Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

HeirLatch ("we", "our", or "us") is committed to protecting your personal data and respecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, and protect your information when you use our digital legacy management service.

We comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and other applicable data protection laws.

2. Data Controller

HeirLatch is the data controller responsible for your personal data. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact our Data Protection Officer at privacy@heirlatch.com.

3. Information We Collect

We collect the following types of personal data:

• Account Information: Email address, name, phone number, and password (hashed)
• Digital Account Data: Account names, usernames, encrypted passwords, and notes you choose to store
• Trusted Contact Information: Names, email addresses, and relationships of your designated contacts
• Legacy Letters: Personal messages you create for your trusted contacts
• Usage Data: Check-in history, login times, and activity logs
• Technical Data: IP address, browser type, device information, and cookies

4. Legal Basis for Processing (GDPR)

We process your personal data under the following legal bases:

• Contract Performance: To provide you with our services as agreed in our Terms of Service
• Consent: For marketing communications and optional analytics
• Legitimate Interests: To improve our services, prevent fraud, and ensure security
• Legal Obligation: To comply with applicable laws and regulations

5. How We Use Your Information

We use your personal data to:

• Provide and maintain our digital legacy management service
• Send check-in reminders and important account notifications
• Notify your trusted contacts when triggered by the dead man's switch
• Deliver your legacy letters to designated recipients
• Improve and personalize your experience
• Respond to your inquiries and provide customer support
• Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and security incidents

6. Data Security

We implement industry-leading security measures to protect your data:

• Encryption of stored secrets: AES-256-GCM, applied in your browser before the data reaches us. This covers the contents of your vault: account passwords, SMS two-factor numbers, the text of your legacy letters, device passcodes, and the access instructions you write for physical documents
• What is not encrypted, stated plainly: theinventory around those secrets is stored in ordinary readable form, because the service has to act on it — send email to your contacts, match your accounts to the right provider procedure, and build the executor pack. That means the names, emails and phone numbers of your trusted contacts; the names, sign-in emails and web addresses of your accounts; the subject and intended recipient of each letter; the type and location of your documents and devices; and your own name, date of birth, phone number and address. Treat that list as visible to HeirLatch
• Your master password: never transmitted to us and never stored, in any form. Your encryption key is derived from it in your browser. We cannot recover it, and we cannot decrypt vault contents from our side using it
• Two designed exceptions to that, both requiring your set-up: if you enable key escrow, a copy of your vault key is stored wrapped so that nominated officers can jointly authorise recovery after a waiting period; and if you distribute recovery shares, your nominated verifiers can jointly reconstruct the key. Both exist so your estate is not lost with your password. Neither operates without you having turned it on
• Secure Transmission: All data is transmitted over TLS 1.3 encrypted connections
• Access Controls: Strict access controls and audit logging for all systems
• Tamper-evident audit log: Actions that are successfully recorded enter a hash-chained log. When you export that log from your account we verify the chain and the export carries the result, so a break is reported rather than passing unnoticed

7. Your Rights (GDPR)

Under GDPR, you have the following rights:

• Right of Access: Request a copy of your personal data
• Right to Rectification: Correct inaccurate or incomplete data
• Right to Erasure: Request deletion of your personal data ("right to be forgotten")
• Right to Restrict Processing: Limit how we use your data
• Right to Data Portability: Receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format
• Right to Object: Object to processing based on legitimate interests
• Right to Withdraw Consent: Withdraw consent at any time for consent-based processing

To exercise any of these rights, please visit your account Settings or contact us at privacy@heirlatch.com.

8. Data Retention

We retain your personal data for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide our services. After account deletion:

• Your data will be permanently deleted within 30 days
• Backup copies are purged within 90 days
• Some data may be retained for legal compliance (e.g., financial records for 7 years)

9. Cookies and Tracking

We use two kinds, and only two:

• Staying signed in: required for authentication and security. Without it you would be signed out on every page.
• Usage measurement: which pages are visited and how often, and only if you turn it on. It is off unless you say otherwise, and it never records the contents of your vault.

We do not use advertising or marketing cookies, and we do not share your browsing with advertisers. You can change your choice at any time — including withdrawing it — here or in your browser settings.

10. International Data Transfers

Your data may be transferred to and processed in countries outside your residence. We ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, including Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission, to protect your data during international transfers.

11. Third-Party Services

These are the processors that receive personal data, what each one receives, and why. Where a service only receives data because you or your organisation connected it, that is stated.

• Supabase: Database and authentication. Holds everything you store in HeirLatch. Data Processing Agreement in place; the database is hosted in the EU (Frankfurt)
• Vercel: Hosting, infrastructure and page analytics. Receives requests and, for analytics, page-level usage without cookies or cross-site identifiers
• Resend: Transactional email. Receives the recipient address and the message — reminders to you, and release notifications to the contacts you have named
• Twilio: SMS, where you have provided a mobile number. Receives that number and the message text
• Anthropic: The optional AI features. When you use one, the text you are working on is sent to Anthropic’s API to generate the response and returned to you. That includes the legacy letter you are drafting or asking to be reviewed, along with the recipient’s first name and your description of the relationship; and, for the account helpers, the account name and category you are asking about. If you do not use the AI features, nothing is sent to Anthropic. See section 12
• Stripe: Payments and subscriptions. Receives your name, email and billing details. HeirLatch never sees or stores your full card number
• Cloudflare: Bot protection on sign-up, sign-in and password reset. Receives your IP address and a challenge token for those requests only
• Apple and Google: Where you subscribe through an app store, the store validates the purchase receipt. Receives the receipt, not your vault
• Browser push services (Google, Mozilla and others): If you enable push notifications, your browser’s push endpoint receives the notification
• Have I Been Pwned: The optional password check. Your password is not sent. It is hashed in your browser and only the first five characters of that hash leave, which matches many thousands of possible passwords — the service cannot determine which one is yours
• HR systems (ADP, BambooHR, Gusto, HiBob, Personio): Only where an employer has connected one to enrol its staff. Receives and returns employee directory data for that employer

12. The AI features, and what leaves HeirLatch when you use them

Several features are powered by a language model run by Anthropic: the letter-writing assistant, the letter review, the account categoriser, the account-discovery helper, the access-instruction generator, the compliance helper, the check-in recommendations and the onboarding assistant.

These features send your content to Anthropic to produce the response. Most notably, the letter assistant and the letter review send the text of the legacy letter you are working on. Your letters are stored encrypted, and we cannot read them at rest — but when you choose to use an AI feature on one, that text is decrypted in your browser, sent to us, and forwarded to Anthropic so the model can act on it.

Your master password and your stored account credentials are never sent to any AI service.

The AI features are optional. If you do not use them, no content leaves HeirLatch for this purpose.

13. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any material changes via email or through our service. Your continued use of HeirLatch after such modifications constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

14. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or wish to exercise your data protection rights, please contact us:

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority.