Privacy Policy.

Important Notice

Never enter Social Security numbers, full financial account numbers, passwords, recovery codes, private keys, or seed phrases into MORTL. Files you choose to upload are stored with your account and may contain sensitive planning information. Ask MORTL isn’t a secure channel for personal legal or medical advice.

About This Policy

MORTL, Inc. ("MORTL," "we," "our," or "us") operates mortl.com, a platform covering death planning, estate law, grief, and end-of-life care. Because our subject matter involves topics that are personal, sensitive, and sometimes emotionally charged, we take data privacy seriously. This policy explains what we collect, how we use it, and what rights you have. It’s written in plain English because you deserve to understand it.

A Note on Sensitive Subject Matter

Planning content can reveal sensitive information about health, family, finances, grief, and end-of-life decisions. Do not put Social Security numbers, full financial account numbers, passwords, recovery codes, private keys, seed phrases, or detailed medical records into MORTL. Files you intentionally upload to the document vault are stored with your account and may contain sensitive planning information.

Use only files you’re comfortable storing with MORTL, remove files you no longer need, and keep high-risk credentials in a separate security system. Ask MORTL is a general information tool, not a secure channel for personal legal or medical advice.

What We Collect

We collect these categories of information:

1. Contact and account identifiers: name, email address, authentication identifier, communication preferences, state, and other contact details you provide when creating an account, subscribing, or submitting a form.

2. Planning and account content: onboarding answers, planning goals, checklist status and notes, saved guides, account-tracker entries, funeral wishes, playlist entries, trusted contacts, family information, the content you save in Premium tools, and the drafts you write in the free tools while signed in. Signed out, a free tool's draft is kept only in your browser. Document-vault files are stored when you choose to upload them.

3. Sharing information: the names and email addresses you enter for trusted contacts, Family Sharing recipients, and Premium gifts; invitation or access tokens; expiration and revocation status; and records needed to operate a shared link.

4. Commercial and business information: Premium plan and gift records, transaction and subscription status received from our payment processor, employer affiliation and work-email domain, provider-listing applications and performance events, sponsorship records, and employer or partner inquiries. MORTL doesn’t receive or store a complete payment-card number from Stripe.

5. Questions, searches, and forms: information you submit to Ask MORTL, site search, contact, provider, employer, correction, and other forms. Do not include high-risk identifiers or confidential professional communications.

6. Technical and measurement information: security and request logs may include IP address, timestamp, device or browser details, and requested route. When optional measurement is on, Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Microsoft Clarity receive the measurement data described in our Cookies and Tracking section. In the United States it starts on, and everywhere else it starts off until you allow it.

When it’s off, Google's Consent Mode may receive limited cookieless signals such as consent state, timestamp, user agent, referrer, and whether a page URL contains ad-click information, and Google Analytics and Google Ads don’t store their measurement cookies. We don’t send Ask MORTL question text, planning content, or names to Google Analytics, Google Ads, or Microsoft Clarity.

We don’t send them email addresses either, with one exception: if you saved a yes to advertising measurement yourself, an email address you give us in a form goes to Google Ads as a one-way hash, so it can tell us whether a MORTL ad brought you here.

7. Executor call details: if you book an executor call, your state, your role, whether you want phone or video, your phone number if you give one, the times you’re free and your time zone, and any notes you add. We use them only to schedule and prepare your call, only Stephanie sees them, and we keep them until you delete your account or ask us to remove them.

What We Do Not Collect

MORTL doesn’t ask for Social Security numbers, full financial account numbers, passwords, recovery codes, private keys, seed phrases, or detailed medical records as part of the standard service. Because people control what they type and upload, we can’t promise that this information will never be submitted. If you enter it by mistake, remove it from the relevant feature and contact privacy@mortl.com for help. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

If you believe a child submitted information, contact us so we can review and delete it as required.

How We Use Your Data

We use information to provide and secure accounts; save and sync the content you ask us to store; personalize state guidance and planning tools; create, expire, and revoke sharing links; process subscriptions and gifts; review and fulfill provider, sponsor, and employer programs; respond to forms and support requests; send communications you requested; prevent abuse and fraud; meet accounting and legal obligations; improve the service using aggregate patterns; and measure whether our own advertising works when permitted by your privacy choice.

We don’t sell personal data. We don’t use personalized advertising, and we don’t share planning content, vault files, names, or email addresses with advertisers.

Commercial Relationships and Data

MORTL may earn revenue through featured listings, sponsorships, employer benefit partnerships, subscriptions, gifts, and other disclosed arrangements. A featured or sponsored provider receives the information you choose to send after leaving MORTL and is governed by its own privacy practices. MORTL doesn’t give providers a reader's planning content or contact details.

Employers receive only aggregate program reporting, with small cohorts suppressed; they don’t receive an employee's plans, files, wishes, family details, tool contents, or individual activity. Employer administrators provide approved work-email domains so eligible employees can activate access.

Cookies and Tracking

MORTL separates storage into clear categories:

Essential storage is always active. It keeps the site secure, supports authentication and saved features, and stores your privacy choice. When you use the site search box, the words you searched for, how many results came back, and the result you opened are counted, with no identifier attached: not your IP address, not an account, not a cookie. Anything that looks like an email address, a phone number, or an account number is dropped before it leaves your browser. We use the counts to see what people can't find.

On the planning tools, we count how many visits open a tool, start it, finish it, and click a next step, along with the kind of link that brought the visit: an ad, an email, social media, a search engine, another site, or none. Those counts carry no identifier either, and they never include an ad's click ID, the address you came from, or anything you typed.

Analytics is optional. Google Analytics uses storage and measurement signals to help us understand how the site is used, and Microsoft Clarity records a replay of the visit, plus click and scroll heatmaps, with the words and images on the page masked, so we can see where people get stuck. In the United States, analytics is on until you turn it off. Everywhere else, it’s off until you allow it. Clarity follows the same choice.

Clarity is deliberately limited. It runs only on mortl.com, and only on our articles, guides, and marketing pages. It never runs on a planning tool, your dashboard, onboarding, Ask MORTL, the pages written for a death that just happened, or the pages about dying, grief support, and medical wishes. If you go from a page Clarity watches to one of those, it stops before that page appears, deletes its cookies from mortl.com, and stays off for the rest of the visit.

Turning analytics off in Privacy Choices stops it the same way. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, Clarity doesn’t load at all. On the pages it does watch, it masks the words and images, so what you read and what you type are never uploaded. It never uses advertising storage. It sets two cookies of its own on mortl.com, _clck and _clsk, and Microsoft sets its own cookies on Microsoft’s domains.

Microsoft keeps replays for 30 days and heatmaps for 9 months, can access the data Clarity collects, and processes it under the Microsoft Privacy Statement. If you would rather no site used Clarity, Microsoft offers an opt-out through the Digital Advertising Alliance.

Advertising measurement is optional. Google Ads can use measurement storage to tell us whether a MORTL ad led to a visit or conversion. In the United States, it’s on until you turn it off, and it’s off from the start if your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal. Everywhere else, it’s off until you allow it. Advertising personalization stays off for everyone because MORTL covers potentially sensitive subjects.

Google Consent Mode receives your settings before any Google tag loads. If we can’t tell where a visit comes from, it’s treated like a visit from outside the United States: everything optional starts off and the banner asks first. While storage is off, Google tags may send limited cookieless pings for consent and modeled measurement, but they don’t set Analytics or Ads measurement cookies.

Measurement never runs on the pages written for a death that just happened or a pet that died, on the pages about dying, grief support, and medical wishes, or on a directory search for hospice or grief counseling, wherever you are. You can turn optional measurement off as easily as on, choose categories separately, and change your decision at any time using Privacy Choices in the site footer. We don’t use cross-site tracking for ad targeting.

Your Consent Choices and Legal Basis

Where the law requires consent, we rely on your affirmative choice before allowing optional analytics or advertising measurement storage, and the banner asks before anything optional runs. In the United States, where the law lets you opt out instead, analytics and advertising measurement start on and Privacy Choices turns them off. We treat a Global Privacy Control signal as a request to keep advertising measurement off, and we honor it over an earlier yes.

Rejecting optional measurement doesn’t restrict access to MORTL. Your selection is stored in your browser with the date and consent-policy version so we can remember it. We ask again if the consent setup materially changes. You may withdraw or change consent at any time through Privacy Choices. Essential processing is based on operating, securing, and delivering the service you requested.

Third-Party Services

We use service providers for hosting and storage, authentication, payment processing, transactional email and newsletters, consent-controlled measurement, security, and the language model that processes a question submitted to Ask MORTL. Those providers receive only the data needed for the configured service and process it under their own terms and our settings. Stripe processes payment-card information; MORTL receives transaction and subscription records rather than the complete card number.

We disable Google signals, advertising personalization, and user-provided-data collection in our analytics property. Consent-controlled measurement is Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Microsoft Clarity; the limits we place on Clarity are described in the Cookies and Tracking section. Do not submit confidential legal or medical details to Ask MORTL. A current service-provider list is available on request at privacy@mortl.com.

Data Retention

Newsletter subscriptions remain until you unsubscribe or we remove an invalid address. Account profiles, saved planning content, and vault files generally remain until you delete the item or account. Shared links remain usable until they expire or you revoke them; related records may remain for security and audit purposes. Contact submissions are retained for up to 24 months.

Provider, sponsor, employer, subscription, gift, invoice, payment, consent, fraud-prevention, and tax records may be retained for the relationship and for the period reasonably needed for accounting, dispute, security, and legal obligations. Deleting an account doesn’t require us to erase records that must be retained for those purposes, and deletion may take time to cycle through restricted backups and logs. Google Analytics event and user data is configured for a 14-month retention period.

Microsoft Clarity keeps session recordings for 30 days, and its data can only be deleted by deleting the whole Clarity project rather than one person's sessions. Your browser privacy choice remains until you change it, clear site storage, or a new consent-policy version requires another choice.

Your Rights

Depending on where you live and which law applies, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, object to, or receive a portable copy of personal data, withdraw consent, and appeal or complain to a regulator. You may opt out of marketing communications at any time. MORTL doesn’t sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. To turn off advertising measurement, use Privacy Choices in the site footer or turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser.

To make a request, email privacy@mortl.com. We may need to verify your identity and authority before acting. We respond without undue delay and within the period required by applicable law; some laws allow additional time for a complex request if notice is provided.

Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures intended to protect information against unauthorized access, loss, or disclosure. No internet service or storage system is completely secure. Keep Social Security numbers, full account numbers, passwords, recovery codes, private keys, seed phrases, and detailed medical records out of MORTL. If you believe account data or a sharing link has been compromised, revoke access where available, change affected credentials, and contact privacy@mortl.com.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we’ll update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, notify subscribers by email. Continued use of the site after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact

For privacy-related questions, data requests, or concerns, contact us at privacy@mortl.com. MORTL, Inc., United States.