Terms and Privacy

Terms of Service

Privacy Notice

The COVID Memorial Terms of Service

Date last updated: 18th January 2021

What's in These Terms of Service?

These are the terms for using the The COVID Memorial Website (the Website). It won't take long for you to read these terms and we recommend that you read them to make sure you know your rights and our terms for using the Website.

We make this Website available to everyone and so you must check that your country's local laws allow you to use the Website. Nothing in the remainder of these terms of service is intended to permit or encourage you to do something which would normally be unlawful in your country.

Who We Are and How to Contact Us

The Website is operated by The COVID Memorial Limited (We or Us), a limited company registered in England under company number 13152416, whose registered address is Freeths Routeco Business Park, Davy Avenue, Knowlhill, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom, MK5 8HJ.

For all queries about The COVID Memorial, please email [email protected].

By Using the Website, You Accept These Terms of Service

By using our Website, you confirm that you accept these terms of service and that you agree to comply with them. If you do not agree to these terms, you must not use our Website. We recommend that you download or save a copy of these terms for future reference.

Please note that we will update these terms from time to time. The latest version of these terms will always be found on our website at www.thecovid.memorial/terms

If you break any of these terms listed here and as a consequence, we suffer any loss or someone tries to sue us, you will pay us in full for all loss we suffer including our legal fees and other costs/expenses.

There Are Other Terms That May Apply to You

These are some other terms, which also apply to your use of the Website:

• Our Privacy Notice, (this talks about how we use the information that you give us or that we hold about you).

It's very unlikely, but if something in the Privacy Notice doesn't make sense because of these terms, these terms will apply regardless.

How We Provide the Website

The Website allows users to commemorate individuals that have died as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Users can add memorials for their loved ones, and read memorials uploaded by other users.

We do not require users to create accounts with The COVID Memorial to upload or read memorials.

The COVID Memorial is not responsible for the information uploaded onto the Website and is unable to verify the accuracy of any memorial.

We can't promise that the Website will always be available or quick, because the Website depends on the servers that host it, the Internet, your WiFi or other local connection and other technical things to work. We also can't promise that there won't be bugs or errors with the Website. We will always try to make sure that you have access to the Website at all times and that the Website is up to date, but cannot guarantee that this will always be the case.

If the Website isn't available, or we need to stop providing it, we'll try to let you know as soon as we can via our social media accounts. We can change or end the Website at any time, for any reason, and we'll try to give you as much notice as possible via our social media accounts.

You need to make sure that your device is able to access the Website (this might mean needing to download the latest software). As with anything that you access via the internet, you should also ensure that your device has appropriate and up to date antivirus and firewall software installed. If you have any trouble accessing the Website, just let us know at [email protected].

How We Use Your Information

Our Privacy Notice talks more about how we use the information that you give us or that we hold about you and what cookies we use.

Ending Your Use of the Website

If you no longer wish to use the Website, you do not need to inform us. However, you will still need to comply with all applicable terms.

Using the Website - Some Other Important Terms

Here are some other important terms:

• You have to pay for any mobile data or other internet charges you incur when using the Website.
• We own The COVID Memorial logo, pictures, layout and other content on our Website (except for any content that comes from someone else such as memorial information). Don't use these, or try to copy them or change them, without our written permission. We grant you a limited, non-transferable and non-exclusive right to use the Website.
• We exclude all implied conditions, warranties, representations or other terms that may apply to our Website or any content on it.
• Don't upload any viruses or anything that might affect the way the Website works, or do anything that would be detrimental or harmful to our code or Website.
• You can only use the Website for personal reasons. Don't ask or make anyone pay you to use the Website.
• If we suspect any fraudulent, criminal or improper activity on the Website, we may report or disclose information about you and/or your use of the Website to relevant law enforcement, at our sole discretion and without notice to you.
• Where our Website contains links to other sites and resources, we have no control over, and are not responsible for these links.

Content on the Website

All content uploaded onto the Website must comply with The COVID Memorial's Community Guidelines below. You are solely responsible for anything you upload onto the Website.

We request that only family members or close friends of the deceased post memorials to ensure they are as accurate as possible, and consent to post the memorial from the deceased’s next-of-kin has been obtained.

We don't actively edit, verify content or exercise editorial control over what is uploaded onto the Website. We reserve the right to remove or edit anything posted on the Website or in any services associated with the Website (such as on social media), at our sole discretion and without notice. We will not be liable to you for any losses that you suffer if this happens.

We don't make any representations or warranties as to the truth, accuracy, quality or completeness of information that appears on the Website. We don't endorse anything that is uploaded onto the Website.

We may remove your content (that is, content created or uploaded by you) from the Website, if:

• another user of the Website informs us of any offensive, defamatory, false or abusive content, or any other content which doesn't comply with our Community Guidelines, which you have uploaded; or
• we judge in our exclusive discretion that we ought to do so in order to comply with the law or protect the Website’s users.

If you upload anything that's offensive, defamatory, false, abusive or otherwise not compliant with our Community Guidelines and we suffer any loss or someone tries to sue us, you will pay us in full for all loss we suffer including our legal fees and other costs/expenses.

Community Guidelines

The COVID Memorial’s aim is to provide a safe space, where people can commemorate and memorialise those that have died as a result of COVID-19. Anyone can use The COVID Memorial, no matter who they are, where they live and what they believe, as long as they follow these simple guidelines which are there to keep our website safe and open.

You agree to abide by our these community guidelines when posting content to The COVID Memorial website. The term ‘content’ refers to any text, images, comments and anything else you may contribute to the website.

• Violence, illegal activities and incitement: You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of individuals or incite or support others in partaking in any violent or criminal activities.
• Terrorism: You may not threaten or promote terrorism or violent extremism on this website.
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: You may not post any content that sexually exploits or endangers children in any way.
• Abuse, harassment and bullying: You may not engage in the targeted harassment of any person or incite other people to participate in the same. This includes wishing or hoping that someone experiences physical harm, making threats/sending threatening messages and coordinating spurious or vexatious litigation against an individual.
• Hate speech and hateful conduct: You may not attack, promote violence against, threaten or harass other people on the basis of protected characteristics which include race, ethnicity, nationality, social status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease. You must also not mock individuals or post any cruel or insensitive content. We will not allow any content (including symbols or logos) from organisations recognised as hate groups or individuals linked to them.
• Suicide or self-injury: You may not post any content that promotes or encourages suicide or self-harm of any kind.
• Sensitive media, including violent, adult and graphic content: You may not post any adult content and/or media that is excessively gory and glorifies or celebrates the suffering or humiliation of others, human or animal. Media depicting sexual violence and/or assault is also not permitted.
• Illegal or certain regulated goods or services: You may not use our website for any unlawful purpose, in furtherance of any kind of illegal activities or in any way that breaches any applicable local, national or international law or regulation. This includes selling, buying, or facilitating transactions in illegal goods or services, as well as certain types of regulated goods or services. Please note that in the event of a conflict between applicable laws in this regard, the laws of England and Wales will predominate.
• Personal information: You may not post personal information of any third party on this website unless you have obtained explicit consent from that third party with regard to the ways in which such information will be used. We request that only close family and friends post memorials for their loved ones.
• Defamatory or false material: You may not post any material which is false or can be considered to be defamatory of any person or organisation.
• Impersonation or inauthentic behaviour: You must not use the website to impersonate any person, misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person or organisation or deceive people or deprive them of money, property or legal rights.
• Spam: do not use the website to send mass, unsolicited communications or do any other form of spam activity.

Please report any problems to us at [email protected] We are unable to proactively monitor all the content that is posted to the website ourselves. Therefore, we rely on our users to report issues to us. Once reported, our team will review the content for policy violations and act accordingly.

If you come across any content on The COVID Memorial that indicates an emergency situation, for example, if a person is in danger, please contact your local authorities or law enforcement agencies immediately.

If we consider that you are in breach of these rules, or you are reported by someone to be in breach of these rules, then we reserve the right to remove your content. If you post content that is a serious or repeated breach of the rules, we may suspend or close your account and we may report you to the authorities.

Sharing Content

All content uploaded onto the Website must comply with The COVID Memorial's Community Guidelines. You are solely responsible for anything you upload onto the Website.

You own, and are responsible for, any original images, videos and other content you share on the Website but we can also store them on the Website and make them available to other users of the Website (where appropriate). We don’t have to pay you any money for our use of your images, videos or other content.

You grant us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use and share your content as part of our promotional activities.

Don't copy other people's images, videos and other content and share them via the Website if you're not allowed to.

If we receive a complaint that you have copied someone else's content (like photos or videos), we will delete your content.

If you share content from the Website in any other domain (including within social media) you are entirely responsible for that publication.

Terms About Linking to Our Website

You may link to our Website, provided that you do so fairly and legally, and you don't damage our reputation. Don't link to our Website in a way that suggests The COVID Memorial knows or endorses you. You can only link from a website that you own or to your own social media or blogging pages.

If we don't like the way you've linked to our Website, we can tell you to remove the link and you'll have to comply.

The COVID Memorial's Rights

We can change these terms at any time and will try our best to let you know about any major changes. If you disagree with our changes, you'll have to stop using the Website. If you keep using the Website after any changes, we'll assume you're okay with them.

We may update and change the Website at any time. We will try our best to let you know about any major changes via our social media accounts.

We're very happy to hear your thoughts and ideas about the Website but if you tell us them, and we use them, we don't have to pay you any money for them or tell anyone that it was your idea.

We can ban you from using the Website if you break our terms, if we think you might try to break the terms or if you lie to us in any way.

If you break the law, or we think you might try to break the law, we will tell the police and share your information with them.

Our Responsibility to You

We can't promise that the Website will always be available. We won't be responsible to you for anything that happens if you can't access the Website.

It's very unlikely but if the Website damages your device, let us know and we'll try to help you. We can't promise that we'll be able to help but we'll give it a go.

Notwithstanding what is said above, if we are found to be responsible to you for anything at all, then provided you evidence your loss and can show us that you have done all you can to minimise it, then we may compensate to a maximum of £5.

English law applies to these terms. If you want to complain about us and you live in the UK, you can only bring your complaint in the courts of England and Wales. Please let us know as soon as possible if you have any questions or complaints about us, by emailing us at [email protected].

If you have any complaint about The COVID Memorial, your complaint can only be against us and not against any of our employees, workers, directors, shareholders, advisors or other The COVID Memorial people.

We May Give Our Rights or Obligations to Someone Else

We may give our rights or obligations, under these terms, to any of our affiliates or group companies (which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries) or any other company that we choose.

If we sell The COVID Memorial or if another company joins our group in the future these new companies may also get involved with these terms.

We might also share information about you with our connected companies.

We will try our best to let you know if we give our rights or obligations, under these terms, to an affiliate or another company via our social media accounts.

The COVID Memorial Privacy Notice

This website is operated by The COVID Memorial Limited (company number 13152416), and referred to as "The COVID Memorial", "we", "us" or "our" in this privacy notice. The COVID Memorial is the data controller and is responsible for your personal data. Personal data is information, or a combination of pieces of information, about an identifiable living person, or that could reasonably allow such a person to be identified.

The COVID Memorial takes data protection very seriously and has put in place appropriate technical and organisational measures in order to meet the requirements of applicable Data Protection Legislation (which includes the UK Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK’s version of the General Data Protection Regulation, the “UK-GDPR”).

This privacy notice describes how we collect and process personal data, how we use and protect this data, and your rights in relation to personal data.

It is important that you read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notice we may provide to you on specific occasions, when we are collecting or processing personal data about you, so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data.

This privacy notice is directed to the controller’s obligations as a processor of personal data in the UK. If you are located outside of the UK, please note that local laws may also apply.

1. Personal information we use

Generally speaking, information which relates to deceased individuals is not classed as personal data. Nevertheless, we may from time to time collect and use personal data that you upload to the website as part of the memorials you post. We will also collect some data from you via the cookies we use to provide the website to you. More details regarding the cookies we use can be found below.

1.1 Information we collect:

To post a memorial, or comment on a memorial, you do not need to create an account or provide any of your own personal data. We only collect data about the deceased person the memorial is intended to commemorate.

If you are posting a memorial, we will ask for the following information about the deceased:

• their name;
• their date of birth, date of death and age;
• the country they lived in;
• the town/city they lived in;
• we also ask that you write a respectful message to accompany these details, giving more information about the deceased’s life;
• memorial sharing links.

We also ask, as far as possible, that you do not include personal data about any living individual as part of the memorial you post.

If you decide to support the work of our project, your personal financial data may be processed by the third-party payment provider in accordance with their own privacy notice – they will not share that personal data with us.

1.2 Where do we get personal data from?

We only collect the personal data you upload to the website when submitting the memorial. We discourage you from revealing any of your own personal data in either the memorial message, or in the memorial comments, as these are publicly viewable.

We request that memorials are only uploaded by family members or close friends of the deceased, and that you seek permission or agreement from the deceased’s next-of-kin before posting the memorial.

1.3 Information we collect about you from other sources:

We may also obtain information about you from your social media pages, if you choose to interact with The COVID Memorial via your social media accounts.

1.4 Your device data:

In the course of your visit to this website, we collect the following technical device data automatically:

• the date and time on which you access a page on our website;
• how you interact with the website; and
• information about the device you are using (e.g. type of device, web browser, operating system and IP address)

We do not link this data to other personal data you provide and the data is only used for internal purposes in connection with the administration of and improvements to the website, and by third party service providers to provide support services in connection with those purposes.

There are also third-party cookies on the website, which collect some information about you. Please see section 9 for further information.

1.6 Employees, candidates and third-party providers

If we engage with you in your capacity as an employee of The COVID Memorial, a candidate or third-party service provider, we may collect the following information, whether from you directly or from a third party:

• name;
• email address;
• postal address;
• telephone number;
• employment information;
• other information about your identity, such as your date of birth, your marital status, in-case-of-emergency contact details and gender (including special category data);
• financial data, such as your bank account details; and
• device data as set out above at section 1.4.

2. How we use your personal information and the basis on which we use it:

We use the information that you provide to us (which includes the deceased’s personal information) to make the memorials publicly available and for the purposes of the memorial set out on the website.

To the extent that the personal information you supply involves personal data of living individuals (which we discourage), we must have a legal basis on which to process this personal information. The legal bases on which we rely are:

• that we are providing a service in the public interest to memorialise those around the world who have passed as a direct or indirect consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic;
• we also consider that affording individuals around the world with a platform on which to memorialise those they have lost, and to draw attention to the scale of the global impact of this pandemic, serves a legitimate interest which justifies the very limited processing of personal data which is associated with that; and
• to the extent that any processing of personal data is not covered by those bases, we consider that your provision of the said personal data amounts to your explicit and unequivocal consent for us to collect and process that personal data in the way described in this privacy notice. You may withdraw your consent (and request us to cease processing under either of the other legal bases described above) at any time by contacting us using the details at the end of this privacy notice.

Your rights over personal information

Although as we have explained above the usual rights in relation to personal data are generally not regarded as applying to the personal data of the deceased, we intend to respect the following rights in relation to any personal information stored on the site (which includes anything which is defined in law as personal data):

• access to the personal information;
• rectification of the personal information we hold;
• requests that we erase the personal information (provided that there is a good lawful basis for erasure);
• restriction of our use of the personal information;
• objections to our use of the personal information; and
• withdrawal of your consent to our processing of the personal information – unless we can rely on another legal basis.

If you have any concerns about our processing of personal information, we would ask you to make us aware of it in the first instance, but you are always able to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority, which, in the UK, is the Information Commissioner's Office.

We encourage you to update or correct the deceased’s information if it changes or is inaccurate. To do this, please email [email protected] to request an update to be made.

4. Information sharing

We may share any personal information you supply with third parties under the following circumstances:

• As is apparent from the information published within the memorial site, the information is being placed into the public domain.
• We may share the deceased's personal information with our service providers and business partners that perform business operations for us. For example, we may partner with other companies to optimise our services, analyse information and promote the website;
• We may share information with law enforcement agency, courts, regulator, government authority or other third party’s where we believe this is necessary to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation, or otherwise to protect our rights or the rights of any third party; and
• We may share personal information with any third party that looks to take over responsibility for, or to which we transfer, the memorial or all or substantially all of our assets and business. Should such a transfer occur, we will use reasonable efforts to ensure that the entity to which we transfer your personal information uses it in a manner that is consistent with this privacy notice.

The recipients referred to above may be located outside the jurisdiction in which you are located (or in which we provide the services). Please see section 8 for more information.

As mentioned, we do use third party cookies on the website. Please see section 9 for further information.

5. Information security and storage

We implement technical and organisational measures to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risk to the personal information we process. These measures are aimed at ensuring the on-going integrity and confidentiality of personal information. We evaluate these measures on a regular basis to ensure the security of the processing.

6. How long we keep personal data

We will keep the deceased’s personal information for as long as their memorial is on our website. If you decide that you no longer want the memorial to be on the website, we will retain their personal information for a period of time that enables us to:

• maintain our business records for analysis and/or audit purposes;
• comply with record retention requirements under the law;
• defend or bring any existing or potential legal cases;
• deal with any complaints regarding the services; and
• any other purposes for which your personal information needs to be retained.

We will delete their personal information as soon as it is no longer required for these purposes, or, in any event, no later than 12 months after you request it is deleted.

If there is any information that we are unable, for technical reasons, to delete entirely from our systems, we will look to anonymise or pseudonymise this information so that the deceased cannot be identified from it.

7. International data transfer

Information that you provide is published on the memorial website and may be visible to anyone with an internet browser who visits the website, from anywhere in the world. We ask that you do not place personal data of any identifiable living person within the memorial, but if you do so then you will also be consenting to any transfer of that personal data which might result from such placement.

We do not currently intend to transfer, store and process personal data outside the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area. It may be, from time to time, that it is necessary for us to make a transfer of personal data to a country (a “third country”) which is neither within the UK or EEA nor a country in relation to which the UK Secretary of State or the EU Commission has made a finding of adequacy in connection with its data protection regime. In those circumstances we will ensure that adequate safeguards are in place which will be documented in a data sharing or data processing agreement using the model clauses approved by the EU Commission or (where applicable) by the UK Secretary of State in accordance with the UK-GDPR.

8. Cookies

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to collect information about you for authentication purposes, which enable you to use the website.

8.1 Strictly Necessary Cookies

These are cookies that are required for the operation of our platform and you cannot turn them off. The cookies we use are:

We also use some third-party strictly necessary cookies:

Cloudflare

Our platform uses a third-party service called Cloudflare to maximize network resources, manage traffic, and protect our platform from malicious traffic. These cookies are strictly necessary and Cloudflare provides more details about them here.

8.2 Third party social media cookies

Third parties may also use cookies whenever you link a memorial to your social media accounts. These third parties include Facebook and Twitter. We have no control over these cookies, and so are not responsible or liable for them. Please refer to the relevant privacy policy for further information about how that social media company uses your personal data.

9. Anonymised data

We collect, use and share anonymised data such as statistical or demographic data to track users of our website. Anonymised data could be derived from the deceased’s personal data but is not considered personal data because this data will not directly or indirectly identify the deceased. However, if we combine or connect anonymised data with the deceased’s personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify them, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy notice.

10. Contact us

If you have questions or concerns regarding the way in which the deceased’s personal information has been used, please contact us at [email protected].

We are committed to working with you to obtain a fair resolution of any complaint or concern about privacy. If, however, you believe that we have not been or are not able to assist with your complaint or concern, you have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues, using their website https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/.

11. Third party links

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to and from third party websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these websites or their related policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data via these websites.

12. Changes to the policy

You may download or save a copy of this privacy notice from the website at any time.

We may modify or update this privacy notice from time to time.

This notice was last updated on 26 January 2021.