Archive policy
Privacy and family contributions
The Saroop Singh Archive is a family-led historical project. Contributions are received privately and are not published automatically.
What we collect
When you contribute, we may receive your name, relationship to the family, contact details, photographs, voice recordings, proposed identifications, certainty, how you know, dates, locations and family stories. We also create a short-lived pseudonymous daily network identifier to limit automated abuse. People sharing one home or event network share that safety limit.
Claims and testimony
An identification, relationship or memory is stored as attributed testimony—not an automatic fact. The archive may preserve corroborating or conflicting accounts and records who reviewed each decision.
Why we collect it
We use this information to preserve family history, identify archival material, contact contributors for clarification, prevent duplicate uploads and decide—with human review—whether an item should become part of the public archive.
Private receipts and event totals
Contributors receive an unguessable receipt link showing only the review state and submission time. Family event screens may show aggregate counts such as photographs or voices received; they do not reveal contributor identities or content.
Publication
Submission is not permission for automatic public publication. The archive reviews rights, privacy, attribution and historical context separately. Contact details are never displayed publicly. We will not knowingly publish a private photograph or voice of a living person without an appropriate basis or permission.
Storage and optional AI studies
Source files and recordings are preserved separately from derivatives and receive a checksum. Preserve-only is the default. The photograph form separately asks whether a contributor permits a private AI study using the current selected provider, which may be OpenAI or Google. Declining does not affect preservation or family review. A study requires recorded permission, remains labelled, is checked against the source and never replaces it.
Your choices
You may ask what we hold, correct attribution, withdraw a private submission or request removal from the public archive. Some minimal preservation or decision records may be retained where necessary to document the archive responsibly.
Contact
Email gurpreet@mereka.io for privacy, correction or removal requests.
Last updated 11 July 2026.