacy law, PIPEDA. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, tell us first; you can also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. How We Saw It is operated by Craig Frew Ltd., 73-1338 Stellys Cross Road, Brentwood Bay, BC V8M 1H3, Canada.