Compliance & Legal Framework

Legal-First Data Collection

Our data ingestion pipeline is built with legal compliance as the top priority. We only collect data from sources that explicitly permit automated access.

Source Approval Process

Before any data source is used, it must pass our compliance gate:

  • Terms of Service URL must be documented and reviewed
  • robots.txt must explicitly allow access to relevant paths
  • Source must be manually approved by an administrator
  • License and attribution requirements must be documented

Technical Safeguards

robots.txt Compliance

Our crawler fetches and respects robots.txt directives. If a path is disallowed, the ingestion is automatically skipped.

Rate Limiting

Default rate limit is 1 request per second (configurable per source). This ensures we never overload source servers.

User-Agent Identification

Our crawler identifies itself clearly:graveyardregclone-bot/1.0 (contact: [email protected])

Prohibited Activities

Our system explicitly prohibits:

  • Bypassing authentication or access controls
  • Circumventing rate limits or CAPTCHAs
  • Collecting personal information about individuals
  • Scraping websites that explicitly forbid it in their ToS
  • Ignoring robots.txt directives

Data Scope

We only collect public, business-level information about cemeteries:

  • Cemetery name and type
  • Physical address and geographic coordinates
  • Official business contact information (phone, website)
  • Operating hours

We do NOT collect personal data about individuals, burial records, or any private information.

Takedown & Corrections

We respect the rights of cemetery operators and data subjects:

  • Correction requests can be submitted at /corrections
  • Authorized representatives can request removal by emailing [email protected]
  • All requests are reviewed within 5 business days

Attribution & Licensing

All data sources are properly attributed. See our Data Sources page for a complete list of sources, licenses, and terms.