Privacy Policy for Our Inner Hearth™

1. Who We Are and What This Policy Covers

The Service is operated by Benson Enterprises LLC, a Maryland limited liability company, doing business as Our Inner Hearth, P.O. Box 19, Bowie, Maryland 20719-0019, United States. We are the party responsible for the personal information described in this policy. This policy covers the Service only; it does not cover third-party websites or services you may reach from it.

Benson Enterprises LLC, doing business as Our Inner Hearth, determines the purposes and means of personal-information processing undertaken in connection with operating the Service, except where another party independently determines its own processing purposes. Third-party websites, embedded media providers, payment processors, and other external services may maintain separate privacy practices. Their independent processing is governed by their applicable policies and legal obligations.

2. Information We Collect

A) Information you provide directly

• Account information: your name, email address, and a securely hashed password. If you enable Two-Factor Authentication, we store the associated secret and hashed backup codes. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address, and profile image from Google.
• Profile information: anything you choose to add to your own profile, such as a photo, biography, birthday, or location.
• User-generated content: photographs, videos, audio recordings, recipes, calendar events and important dates, "Words of Wisdom" and other stories, written digital letters, letter stationery font choices, time-capsule unlock dates, music playlists, track entries (including YouTube video identifiers/URLs and the stories you attach to them), track comments and reactions, movie picks (including optional YouTube trailer identifiers and the reasons each movie matters to you), news clippings, discussion posts, comments, replies, family-tree records, and invitations you send.
• Communications with us: the contents of emails or support requests you send us.

B) Information we do not collect

• We never receive or store your full payment card number, CVC, or bank details — see Section 4.
• We do not collect precise device location, contact lists, or advertising identifiers, and we do not buy personal information from data brokers.
• Invitations and referrals happen only through in-app share links, referral codes, and QR codes that a member chooses to share themselves. We never access your device's contact list, we do not send automated "friend invite" emails on your behalf, and we receive no information about an invited person unless and until they choose to join.

We collect account-registration and authentication information necessary to establish, secure, and maintain your account. Depending on the sign-in method you select, this may include your name, email address, authentication identifiers, profile image, and information used to support account security. Authentication credentials and security-related information are handled through our authentication systems and service providers in accordance with the safeguards described in this Policy.

We do not intentionally request access to your device's contact list, collect precise device-location information, or use advertising identifiers for behavioral advertising. Invitations and referrals are initiated by users through the available sharing tools. We do not access a user's device contacts to send invitations. We may process limited technical information associated with referral links, registration, and security operations as described elsewhere in this Policy.

3. Family and Genealogy Information

This section is especially important, because a genealogy service stores information about people other than the person who typed it in.

Members build a family tree and attach memories to the people in it. That means we may hold information about you that was provided by a relative rather than by you, and it may include:

• names, nicknames, maiden names, and suffixes;
• family relationships such as parent, child, sibling, spouse, or partner;
• dates and places of birth, marriage, and death;
• photographs and videos, including user-placed photo tags showing where a family member appears. These tags are coordinate boxes linked to family tree profiles; we do not perform biometric facial recognition, facial geometry scans, or automated identity matching;
• audio recordings and their transcripts;
• family histories, stories, recipes, news clippings, and important dates; and
• comments and discussion posts referring to identifiable family members.

Information about people who are not users. A family member may create a placeholder profile for a living or deceased relative who has never created an account. We receive that information from the family member who submitted it, and we do not independently verify it. Under the Terms of Service, the person who submits information about someone else represents that they have an appropriate basis to do so.

How this information is used and shared. Family and genealogy information is visible to the members of the family space it belongs to, subject to any per-item sharing settings the contributor chose. It may become visible to a larger group if a Founder or Co-Founder performs a Tree Merge (Section 9). If you are named in a family space and want information about you corrected or removed, contact us at support@ourinnerhearth.com and we will work with the relevant Family Administrator; see Sections 10 and 11 for what we can and cannot delete.

Family and genealogy records may contain personal information about living individuals who have not created an account and who did not directly provide information to the Service. Such information is generally submitted by registered family members for the purpose of creating, maintaining, and sharing family records. We do not independently verify the accuracy of every submitted record or assume that a contributing member has authority to disclose all information about another individual. Where appropriate, we may review, correct, restrict, or remove information in response to a verified request, a credible privacy concern, or an applicable legal obligation. Our handling of these requests will take into account the rights of the affected individual, the interests of other family members, applicable law, and the technical structure of the shared family space.

Users may manually associate photographs with family-tree profiles through the Service's available tagging tools. The current photo-tagging feature is intended to identify user-selected locations within photographs rather than independently determine a person's identity through biometric recognition. If we introduce functionality involving biometric identification or automated facial recognition, we will evaluate the applicable legal requirements and update our disclosures and consent practices before deploying that functionality.

4. Payment Information

Subscription payments are processed by Stripe. Your card details are entered on Stripe's systems and are never transmitted to or stored by us. What we do store, so we can administer your subscription, is:

• your subscription status (trialing, premium, or viewer);
• your trial end date and current billing period end date;
• your Stripe customer identifier and subscription identifier; and
• the billing email address associated with your subscription.

Gifted memberships. A member can choose to pay for another member's Premium membership. When that happens we also store, on the recipient's membership record, the identifier and email address of the person paying, and we keep a gift record containing the payer's email address, the recipient's email address, the Stripe customer and subscription identifiers for that membership, and its status (pending, active, cancelled, or taken over). We keep this so we know who to bill, who to show the membership to, and how to handle a hand-off.

Stripe's handling of your payment information is governed by Stripe's own privacy policy. We may also receive limited transaction outcomes from Stripe (for example, whether a renewal succeeded or failed) so we can keep your account status accurate.

Subscription payments are processed through Stripe. We do not intentionally collect or store full payment-card numbers or card security codes within our application systems. We receive and retain limited subscription and transaction information necessary to administer memberships, including customer and subscription identifiers, billing status, payment outcomes, relevant billing dates, and associated account information. Stripe independently processes payment information under its applicable privacy terms and legal obligations.

When one member pays for another member's Premium subscription, we process the information necessary to establish, administer, cancel, or transfer that billing arrangement. The payer and recipient may receive limited information about each other, including the identifying and billing-status information disclosed through the gifting process. Payment for another person's subscription does not authorize access to that person's account, family records, photographs, communications, or other private content.

5. Information Collected Automatically, Cookies, and Analytics

• Server and request logs: our servers and hosting providers log technical information about requests, which may include your IP address, browser type and version, the pages or endpoints accessed, timestamps, and error diagnostics. We use these logs for security, abuse prevention, and troubleshooting.
• Essential cookies and local storage only: we use cookies and browser local storage strictly to keep you signed in, maintain your session, remember which family space you are viewing, and remember interface preferences. These are necessary for the Service to function.
• No tracking: we do not use third-party analytics platforms, advertising networks, tracking pixels, session-replay tools, or cross-site tracking cookies, and we do not sell or share information for behavioral advertising. If that ever changes, we will update this policy and provide notice, and we will obtain consent where the law requires it.

We use cookies and similar local-storage technologies necessary to authenticate users, maintain sessions, remember interface preferences, and support core Service functionality. We do not intentionally use these technologies for third-party behavioral advertising. If we introduce nonessential analytics, advertising, or similar tracking technologies, we will update this Policy and implement any notice, consent, or preference mechanisms required by applicable law.

6. How We Use Information

• To provide and maintain the Service: authenticate you, display your family's content (including music playlists, embedded YouTube videos, written letters, and time-locked content), manage family spaces, roles, and invitations, and enforce time-capsule unlock dates.
• Family Book Club: we store book recommendations, reflections, optional ratings, reader enrollment, optional selector preferences, selection-turn history (including passed turns), reading plans, checkpoints, progress and family discussions within the selected family space. Enrolled readers receive checkpoint reminders and reading updates in their weekly digest, subject to notification preferences; choosing books is not required. Private notebook entries are readable only by their author, not by family Founders or Admins, and are never published automatically. A member may explicitly copy a note into a family discussion. We do not sell these records or send notes, family identities or discussions to book catalogs.
• Family Movie Night: when you submit a monthly movie pick, vote, or post in the movie chatter, we store the pick details you enter (title, optional trailer link, note, decade, genre, and where-to-watch services you select), which pick you voted for, and your comments. These are visible to the members of that family space, including who submitted and who voted for each pick. "Where to watch" is a label you choose; we do not connect to or share data with any streaming service. If you add the winning movie to the family calendar, a calendar event is created like any other. Virtual Movie Night also stores proposed showtimes, date votes, RSVPs, readiness check-ins, shared countdown times, lobby messages, emoji reactions, and star ratings and reviews. These are visible only within that family space.
• Year in Review: each year we assemble a slideshow for each family space from photos and milestone photos already shared there. No copies of photos are made; members only see photos they already have access to. Background music plays from the family's holiday mixes through embedded YouTube videos. We record that you have viewed a year's review so the celebration banner is not shown to you again.
• To administer subscriptions: manage your 14-day free trial, process payments through Stripe, and set your Premium or Viewer status.
• To communicate with you: send transactional email such as password resets, sign-in links, email-change confirmations, security alerts, invitations, role-change notices (such as being made an Administrator or Founder), and subscription notices; and family-activity notifications such as birthday reminders, comment and reply notifications, photo-tag notifications, the weekly digest, and — if you opt in from the music room — the weekly Old School Friday music reminder or the monthly Family Movie Night reminder on the 1st when movie picks and voting open. Both music-room reminders are optional and off by default. We store each reminder preference with your account and use your email address and eligible family-space memberships to send reminders for the trees you belong to. You can adjust notification preferences in your settings or turn either reminder off at any time using its switch in the corresponding Music & Cinema tab. The two reminders are separate choices. We do not send marketing email without your explicit consent.
• For security and fraud prevention: detect, investigate, and prevent unauthorized access, abuse, and other harmful activity.
• To troubleshoot and improve: diagnose errors, understand which features are used, and develop new functionality.
• To enforce our Terms and to protect our users, the public, and our rights.
• To meet legal obligations and to respond to lawful requests (see Section 7).
• To maintain backups so content can be restored after an incident or accidental deletion.
• To process privacy requests and keep records of them.
• For ordinary business administration, such as accounting, tax records, and correspondence.
• To provide optional AI features that you choose to use (Section 8).

We may use operational records and limited first-party information to troubleshoot errors, maintain security, evaluate Service performance, and improve functionality. These activities do not necessarily involve third-party behavioral tracking or advertising analytics. We do not use family content for unrelated advertising purposes.

You may manage optional family-activity notifications and reminders through the available account settings. Certain communications, including security alerts, password resets, account confirmations, and material billing notices, are necessary to administer your account and may continue while your account remains active. Marketing communications, if introduced, will be handled separately and subject to applicable consent and unsubscribe requirements.

7. Who We Share Information With

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only as follows:

• With other members of your family space: the purpose of the Service is family sharing. Your name, profile, and the content you upload are visible to the members of your family space, subject to any per-item sharing settings you choose. When you restrict an album, recipe, or letter to specific members, that content is shielded from all other relatives, including Family Administrators and Founders. How much a member can see and change depends on their role in that space (Founder, Co-Founder, Administrator, Contributor, or Viewer), and a Viewer may be restricted to the family tree alone ("Tree-Only Access"), which hides the gallery, recipes, stories, discussions, calendar, and news from them.
• Sharing across multiple family spaces: if you belong to more than one family space, you may choose to upload a photo or other item to several of your spaces at once. When you do, that item becomes visible to the members of each space you selected, exactly as if you had uploaded it to each one separately. We never share your content into a space you did not select.
• Members who leave or are removed: when someone loses access to a family space, their place in the family tree remains for genealogical continuity and is shown as no longer having access. Their access to the space ends.
• Downloads by members: members can download photos at full resolution and export recipes as PDF files. Once a file has been downloaded, we no longer control that copy.
• With service providers who process information on our behalf and only as needed to provide their service to us. Our current key providers are our database, storage, and authentication provider; our application hosting provider; Stripe for payments; our managed email delivery provider for transactional and notification email; the AI providers described in Section 8; and YouTube, which hosts and streams videos that you or your family members add to playlists. Storing a YouTube link in a playlist or movie pick sends nothing to YouTube — information flows only when a member chooses to play an embedded video, at which point YouTube may receive information such as your IP address and cookie data under its own privacy policy and terms. Providers can change over time as we improve the platform; when a key provider changes, we will update this policy and its "Last Updated" date.
• Book catalog: book searches send the search words to Open Library through our server to retrieve public titles, authors and bibliographic details. We do not send account or family identities, notes, ratings or discussions. Optional catalog links open Open Library, whose privacy terms apply.
• Movie metadata: movie searches send the title you search for, or a selected public movie identifier, to OMDb through our server to retrieve public artwork, ratings, release years and runtimes. We do not send your account identity, family name, votes, messages or reviews to OMDb. Displaying externally hosted posters may reveal your IP address and browser request information to the image host. Optional JustWatch links open that provider's website with the movie title in the search; its own privacy terms apply. We do not verify streaming availability.
• For legal reasons: we may disclose information when we reasonably believe it is required by applicable law, a court order, a subpoena, or another legitimate governmental or legal request, or when necessary to investigate fraud, enforce our Terms, or protect the rights, property, or safety of our users, the public, or us. Where permitted, we will attempt to notify the affected user.
• In a business transfer: if the Service is ever sold, merged, or reorganized, information may transfer as part of that transaction, subject to this policy.
• With your direction: for example when you send an invitation or deliberately share an item with a specific person.
• Gifted memberships: if someone pays for your Premium membership, they can see your email address and the status of that membership in their own billing settings, and you are shown their name so you know who is funding it. We also email the recipient to say who gifted the membership, and email the payer when a recipient takes over payments. No other personal information and no family content is shared between the two accounts because of gifting — paying for a membership gives no access to the other person's account or content.

Content-sharing permissions determine which family members may access particular records through the ordinary Service interface. Where you restrict an item to selected recipients, other family members, including Founders and Administrators, are not authorized to access that item through ordinary family-space permissions. Limited access by authorized personnel or service providers may occur where reasonably necessary for security, support, legal compliance, or other purposes disclosed in this Policy.

We engage service providers to support hosting, authentication, data storage, payment processing, email delivery, security, and optional AI functionality. These providers may process information necessary to perform their contracted services, subject to applicable agreements and legal obligations. Certain external services, including payment processors and embedded-media providers, may independently process information under their own privacy policies. We review material changes to our service-provider arrangements and update our disclosures when required.

Certain music and video features use links to or embedded content from YouTube or other external providers. When external media is loaded or activated, the provider may receive technical information, such as an IP address, browser information, or cookie-related data, depending on the integration and the provider's practices. The provider's independent processing is governed by its own terms and privacy policy.

8. AI-Powered Features

Certain features use third-party artificial-intelligence providers, accessed through our hosting platform's AI gateway. These features are optional — content is transmitted only at the moment you actively trigger the feature, never in the background and never automatically for your whole library.

• Recipe scanning: when you scan a handwritten or printed recipe, the image you select is sent for text extraction and structuring.
• Photo enhancement: when you enhance a photograph, that photograph is sent to an image model, and the enhanced result is returned and saved in your family space alongside the original.
• Recording transcription: when you request a transcript, the audio track extracted from your recording is sent to a speech-to-text model in segments, and the resulting transcript is saved with the entry.
• Story prompts: when you ask for a writing prompt, only the prompts already shown in your session are sent, so the model avoids repeats. No family content is transmitted.

Why: solely to produce the output you asked for. Storage of outputs: outputs such as extracted recipe text, enhanced images, and transcripts are stored in your family space like any other content, and you can edit or delete them. Provider retention and training: the processing, retention, and permitted use of submitted information are governed by the applicable provider arrangements and service configurations. We seek to use provider arrangements that restrict unauthorized secondary use of submitted content, including model-training uses, where supported by the applicable contractual terms. Your control: if you never use an AI feature, none of your content is sent to an AI provider. AI output can be inaccurate — please review it before relying on it.

AI-powered features are optional and are intended to operate when a user affirmatively requests the relevant functionality. Depending on the feature selected, we may transmit the recipe image, photograph, recording, or limited prompt information necessary to generate the requested result. The resulting output may be stored in the applicable family space in accordance with the user's selected sharing settings. AI-generated and AI-assisted results may be inaccurate or altered and should be reviewed before use.

We use third-party AI processing services to provide optional features requested by users. The processing, retention, and permitted use of submitted information are governed by the applicable provider arrangements and service configurations. We seek to use provider arrangements that restrict unauthorized secondary use of submitted content, including model-training uses, where supported by the applicable contractual terms. Additional information about relevant processing practices may be provided through this Policy or feature-specific notices.

9. Tree Merge and What It Means for Your Privacy

Please read this section carefully — a Tree Merge changes who can see your content. The wording here is intended to match Section 7 of our Terms of Service.

• Who may initiate it: the Founder or a Co-Founder of one family space may request a merge, and the Founder or a Co-Founder of the other space must approve it before anything is combined — each acting on behalf of their own family space. Any member may suggest a merge for the Founders to consider.
• How automated suggestions work: a suggestion appears only when the spaces share at least five of the same joined members, at least five additional placeholder relatives whose names match, and at least one shared family relationship. We use account identity, names, and relationship structure for this limited purpose. Overlapping in-law trees are not intended to be suggested automatically. Founders may still intentionally search for and request a merge with another tree.
• Cancellation before completion: after approval but before a merge is completed, a Founder or Co-Founder of either tree may cancel it. Cancellation closes the request and clears review decisions without changing either tree or broadening anyone's access.
• Consent and notice: individual member consent is not required. Where technically feasible, members receive in-product or email notice of a completed merge.
• What transfers: profiles, family-tree records, photographs, videos, recipes, stories, comments, events, and other content from each space are migrated into the combined family tree and become accessible to the members of that combined family. Your content stays private to the merged family, but it is no longer isolated from the members of the family you have joined.
• Un-merging after completion: a completed merge is reversible — two Founders or Co-Founders of the merged space can request and approve an un-merge from the Merge Room, and everything that moved in the merge goes back to the family space it came from. Content added after the merge stays with the merged space, and reversal cannot recall what members of the merged family already viewed, saved, or downloaded.
• Deletion after a merge: you can still delete your account and personal information, but content you contributed that has been incorporated into a shared or merged family tree may remain accessible to that family (Section 10).
• If you object: contact your Family Administrator, and you may also contact us. We do not adjudicate family disputes, but we can explain your options, including deleting your own content before a merge or leaving a family space.

A Tree Merge allows authorized Founders or Co-Founders of separate family spaces to approve the combination of those spaces. Under the Service's ordinary administrative workflow, separate approval from every individual member is not required to complete a merge. However, this administrative process does not eliminate any independent privacy, consent, or other rights provided by applicable law. A merge may expand the number of people who can access personal information and family content. Authorized approvers should consider these consequences before completing the merge.

Certain completed Tree Merges may be reversed through the supported un-merge functionality, subject to technical and operational limitations. Where an eligible un-merge is completed, qualifying records and content may be returned to their originating family spaces. Content created after the merge may remain in the merged space, and content deleted after the merge may not be restored. An un-merge cannot necessarily recall information that members previously viewed, downloaded, copied, or otherwise retained. Certain historical merges may require support assistance and may not be eligible for automated reversal.

If you believe a Tree Merge has resulted in inappropriate disclosure of personal information about you, you may contact us at support@ourinnerhearth.com. We may review the concern, consult relevant administrators where appropriate, and consider available corrective measures. We do not resolve ordinary family disputes or determine legal ownership of genealogical information. However, we may restrict access, remove information, or take other action where required by applicable law or reasonably necessary to address a substantiated privacy or security concern.

10. Data Retention and Deletion

• While your account is active, we retain your account information and content so we can provide the Service to you and your family.
• Time Capsules: a Time Capsule (such as a sealed letter, recording, or video with a future unlock date) is retained in a locked state until the unlock date arrives or until you delete it, whichever comes first. If you delete your account before the unlock date, the sealed content is deleted with your account and will not become visible to your family.
• Soft delete: many items you delete are first moved to a recycle bin so a Family Administrator can restore them. Items remain there until permanently deleted or until the retention window for that item type expires.
• Account deletion: you can delete your account at any time from Profile & Settings. Your subscription billing is canceled immediately and your account enters a 30-day grace period during which it is deactivated. We send an immediate confirmation email as well as a reminder approximately 7 days before the grace period ends. Logging back in and choosing "Reactivate" within those 30 days restores the account in full. During the grace period (days 1–30), your account is deactivated — you cannot sign in or use the Service — but your profile, bio, photos, and the content you contributed remain visible to your family members so that a reactivation restores everything exactly as you left it. Once the 30-day grace period expires, your sign-in credentials and personal account information (including your bio and profile photo) are permanently erased from our primary production systems, and your place in each family tree becomes an unclaimed relative profile that family administrators may continue to maintain and update with genealogical facts such as dates, milestones, and family connections. Content you contributed to shared family spaces (such as milestones, photos, recipes, stories, and comments) is preserved for your family and attributed to a "Former Member" so it no longer shows your name or profile photo. This reduces direct identification but does not necessarily make the underlying content anonymous. If you are the only administrator or the sole Founder of a family space, we ask you to hand that role to another member first so the space is not left without an administrator.
• Backups: residual copies may persist in encrypted, access-controlled backups for a limited period after deletion (ordinarily up to 30 days) before those backups expire and are overwritten. We do not restore deleted accounts from backups except to recover from an incident.
• Legal, security, and financial retention: we may retain limited records longer where necessary to comply with legal or tax obligations, resolve disputes, enforce our Terms, or investigate security incidents and abuse. Subscription and transaction records are retained as required for accounting and tax purposes.
• Content reports and moderation records: when a member reports content, we keep a record of the report — the content involved, who reported it, when, and the action we took — together with the reported material itself, even after that material is hidden from the app. We keep these records to enforce our Community Guidelines, handle repeat violations, respond to legal requests, and protect member safety. Reports are visible only to us, not to the person whose content was reported.
• Content shared with others: we cannot delete content out of other people's hands. Content you shared into a family space, content another member incorporated into a family tree, content carried into a combined tree by a Tree Merge, and content other members downloaded or saved may persist even after your account is deleted. Comments and posts may be retained with "Former Member" attribution so that conversations remain readable.
• Information independently provided by others: if a relative independently entered information about you, deleting your account does not necessarily delete their entry. Contact us and we will work with the relevant Family Administrator.

We do not promise instantaneous or absolute erasure, because the honest technical answer for a shared family platform is more nuanced than that.

After the applicable account-deletion grace period, we delete or de-identify eligible account credentials and personal profile information from our active production systems, subject to applicable retention obligations and the limitations described in this Policy. Certain family-tree records, photographs, stories, recipes, comments, and other content previously shared with family members may remain in the applicable family space. Where retained content is attributed to a 'Former Member,' the attribution is changed to reduce direct identification of the former account holder. This does not necessarily make the underlying content anonymous or eliminate all personal information contained within it. Information may remain identifiable through family relationships, photographs, genealogical facts, or other context. Requests concerning retained personal information will be evaluated in accordance with applicable law and the procedures described in Section 11.

During the 30-day grace period, the account is deactivated from ordinary use, but eligible reactivation may be available through the designated account-recovery or reactivation process. Shared family content may remain visible during this period as described in this Policy. If the account is not reactivated within the applicable period, the deletion process proceeds in accordance with our retention practices and applicable legal requirements.

Residual information may remain in access-controlled backups for a limited period after deletion from active systems. Backup retention periods depend on the applicable systems and recovery practices and are subject to legal, security, and operational requirements. We may retain limited information for longer periods where reasonably necessary to comply with law, maintain required financial records, investigate security incidents, resolve disputes, or enforce our Terms. We do not ordinarily restore deleted account information from backups except as necessary for authorized recovery or other permitted purposes.

Certain deleted items may remain temporarily in a recovery or recycle-bin state before permanent removal. The availability and duration of recovery may vary by content type and applicable retention settings. Time Capsules that have not reached their scheduled unlock date are handled in accordance with the applicable access, deletion, and retention rules. Where a verified privacy request requires restriction or deletion, we may apply additional controls rather than relying solely on ordinary family-administrator recovery procedures.

11. Your Privacy Rights and How to Exercise Them

Subject to applicable law and the limits described in Section 10, you may:

• Access the personal information we hold about you;
• Correct inaccurate or incomplete information, including your profile and family-tree entries you control;
• Delete individual items, or your entire account;
• Obtain a copy of the information you provided, in a portable format;
• Manage communications, including notification and digest preferences in your settings;
• Withdraw consent where we rely on consent, for example by stopping use of an AI feature; and
• Object or complain about how information about you is being handled.

Most of these you can do yourself in the Service. Otherwise, email support@ourinnerhearth.com with the request and the email address on your account. We will respond within the time required by applicable law, ordinarily within 30 days, and we may need to verify your identity first. We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights.

Privacy rights vary by jurisdiction. If you live somewhere with additional statutory rights, we will honor those rights as they apply to us, and we will add jurisdiction-specific disclosures to this policy as the Service expands.

Depending on applicable law and your relationship to the Service, you may have rights to request access to, correction of, deletion of, or a copy of personal information concerning you. You may also have rights to object to certain processing activities, withdraw consent where processing relies on consent, or submit an appeal or complaint where applicable law provides that right. To submit a request, contact support@ourinnerhearth.com. We may take reasonable steps to verify your identity or authority before disclosing, changing, or deleting information. Individuals who do not maintain accounts may also contact us concerning personal information about them that appears in family records. We will respond within the period required by applicable law and explain any material limitations or exceptions that apply.

You may choose not to use optional AI-powered features. Discontinuing use of an AI feature prevents new processing initiated by you through that feature but does not necessarily reverse processing already completed. Where applicable, you may separately delete saved outputs or submit a privacy request concerning information retained through the Service. Requests involving third-party processing will be evaluated in accordance with applicable law and the relevant provider arrangements.

12. Data Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to protect personal information, including encrypted transport (HTTPS/TLS), passwords stored only as salted hashes, password strength requirements enforced when you create or change a password, checks against lists of known compromised passwords, automated detection and alerts for suspicious or repeated failed sign-in attempts, sign-in rate limiting, a self-service password reset flow that verifies control of your email address before a new password can be set, optional Two-Factor Authentication with hashed backup codes, row-level database rules that scope access to the family spaces you belong to, access-controlled storage for photos and recordings, password re-authentication for sensitive actions, and restricted administrative access.

However, no method of electronic transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. You play an important role too: use a strong, unique password, enable Two-Factor Authentication, and tell us promptly at support@ourinnerhearth.com if you suspect unauthorized access to your account. If a breach affecting your personal information occurs, we will notify you as required by applicable law.

We maintain administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to protect personal information against unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and loss. Depending on the relevant system and account configuration, these safeguards may include encrypted communications, access controls, authentication protections, restricted storage access, monitoring, and administrative security procedures. No method of electronic storage or transmission is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. If a security incident triggers applicable notification obligations, we will provide notices as required by law.

13. Children's Privacy

There are two distinct situations, and we treat them differently:

• A child using the Service: accounts require a minimum age of 13. We do not knowingly create accounts for children under 13. If we learn that a child under 13 has created an account, we will delete the account and its personal information.
• An adult entering information about a child: a genealogy platform inevitably includes children on family trees — for example a parent adding their own children, with names, birthdays, and photographs. That information is submitted by the adult family member, is visible only within the family space, is never used for advertising or profiling, and is never sold. The adult who submits it is responsible for having the authority to do so.

A parent or legal guardian may ask us to remove information about their child by emailing support@ourinnerhearth.com. We will work with the relevant Family Administrator to remove it, subject to the limits in Section 10.

The Service is not intended for children under 13 to create or independently maintain accounts. Family-tree records may nevertheless contain information about children entered by parents, guardians, or other family members. We process such information for the family-sharing purposes described in this Policy, subject to applicable legal requirements. A parent or legal guardian may contact us to request review, correction, restriction, or removal of information concerning their child. We may request reasonable verification of the requester's identity and authority before taking action. Where applicable law requires additional consent or other protections, we will evaluate and implement those requirements.

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We will post the revised policy here and update the "Last Updated" date. For material changes, we will also provide notice by email, an in-product notice, or an account notification before the change takes effect, consistent with the notice standard in our Terms of Service.

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in our practices, technology, service providers, legal obligations, or Service functionality. We will update the effective or Last Updated date when revisions are published. For material changes, we will provide advance notice as required by applicable law. Where a change requires additional consent or other action under applicable law, we will obtain that consent or take the required action before implementing the affected processing activity.

15. Contact Us

For any privacy question or request, contact us at support@ourinnerhearth.com or Our Inner Hearth, P.O. Box 19, Bowie, Maryland 20719-0019, United States.

Please include sufficient information to help us understand your request. We may require reasonable identity or authority verification before disclosing or modifying personal information.