Privacy Policy

Last updated: 22 June 2026

VictoriaCross.ca ("we", "the archive") is a working historical archive preserving the lives, medals, citations, and family histories of decorated military heroes. This policy explains what personal information we collect from visitors, families, donors, and account holders, how we use it, and the choices you have.

• Account information. If you create an account: email address, display name, password (hashed), role.
• Form submissions. Research requests, correction submissions, support payments, adoptions, and contact-form intake: name, email, optional phone, the message body, and any files you choose to upload.
• Support and adoption payments. Processed by Stripe. We see the support payment amount, the hero adopted (if applicable), and Stripe's reference IDs; we do not see or store full card numbers.
• Family-supplied material. Photographs, documents, citations, and biographical notes that you choose to send us. You retain ownership.
• Server logs. Standard web-server logs (IP address, browser, requested URL, timestamp) kept for short periods to detect abuse and troubleshoot errors.

• To respond to your inquiries, research requests, corrections, and contributions.
• To process support payments and adoptions, and to acknowledge them in line with your stated preference.
• To build, verify, and publish hero profiles — but family-supplied private material is never published without your explicit permission.
• To send transactional emails (account-related, support payment receipts, correction status). We do not sell email lists or share personal data with third-party marketers.
• If you subscribe to the newsletter, to send occasional archive updates. You can unsubscribe at any time.

We share personal information only with the service providers we need to run the archive: our hosting provider, our email service (Resend), our payment processor (Stripe), and our image-storage provider (Cloudinary). Each of these processes a narrow slice of data on our behalf under their own privacy commitments.

We do not sell personal information. We do not share family-supplied private material with anyone outside the archive's editorial team.

Hero profiles include the name, service history, medals, citations, photographs, and biographical notes of the recipient. We publish only material that is in the public record (gazettes, regimental histories, public domain photography) OR that has been provided to us with publication permission.

If you have submitted material and want it removed, contact us via the contact page and we will action the request promptly.

• Access and correction. You may request a copy of the personal information we hold about you and ask us to correct anything that is wrong.
• Deletion. You may ask us to delete your account and any personal data we hold about you. Some support payment records may need to be retained for tax / accounting purposes.
• Withdrawal of consent. If you submitted material with publication permission, you may withdraw that permission at any time.
• Unsubscribe. Newsletter emails include a one-click unsubscribe link.

We use TLS encryption for all traffic; account passwords are bcrypt-hashed; payment data is handled directly by Stripe's secure infrastructure (we never touch raw card data). No system is perfectly secure, and we encourage you to use a strong, unique password if you create an account.

The archive is not directed at children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

When this policy changes substantively we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of the page and, where appropriate, notify account holders by email.

Questions about privacy, data, or this policy go through the contact page; select "Privacy / data" as the routing category.