Privacy
This is a one-person music project. It collects as little as it can get away with, and this page says exactly what that is.
The short version
An email address if you join or sign up for the list. A town if you choose to type one. What you paid, and what the payment processor took. Nothing else, and nothing is sold or shared for advertising.
What is collected, and why
If you join the mailing list
Your email address, the fact that you ticked the consent box, and where you arrived from if a link carried that. Used to write to you about new music and nothing else. Every email has an unsubscribe link, it needs no password, and it takes one press — the entry is deleted, not flagged.
If you become a member
An email address, your member number, the amount and currency, PayPal's order and capture references, the fee PayPal charged, and the date you joined. The address is the one you type on the join form, or the one on your PayPal account if you leave that blank. If you typed a town or postal code, that too — it is optional, it is free text, and it is used to work out where there are enough people to justify playing.
If you arrived on somebody's invite link, the membership records which member that was. It records no more than that: not who they are, not how to reach them.
If you put a photograph in your square
The photograph, the square it belongs to, and anything you type under it. It is cropped and shrunk in your browser before it is sent, so the full-size original never leaves your device.
Nothing appears until a person has looked at it. Once it is approved the photograph is public: it sits at a web address anyone can open, and it is part of a picture meant to be shown to people who have not joined. What is published is the photograph and nothing else — the file is named after its place in the picture, not after you, so the address does not reveal your name, your email or your member number.
It comes down whenever you ask, and the file is deleted rather than hidden. A photograph that is turned down is deleted straight away.
If you use the booking form
Whatever you put in it — name, email, and the details of the enquiry. It is emailed on and kept so the enquiry can be answered.
If you email the project
Mail sent to any address at gentlecollapse.com is delivered through Amazon, stored as the original message in a private bucket, and listed so it can be read and answered. Every hosted mailbox works this way; it is written down here because it means what you send is kept rather than only passed along. Nothing sent to the project is published, and nothing is used for anything but answering you.
If you sign in to your library
Signing in is a link sent to your email; there is no password to store. A Firebase Authentication record is created and tied to your membership.
Automatically
A short-lived record derived from your IP address is kept to rate-limit the forms, so the same address cannot request a thousand sign-in links. It is not used to identify anyone and it is not joined to anything else.
What is never collected
- Card numbers. Payment happens on PayPal. This site never sees them.
- Passwords. There are none.
- Tracking across other sites. No advertising pixels, no third-party trackers.
Cookies
| Name | What it does | How long |
|---|---|---|
| gc_invite | Remembers the invite code you arrived on, so the person who sent it is credited when you join. | 30 days |
| Firebase Auth | Keeps you signed in to your library. Stored by your browser, not sent anywhere. | Until you sign out |
There is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to: neither of those is used for advertising or for tracking you elsewhere. If analytics is switched on it will be Plausible, which sets no cookies and collects no personal data.
Where it is kept, and who else sees it
The project is based on Vancouver Island, but the infrastructure is not all in Canada. Being straight about that matters more than it sounds, so:
| Who | What they hold | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Google Firebase | The database, sign-in, files and the site itself | United States (nam5 multi-region; functions in us-central1) |
| PayPal | The payment, and the email address on your PayPal account | Per PayPal's own policy |
| Amazon Web Services | Sends and receives the email (SES), keeps incoming messages (S3), and tells the site one arrived (SNS). | United States (us-east-1) |
That means personal information is stored and processed outside Canada, and may be accessible to authorities there under their laws. Joining or signing up means accepting that. None of these companies is permitted to use your information for their own purposes.
How long it is kept
- Membership and payment records are kept for as long as the membership exists, and afterwards for as long as tax and accounting rules require.
- Mailing list entries are kept until you unsubscribe, then deleted outright. Unsubscribing does not touch a membership: the music stays yours.
- Booking enquiries are kept for two years.
- Photographs in the picture are kept while they are up. One that is taken down or turned down is deleted, not archived.
- Email sent to the project is kept while there is any reason to have it, and deleted on request unless it is part of a booking or a payment record.
- Rate-limit records expire within a day.
What you can ask for
A copy of everything held about you, a correction, or deletion. Email hello@gentlecollapse.com and a person will answer. No particular form of words is needed.
Deleting a membership means losing access to the music, and the payment record has to be kept for tax purposes even then — that is the one thing that cannot simply be erased on request.
Children
This is not aimed at children, and membership is intended for people 16 or over. If you believe a child has joined, email and it will be removed.
Changes
If what is collected changes, this page changes with it and the date at the top moves. Anything that materially affects existing members will be emailed rather than quietly edited in.
Who to contact
Gentle Collapse — Joey Caughey, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. hello@gentlecollapse.com