Our promise to you

Open After is a family project. It is built and maintained by a family, not a company. We have no investors, no board, and no plans to sell. The core service — writing and delivering your letters — will always be free.

If circumstances ever change and we can no longer sustain the service, we commit to giving every user enough time and tools to export their data before anything shuts down. Your letters will never disappear without warning.

What we store

Your email address, the books you write, the entries in those books, and any images you attach. We also store who you’ve named as recipients and whether they’ve accepted. If you remove a recipient, we delete every record of them — as if they were never there.

What we don’t store

Passwords (there are none — we use email links), payment information (there is nothing to pay), tracking cookies, analytics scripts, or anything from third parties.

We do use a small number of cookies, but only for authentication — to keep you signed in during your session. These are strictly functional. We do not track you, profile you, or share anything with anyone.

Who can read your letters

The system can — it has to, in order to compile your book and deliver it. No human reads your content. We will only disclose information if compelled by a court order or judicial mandate — never by informal request, and never voluntarily.

Your content is encrypted at rest — meaning that even the data stored on our servers is unreadable without the right key, like a letter locked in a safe. Even if someone stole our entire database, they would see nothing but scrambled text. The encryption key is split into five separate shares, held by five different people. No single person can access it alone.

When your letters leave our servers

Only when the switch triggers — and that timing is entirely in your hands. You set how long after your last check-in your letters should be sent. We send reminders as your deadline approaches. One click on the link in the reminder resets the clock.

Your books are compiled into a PDF and emailed to the recipients you chose — and only those who explicitly accepted. Each delivery email includes a link to confirm that you have sadly passed away. Once confirmed, your account and all its data are permanently deleted from our servers. Nothing remains.

You choose who carries that responsibility. In your Settings, you decide which of your recipients can confirm your passing — one person, several, or any of them. That choice is yours to make while you’re still here.

Deleting your account while you’re here

You can delete your account at any time from Settings. We send a confirmation link to your email. Click it, and everything is gone — every book, every entry, every image, every record. Permanently. We keep nothing.

Changes to this policy

If we ever change how we handle your data, we’ll email you first. No surprises.