Souvenance Privacy Policy

Effective 25 October 2026 · Applies to Souvenance 1.0 and later for iOS, iPadOS and macOS

1. Part one: what we do with your data
2. Part two: what you do with theirs

Part one: what we do with your data

Very little, and none of it on a computer of ours. The details, for the thorough reader:

1. What we collect

Nothing. Souvenance does not collect, store or transmit personal data, usage data, crash reports or identifiers of any kind, and it does not track you across apps or websites. We do not know who you are, how often you open the app, or what you keep in it, and we have made sure we could not find out if we tried. The App Store privacy label for Souvenance is "Data Not Collected".

2. Your boxes

Everything you put into Souvenance is stored in a folder on your iPhone, iPad or Mac, in the app's own container that only Souvenance and its extensions (the share extension, the widgets, and on the Mac the Quick Look and thumbnail extensions) can read. Each item is an ordinary file (a photo, a Markdown note, a contact card, a calendar event, a PDF) with a small sidecar file holding its title, date, tags, your note and similar details. Relations between items are kept in one text file in the same folder. Nothing in the boxes is uploaded anywhere by the app.

Items you delete move to a trash folder inside the boxes and are removed for good after 30 days. On iPhone and iPad, deleting the app deletes the boxes with it, unless they are in iCloud Drive.

3. iCloud Drive boxes

With Memories for Life you can choose to keep the boxes in your own iCloud Drive (Preferences > Boxes), so that every device signed in to your Apple Account sees the same boxes. The files then travel between your devices through Apple's iCloud, under your account and Apple's privacy policy. We have no access to them; to us, your iCloud Drive is as private as your sock drawer. The setting is off until you turn it on. What iCloud means for who else could reach your boxes is in section 15.

4. Shared items

When you share something to Souvenance from another app, the share extension receives exactly what that app hands over: a link and its page title, text, a photo or video and its metadata, a contact card, an event, a place, or a file. It writes a copy into your boxes and keeps nothing else. Souvenance does not fetch web pages itself; a link opens in your browser when you tap it.

5. Photos, camera, microphone, contacts and calendar

• Photos: "Photos from library" uses the system photo picker, which gives Souvenance only the photos you select. The app has no access to the rest of your library.
• Camera: used only when you choose "Take photo", to save the photo into your boxes.
• Microphone: used only when you record a voice memo. The recording is saved into your boxes and is not transcribed or sent anywhere.
• Contacts: "Person from Contacts" uses the system contact picker, which gives Souvenance only the contact you select, saved as a card in your boxes.
• Calendar: adding a single date needs no calendar access. "Add to Calendar" opens the system's event editor. Subscribing to a calendar copies that calendar's events into a Memory and refreshes them when the app opens; this requires full calendar access, which the system asks you for. Your calendar is only read, never changed, and the copies stay in your boxes.

Each permission is requested by the system the first time the feature is used and can be withdrawn at any time, in Settings > Apps > Souvenance on iPhone and iPad, or in System Settings > Privacy & Security on the Mac.

6. Locations and places

Souvenance does not track or record your location. A place in your boxes comes from something you shared from Maps, created yourself, or from the coordinates already stored inside a photo you added. When a photo carries coordinates, the app compares them with the places in your boxes, on the device, and proposes a link.

One feature contacts Apple: "Look up place names" in Preferences. When it is on and a photo's coordinates match no known place, the coordinates are sent to Apple's geocoding service to suggest a name and address, under Apple's privacy policy. The setting is off by default; when it is off, a proposed place is simply named after its coordinates.

7. Maps

The Map view and place tiles are drawn by Apple Maps. To show a map, the system requests map imagery for the area on screen from Apple, as every app that shows an Apple map does. This is governed by Apple's privacy policy; Souvenance adds nothing to those requests.

8. Sending Memories and Pages

Saving a Memory produces a .mem file containing the Memory's files, their sidecars and the names of the relations between them. A Page is a single web page with a Memory's photos and notes. Both are written to the Outbox folder in your boxes and go only where you send them, through the share sheet, by Mail, Messages, AirDrop or any other app you choose. Those apps and the recipient then hold a copy; Souvenance keeps no record of what you shared or with whom. A Page contains no scripts and no tracking; its "Made with Souvenance" line is an ordinary link to this website, so following it is an ordinary visit (section 13).

9. Memories for Life and the App Store

Souvenance is downloaded, and Memories for Life is bought and shared with your family, through the App Store. Apple handles the payment, Family Sharing and restoring purchases; the app only asks the App Store whether the purchase is present on your account. Apple may give us aggregated, anonymous statistics such as download and sales counts by country. We receive no name, email address or payment details from Apple. See Apple's privacy policy.

10. Network access

Souvenance has no server of its own. The app goes online only for what is described above: map imagery from Apple Maps (section 7), the optional place-name lookup (section 6), iCloud Drive if you turn it on (section 3), and the App Store for Memories for Life (section 9). Links you open are handed to your browser.

11. Backups

Like other apps' data, the boxes are included in your device's iCloud Backup or computer backup if you have those turned on. That is handled by the system under Apple's privacy policy and your own backup settings.

12. Children

Souvenance is suitable for all ages and collects no information from anyone, including children.

13. This website

sunshine-it.eu uses no cookies, no analytics and no third-party scripts or fonts. The hosting provider may keep standard server access logs (IP address, time, requested page, browser identification) for security and troubleshooting; these are not combined with any other data.

Part two: what you do with theirs

Souvenance gives you a box. What goes into it is up to you, and much of it is about other people: Anna's phone number, Sam's face at the beach, the café where your brother proposed, the date of an aunt's operation. We are only the maker of the shoebox. You are the one holding it, which in the language of data protection makes you the controller of what is inside. So here, as briefly as the subject allows, are the two laws worth knowing about: one from Brussels about what you may keep, and one from Washington about who else may come and look.

14. The GDPR, in ten house rules

The EU's General Data Protection Regulation does not apply to "purely personal or household activity" (its Article 2), and a box of family photos on your own phone is exactly that. But that exemption ends where your living room does. Publish a Page on a website, keep a box about your customers, your club's members or your patients, or use Souvenance for work, and the GDPR applies to you in full. Even where the law looks the other way, the people in your boxes do not. So, whichever side of that line you are on, these are the house rules:

1. Have a good reason. Keep information about someone because they agreed, because you need it for something you do together, or because you have a legitimate interest that does not trample theirs. "Because I could" is not on the list.
2. Stick to the purpose. The birthday list is for birthdays. It does not quietly become a file on someone.
3. Keep only what you need. You need Anna's phone number to call her. You do not need her blood group, her salary or her ex.
4. Keep it right. When something about a person is wrong or out of date, fix it or let it go.
5. Do not keep it longer than needed. Souvenance is made to keep memories for life: yours, and theirs with their blessing. Information you only needed for a while can leave when the while is over.
6. Lock the box. Use a passcode on your devices, think twice before you AirDrop a Memory to "iPhone (37)", and check who is on the other end before you send a Page.
7. Be extra careful with the sensitive kind. Health, religion, political views, sexual orientation, ethnic origin and biometric data are special categories under the GDPR. Without someone's explicit permission, the safest box for them is no box.
8. Ask before you publish. A photo of someone in your boxes is a memory; the same photo on a public Page is a publication. Ask first, and for other people's children, ask their parents.
9. Honour their rights. People may ask what you keep about them, ask you to correct it, ask you to delete it, or object to how you use it. Under the GDPR you answer within a month. Souvenance makes this easy: everything is an ordinary file you can show, edit or throw away.
10. Own up to accidents. If a box with other people's data goes astray and the GDPR applies to you, you have 72 hours to tell your data protection authority, and the people affected when the risk to them is high. If it does not apply, tell them anyway.

For the record, fines under the GDPR go up to 20 million euros or 4% of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher. For most of our customers that is considerably more than Memories for Life. The full text is at EUR-Lex.

15. The CLOUD Act, or who else may look in the box

The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act of 2018 is a United States law. It lets US authorities, with a warrant or subpoena, require a provider under US jurisdiction to hand over data in its "possession, custody, or control", wherever in the world that data is stored. A data centre in Europe does not change that. What it means for your boxes depends on where you put them:

• Only on your device. There is no provider in between, so there is nothing for the CLOUD Act to ask a provider for. The box is as safe as your passcode.
• In iCloud Drive or iCloud Backup. Apple is a US company. With standard data protection Apple holds the keys to your iCloud Drive and backups and can be compelled to produce them. With Advanced Data Protection turned on, where Apple offers it, both are end-to-end encrypted and only your devices hold the keys; Apple cannot hand over what it cannot read. If your boxes hold other people's private matters, turn it on (section 16 shows how).
• Sent to someone. A Memory or Page sent by email, a cloud storage link or a messaging service now also lives with that provider, under that provider's laws. End-to-end encrypted services carry the least risk, ordinary email the most.
• With us. Sunshine IT is a one-person business in the European Union, not a US provider, and holds none of your data. Should a request ever reach us, the answer fits on a postcard: we have nothing.

If the GDPR applies to you, keeping other people's data with a provider outside the EU is a transfer you must be able to justify; check that yours is allowed before you switch iCloud Drive on for a box of customers. Background is on the US Department of Justice's CLOUD Act page.

16. How to turn on Advanced Data Protection

It takes about five minutes and one grown-up decision: how you will get back in if you ever lose your devices. With Advanced Data Protection, Apple no longer holds the keys to most of your iCloud, including iCloud Drive and iCloud Backup, so Apple can no longer rescue you either.

Before you start

• Your Apple Account uses two-factor authentication, and your devices have a passcode or login password.
• Every device signed in to your account runs iOS or iPadOS 16.2, macOS 13.1 or later (Souvenance needs newer than that anyway). An old device that cannot update has to be removed from your account first.
• Managed Apple Accounts, such as work or school accounts, and child accounts cannot use it.

On iPhone or iPad

1. Open Settings and tap your name, then iCloud.
2. Scroll down, tap Advanced Data Protection, then Turn On Advanced Data Protection.
3. Follow the steps on screen to set up a recovery method.

On the Mac

1. Choose Apple menu > System Settings, click your name, then iCloud.
2. Click Advanced Data Protection, then Turn On.
3. Follow the steps on screen to set up a recovery method.

Turning it on on one device turns it on for your whole account.

The recovery method is the important part. You choose a recovery contact, a trusted friend or family member whose device can give you a code, or a 28-character recovery key, or both. Write the key on paper and keep it somewhere safe, and not in your boxes: a key locked inside the box it opens is a well-known plot device, not a plan.

What changes afterwards

• Your iCloud data is no longer visible at iCloud.com, unless you allow it for a while from one of your devices.
• A shared iCloud Drive folder stays end-to-end encrypted only when everyone sharing it has Advanced Data Protection on. Anything shared with "anyone with the link" is not.
• You can turn it off at any time in the same place; your account then returns to standard data protection.

Apple's own instructions are at How to turn on Advanced Data Protection for iCloud.

The short version of part two: treat the people in your boxes the way you would like to be treated in theirs. This page summarises the law; it is not legal advice. When the stakes are real, ask a lawyer or your data protection authority.

About this policy

17. Changes

If a future version of Souvenance changes what it does with your data, this page will be updated and the effective date above will change before that version is released.

18. Contact

Questions about this policy or about Souvenance can be sent to souvenance.app@icloud.com. You can also reach the data protection authority of your country, though we would like the chance to put things right first.

Souvenance is developed by Bas Meijer, trading as Bas Meijer, in the European Union.