Everlit · Memorial Films

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 28 July 2026

1. Who is responsible for your information

Everlit is run from South Africa by Deon van der Nest, trading as Afterlight Memorial Films. Under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), that makes him the responsible party for the personal information described here, and the person you can contact about any of it. Message us on WhatsApp at 062 660 7269.

2. What we collect, and why

We only collect what a memorial needs in order to work:

• Photographs that families upload. These often show living people as well as the person being remembered.
• The first name you enter when you join a memorial, so the family can see who chose which photos.
• Comments, favourites, and tribute answers you write.
• Photo details such as a date or a place, where someone adds them.
• How you are related to the person being remembered, if you choose to say when you join.
• A contact detail from whoever arranges the memorial, given once when it is created, so we know where to send the finished film.
• A contact detail passed to us by a funeral home, where a family has asked their funeral home to arrange a memorial on their behalf. We use it only to set that memorial up and to reach the family about it, and you may ask us to remove it at any time.
• Basic technical information needed to serve the site, such as the invite code you arrived with.

We use all of it for two purposes only: running the memorial so your family can gather and see these moments, and producing the tribute film where one has been arranged. We do not use it for advertising, and we do not sell it.

3. A note about the person who has died

POPIA protects living people. Information about someone who has died is not personal information under the Act. But the photographs and stories in a memorial almost always include living relatives and friends too, and that information is protected. We treat the whole memorial with the same care either way.

4. Photographs of other people, including children

When you upload a photograph, please only upload photographs you have the right to share. If a photograph shows a child, South African law expects the permission of a parent or guardian before that child's information is handled. In practice this is family photographs being shared within a family, which is exactly what the law contemplates, but the responsibility to share thoughtfully sits with the person uploading.

5. Who else touches your information

We keep the number of hands as small as we can. Two service providers process information on our behalf, under our instructions:

• Supabase stores the database and the photograph files.
• Netlify hosts and serves the site.

These providers store information on servers outside South Africa. POPIA allows this where the receiving country or the provider offers comparable protection, which is the basis we rely on.

A backup copy. A dated backup of every memorial's photographs and words is also kept on Everlit's own computer in South Africa, so no fault at our service providers can ever lose a family's photographs. When a memorial is deleted, it is removed from this backup as well, within days. Nobody else is given access to a memorial's contents.

6. How long we keep it

We keep a memorial for as long as the family wants it, because the point of it is to last. If you ask us to remove a photograph, a comment, or an entire memorial, we will do so within a reasonable time. We do not have a fixed deletion date, and we will not quietly delete a family's memorial without telling them.

7. Keeping it safe

Photographs are stored privately rather than on the open internet, and are shown through links that expire. A memorial can only be opened by someone who has its invite link, so please share that link thoughtfully. No system is perfect, and we ask you to keep your own copies of irreplaceable photographs.

8. Your rights

Under POPIA you may:

• Ask what personal information we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct anything that is wrong.
• Ask us to delete a photograph, a comment, or an entire memorial.
• Object to how we are using your information.
• Withdraw permission you gave earlier.

Message us on WhatsApp at 062 660 7269 and we will help. There is no charge for asking.

9. If you are not happy with how we handled it

Please tell us first, so we can put it right. If you would still rather take it further, you can complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa, the body that oversees POPIA. Their details are published at inforegulator.org.za.

10. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a meaningful way, we will update the date at the top of this page.

Read our Terms & Conditions Back to Everlit