1. Overview
StoryHive helps an organizer invite a group of people (contributors) to record short video, photo, or voice answers to a set of questions about a person or an occasion, then compiles those answers into one film. This policy covers both roles: the organizer who creates and pays for an event, and the contributors who record for it.
2. Information we collect
- Organizer account information. When you sign in with Google we receive your Google profile's name, email address, and profile photo (if your Google account has one). If you sign in on a development instance without Google configured, we store only the name and email you type in.
- Event details. The event type, honoree or occasion name, theme, deadline, the questions you choose to ask, and settings like recording orientation and length limits.
- Contributor information. A contributor's name and email are collected when they join an event; the email field is optional unless an organizer's platform admin has turned on a "require email" setting. If the organizer turns on those fields for the event, we also collect the contributor's relationship to the honoree and their age. These fields are optional per event and only collected when the organizer asks for them. A contributor can also choose "Continue with Google" instead of joining as a guest — in that case we receive the same Google profile fields as an organizer (name, email, profile photo), and use them to let that contributor pick up where they left off if they switch devices or come back later.
- Marketing consent. A contributor may separately, and only by their own unticked opt-in, agree to receive occasional marketing email from StoryHive. If they do, we keep a record of their email address, the date and time of that consent, and which event they were contributing to at the time — nothing more. This is entirely independent of the transactional email above and of any single event's own reminders.
- Recordings. The video, photo, and voice answers contributors record or upload, plus any optional intro video or honoree photo the organizer uploads, and any music track an organizer uploads for their film.
- Technical logs. Standard web request logs (timestamps, the page or API route requested, response status, and the connecting IP address as seen by our network provider), and application logs needed to run and debug the recording, upload, and film-compilation process.
3. How we use it
- To create and manage your organizer or contributor account.
- To run the invite link, recorder, and upload flow for an event.
- To compile the film: assembling clips in question order, adding title cards, contributor names, transitions, background music, and (when enabled) subtitles.
- To send you email about your account or event (an invite reminder, a "your film is ready" notice, a thank-you note) when you or the organizer trigger it.
- Only with your separate, unticked opt-in, to send you occasional marketing email about StoryHive (tips, offers, new features). Every such email includes an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing takes effect platform-wide immediately.
- To operate rate limits, storage quotas, and abuse prevention so the service stays available for everyone.
- To debug problems with a specific upload or compile job, using the technical logs above.
- To process payment for compiling a film, when payments are enabled.
We do not sell your information, and we do not use your recordings to train any AI model, ours or anyone else's.
4. Who can see your media
Every clip, photo, voice recording, and compiled film is stored privately — not on the open internet where a guessed link would work. Access is checked on every request:
- The event's organizer, while signed in, can see every submission and the compiled film for their own events only — never another organizer's.
- StoryHive admins (currently the site owner/operator) can access media for support and moderation.
- A contributor can access only their own submitted clips, checked against a private cookie set when they join — not any other contributor's, and not the finished film.
- Anyone with the invite link can view an organizer-supplied intro video or honoree photo for that event (the material meant to be shown to invitees), but never raw contributor submissions or the finished film.
5. Where processing happens
Film compilation — trimming and joining clips, adding title cards and transitions, mixing in music, and generating subtitles — runs entirely on StoryHive's own computer, using local software (FFmpeg and a locally run Whisper speech-to-text model). We do not send your recordings to a third-party AI or video-processing service to make your film.
6. Third-party services we do use
A short list of outside services support the site itself, separate from film processing:
- Cloudflare — our network provider. It sits in front of the site for TLS/HTTPS, basic protection against abusive traffic, and to see your connecting IP address on our behalf.
- Google — used only for "Sign in with Google". Google shares your profile name, email, and photo with us when you use it; we don't ask Google for anything else about you.
- An email provider (Resend), when configured, sends transactional email on our behalf — invite reminders, "your film is ready" notices, and thank-you messages. It is not enabled on every deployment.
- A payment processor (Stripe), when configured, handles payment for compiling a film. We don't store your card details ourselves.
8. Data retention
- A finished film is downloadable for 30 days after it's compiled. After that window it's removed from storage; the event record and payment history are kept.
- An event with no activity for 60 days may be treated as abandoned and, once that sweep is turned on for a deployment, moved into the same 7-day deletion process below.
- When an organizer deletes an event, it enters a 7-day grace period during which it can be restored. After 7 days it's permanently purged: the recordings, clips, and film files are deleted, and the questions and contributor records tied to it are removed. The event listing itself is kept as a lightweight record (so payment history stays accurate) but with its content scrubbed.
- Music an organizer uploads for their film is deleted once that film successfully compiles (a re-compile falls back to a built-in track).
- Session cookies expire automatically; a signed-out session is deleted immediately.
9. Your rights, and contributor rights
If you contributed a clip, photo, or voice message to someone else's event and want it removed, ask the event's organizer — they can exclude or remove any submission from their event. You can also contact us directly at [email protected] and we'll remove your contribution or account information. If you opted in to marketing email, every message includes an unsubscribe link that takes effect immediately and platform-wide; you can also ask us directly.
[Owner/lawyer: which specific regional rights language (e.g. GDPR access/portability/erasure requests, or a California-style "Do Not Sell" notice) applies depends on where StoryHive operates and where its users are, and needs a lawyer's sign-off before launch.]
10. Children's privacy
StoryHive is meant for organizers and contributors who can consent for themselves. When an event asks for a contributor's age and that age is under 13, we ask that a parent or guardian participate with the child in recording and submitting the answer, rather than the child using the invite link unsupervised.
[Owner/lawyer: whether this needs to go further — a hard age gate, verifiable parental consent (COPPA in the US), or a GDPR "age of digital consent" (a.k.a. GDPR-K) flow for users in the EU/UK — is a legal decision, not something this draft can settle on its own.]
11. Security
Passwordless sign-in uses randomly generated session tokens; only a one-way hash of your session token is stored, never the token itself. Media files are served through access checks on every request rather than sitting on the open internet. No system is perfectly secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security of information you send us.
12. Changes to this policy
If we make a material change to this policy, we'll update the "Last updated" date above and, where practical, let organizers know by email.
13. Governing law
[Owner/lawyer: governing law and venue not yet chosen]
14. Contact us
Questions about this policy, or a request to delete your information? Email [email protected].