Privacy Policy

The short version

Elise’s Lantern is a grief support community for bereaved parents, made by a bereaved parent. You will be trusting this app with some of the most tender things you have. So before the fine print, here are the promises:

• We never sell your information. Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to anyone, not ever.
• There are no ads and no tracking. The app contains no advertising, no analytics trackers, and no social-media tracking code.
• Your journal is yours alone. Journal entries, photos, and voice notes are private to you. No other member, moderator, or team member can browse them.
• We only collect what the app needs to work — and this page lists all of it.

What we collect

Your account. An email address and a password. The email is used to sign in, verify your account, and (only if you opt in) send you letters and notifications. Passwords are handled by our sign-in service and are never visible to us.

Your profile. What you choose to share: your first name (last name is optional), your role (mom, dad, guardian…), your faith if you wish to share it, languages, and your story in your own words. Other members see only a gentle summary — your first name and last initial — and never your email address.

Your child. The names, dates, cause of loss, and memories you choose to share about your child. We know what these mean. They are shown to other bereaved parents in the community as part of your profile, exactly as you entered them, and nowhere else — unless you choose to publish a public memorial page (see below).

Your journal. Entries, letters, moments of joy, photos, one voice note per entry, and your daily grief meter. These are private to you — see the next section.

Your activity in the community. Whether your lantern is lit, reach-outs you send or answer, messages in conversations you take part in, members you’ve blocked, and reports you submit.

Memorial pages. If you create and publish a story page for your child, its text, photos, and the candle messages visitors leave are public — that is their purpose. You choose if and when to publish.

Letters from friends and family. When someone who isn’t a member writes a letter through a link you shared, we collect their name, their letter, and (only if they choose) an email address for yearly reminders, which they can unsubscribe from at any time. We also note their device’s internet address briefly, only to prevent abuse of the link.

Your device. A notification token, so the app can deliver notifications you’ve asked for. The app asks permission before using your microphone (voice notes) or photo library (journal and memorial photos), and uses them only for those features.

Your journal is private

Journal entries — including photos and voice notes — are stored so that only your own account can reach them. They are not visible to other members, to volunteers, or to moderators, and they are never used for matching, moderation, or anything else. Photos and voice notes are kept in private storage and served only to you, through links that expire within an hour.

If you write something in your journal that sounds like a crisis, the app will gently show you the 988 lifeline. That happens on the spot, just for you — no one is notified, and your entry stays private.

How we use your information

Only to make the app work for you:

• To connect you with other bereaved parents — the lantern, reach-outs, and conversations.
• To send notifications you’ve chosen to receive, and letters on the days you’ve asked us to remember.
• To keep the community safe — reviewing reports, moderating public letters and candle messages, and responding when someone may be in crisis.
• To fix problems when something breaks.

We do not use your information for advertising, profiling, or training AI models. The companionship content in the app is written by humans, and always will be.

Who helps us run the app

A small number of services process data on our behalf, under their own confidentiality obligations. None of them are allowed to use your information for their own purposes:

• Amazon Web Services (United States) — hosts the app, its database, its stored photos and voice notes, and sends our email.
• Expo & Google Firebase — deliver push notifications to your phone. They handle the notification itself (which may include a first name or a short message preview), not your stored data.
• Anthropic — an AI service that helps screen public content (letters from non-members, candle messages, and abuse reports) for safety before a human reviews it. It never sees your journal, your profile, or your private conversations.
• Slack — how our small team is alerted to safety reports and possible crises, so a human can respond quickly.

We may also disclose information if the law truly requires it, or when someone’s safety is at immediate risk.

When someone may be in crisis

Messages in conversations pass through a simple safety screen. If a message suggests someone may be thinking of harming themselves, the app shares the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline with them right away, and quietly alerts a human on our team so we can check in. The message itself is never blocked or censored — grief needs room to speak.

Children

Elise’s Lantern is for adults. It is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. The information about children in this app is the memories bereaved parents carry of their own — and we treat it with the care it deserves.

Keeping and deleting your information

We keep your information for as long as you have an account, so that your journal, your child’s page, and your connections are there when you return — whether that’s tomorrow or years from now. We keep short-term backups to protect against accidents.

• You can delete individual journal entries in the app at any time; their photos and voice notes are deleted with them.
• You can unpublish or edit your child’s memorial page at any time.
• To delete your account and everything in it, email letters@eliseslantern.com from your account’s email address. A person — not a bot — will take care of it, confirm with you, and remove your data, usually within a few days. Residual copies leave our backups within about 35 days.

A delete-account option inside the app itself is on the way.

Security

Your information travels encrypted between your phone and our servers, and is stored with a major cloud provider in the United States with access limited to what the app needs. Photos and voice notes live in private storage that is not reachable from the open internet. No system is perfect, but this one was built by a parent who keeps his own daughter’s memories in it — it is protected the way we’d protect our own. If we ever learn of a breach affecting you, we will tell you plainly and promptly.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we’ll update the date at the top and let you know in the app before the change takes effect. We will never quietly weaken the promises in the short version at the top.

Questions

Write to letters@eliseslantern.com — a person reads it. Elise’s Lantern is operated by Dotsense Media in Arizona, United States.