Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 13, 2026

Kinship Trees is a private home for your family's story. Privacy is not a feature of the product — it is the point of it. This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have. The short version: your archive belongs to you, only the people you invite can see it, we never sell your data, and we never show you ads. We do measure our own advertising, and section 7 explains exactly what that involves.

1. Information we collect

• Account information. Your name, email address, and password when you create an account.
• Your content. The photos, videos, voice recordings, documents, stories, and family-tree details you choose to upload. This may include information about family members, living and deceased, that you add on their behalf.
• Payment information. If you subscribe, payment is handled by a third-party payment processor. We do not store your full card details — we receive only what we need to manage your subscription, such as its status and the last digits of your card.
• Usage information. Basic technical data such as device type, browser, and how the app is used, collected to keep the Service working and improve it.
• Analytics. We use Google Analytics on kinshiptrees.com to count visits and see which parts of the page lead people to try the app, and in the app to see which features are actually used. It sets a cookie in your browser. Your name, email address and similar contact details are removed before anything is sent to Google.
• Advertising measurement. We advertise Kinship Trees on other companies' platforms, currently Facebook and Instagram. To know whether an advert actually worked, the platform that showed it is told about account and subscription events, such as somebody creating an account. It is never told anything about what is in your archive. Section 7 sets out what is sent, what never is, and how to switch it off.

2. How we use your information

We use your information only to provide and improve the Service:

• to store, display, and back up your archive for you and the people you invite;
• to process photos you upload (for example, compressing them for efficient storage);
• to manage your account, storage allowance, and subscription;
• to send you service messages, such as invitations you trigger, billing notices, and important updates;
• to understand how the Service is used so we can improve it;
• to keep the Service secure and prevent abuse.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use your content to train AI models. We do not show ads inside Kinship Trees, and nothing in your archive is ever used to target advertising, ours or anyone else's. We do measure our own advertising, which section 7 describes in full.

3. How your data is stored and protected

Your data is stored securely in encrypted Google Cloud buckets, utilizing the same world-class infrastructure that protects Google's global services. Files are never exposed directly; instead, access is granted through secure, time-limited signed URLs that expire automatically after one hour.

No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security — but protecting your family's archive is our highest engineering priority.

4. Who can see your tree

By default, only you. You choose who to invite, and at what access level (view, contribute, or co-edit). People you invite can see the content shared with them, so invite only people you trust. You can change or revoke access at any time.

5. When we share information

We share information only with the service providers we need to run Kinship Trees: Google Cloud for storage, Google Analytics for usage measurement, our payment processor for billing, and the advertising platforms we measure our own adverts on, currently Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram. In each case we share only what that provider needs. We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the rights and safety of our users and the Service.

Advertising platforms are worth naming separately, because they differ from the others in a way we would rather state than bury. Google Cloud and our payment processor handle information on our behalf and for no other purpose. An advertising platform also uses what it receives for its own purposes. That is precisely why we send so little, and section 7 lists exactly what.

6. Your rights and choices

• Access and export. You can export your full tree and all attached files at any time, free of charge, in formats that work outside Kinship Trees.
• Correction. You can edit your account details and content directly in the app.
• Advertising measurement. You can switch this off at any time using the cookie settings link at the foot of every page. See section 7 for what it covers.
• Deletion. You can delete individual people, files, and other content in the app at any time. To close your account entirely, email us and we will delete it for you. Copies can remain in our encrypted backups for up to fourteen weeks before they age out — see Data retention for the two records that outlive an account.
• Family members' information. If you appear in someone else's tree and would like your information corrected or removed, contact us and we will help.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional legal rights over your personal data (such as those under the GDPR or the California Consumer Privacy Act). We honor valid requests to exercise those rights — contact us using the details below.

7. Cookies, analytics and advertising

We do not show ads in Kinship Trees, and we do not intend to. Nothing in your archive, no photo, no recording, no document, no name and no story, is ever used to target advertising by us or by anybody else.

The app uses cookies and similar storage for the things it cannot work without: keeping you signed in, and remembering your preferences on your own device.

Usage analytics. Both the app and our website use Google Analytics. On kinshiptrees.com it counts visits and shows which parts of the page lead people to try the app, recorded against a randomly generated visitor identifier. In the app it records which features are used, such as adding a person, uploading a file, or starting a subscription, against the same account identifier the Service uses internally, so those measurements are pseudonymous rather than anonymous. Your name, email address and similar contact details are removed before any of it is sent.

Advertising measurement. We advertise Kinship Trees on other companies' platforms, and we need to know which adverts bring people who actually stay. Today that means Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram. If we add another platform, it is named here, and everything below applies to it in exactly the same way.

On this website, those platforms' measurement tools record that pages were visited, in the ordinary way advertising measurement works anywhere. From the app itself we send only account and subscription events, such as an account being created or a subscription started.

So that an advert can be credited to the account it actually produced, a few identifiers travel with those events. Your email address, in scrambled (hashed) form rather than as plain text. The identifiers the platform's own cookies have already placed in your browser, including the one recording which advert you clicked. Your IP address and browser type, which every website receives from every visitor as a matter of course. And the internal account number we use for you, which is neither your name nor your email address.

None of those describe you or your family. They exist for one purpose: so we can tell which adverts bring people who stay, and stop paying for the ones that do not. If you would rather none of it happened, the cookie settings link at the foot of every page switches all of it off.

What is never sent matters more, so here it is plainly. No photos. No recordings. No documents. No names of family members, living or dead. No dates, no places, no stories. Nothing you have added to your archive, and nothing about how you use it once you are inside. An advertising platform learns that somebody signed up and pays. It learns nothing whatsoever about who is in your tree.

What these platforms then do with the little they receive is governed by their own terms and their own retention periods, which we do not control. That is the honest reason we keep what we send to the minimum.

Your choice. If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, we ask before any advertising measurement happens, and nothing is sent unless you agree. Wherever you are, you can turn it off at any time using the cookie settings link at the foot of every page, and turning it off does not change the Service in any way.

If you would rather not be counted at all, any browser setting or extension that blocks analytics and advertising scripts will prevent both kinds of measurement, and the app and the site work exactly the same either way.

8. Data retention

We keep your information for as long as your account is active. If you reach your storage limit or your subscription lapses, nothing is deleted — uploads simply pause and your archive remains viewable and exportable.

When you ask us to close your account, we delete your archive, your uploaded files, your account record, and your membership of any tree you were invited to. Our encrypted backups run on a rolling schedule, so copies can remain there for up to fourteen weeks before they age out.

Two records deliberately outlive the account:

• Billing history. Dates, amounts, and which plan — never card numbers. Financial records have to survive the account they belong to. Once your account is gone, this is no longer linked to your name or email address.
• Usage analytics. Google Analytics deletes these automatically after 14 months. We keep our own copy of the same measurements for longer, so we can see how the product is used over time. It contains no names, email addresses, or content: only the pseudonymous account identifier described under Cookies, analytics and advertising above, and which features were used.

We may also retain information for longer where the law requires it.

9. Children

Kinship Trees is not directed at children, and children under 13 may not create accounts. Family archives naturally include photos and details of children; those are added and controlled by the adult account holders in each family, who are responsible for having the right to share them.

10. International users

Kinship Trees is operated from the United States, and your information is stored on Google Cloud infrastructure. If you use the Service from outside the US, you understand that your information will be processed in the United States and other locations where our providers operate.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you — for example, by email or a notice in the app — before they take effect. The "Last updated" date at the top shows when this policy was last revised.

12. Contact

Questions about privacy, or a request about your data? Contact us at support@kinshiptrees.com.