These terms govern your use of Rootkin. By creating an account, you agree to them. Questions to support@rootkin.family.
Effective: May 17, 2026 · Last updated: June 8, 2026
What you add to the app belongs to you. We don't sell your data and we don't use your family history to train AI. You must have permission from relatives before adding their personal information or recording their voice. The service is provided as-is. If you subscribe to a paid plan, Apple or Google handles billing. You can delete your account and your data at any time from within the app.
These Terms of Service (the "Terms") govern your access to and use of the Rootkin mobile application and website (together, the "Service"). By creating an account or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.
The Rootkin Service is operated by Rootkin (the "Operator," "we," "us," or "our"), based in the State of Florida, United States. The Operator intends to form a Florida limited liability company to own and operate the Service; upon formation, that LLC will assume the rights and obligations of the Operator under these Terms without any action required on your part.
You must be at least 18 years old to create an account. By creating one, you represent that you are 18 or older. If we learn that an account holder is under 18, we will terminate the account and delete associated data without notice.
Family trees may include records for minor family members (such as names and dates of birth). These records are created and managed entirely by the adult account holder — minors do not hold accounts or access the Service directly.
To use most features of the Service you must create an account. You agree to:
We use Google Firebase Authentication to manage account credentials. Your password is never stored in plain text by us.
Rootkin lets you build private family trees you share with invited relatives. Features include:
The Service is provided on an ongoing basis. Features may be added, changed, deprecated, or removed at our reasonable discretion. We will make reasonable efforts to notify you of material changes in advance.
Rootkin offers a free tier with substantial functionality and one or more paid subscription tiers ("Paid Plans"). Paid Plans are purchased through Apple's App Store or Google Play, which handle all payment processing, receipts, and refund requests. Your subscription automatically renews at the end of each billing period unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the period ends.
Refunds. Because purchases are processed by Apple or Google, refund requests must go through those stores under their policies. We cannot directly process refunds for in-app purchases.
Price changes. We will provide at least 30 days' advance notice, by email or in-app notice, before any price change affecting your existing subscription takes effect. You may cancel at any time.
Free tier changes. We may modify the limits of the free tier. If we reduce a limit, content you previously added within the higher limit will remain visible and editable; the new limit will only apply to new content.
Free trial. If we offer a free trial of a Paid Plan, the trial automatically converts to a paid subscription unless you cancel before the trial ends.
You retain all ownership rights in the content you add to Rootkin — including names, biographical details, photos, voice recordings, and transcripts ("Your Content"). We do not sell Your Content, and we do not use Your Content to train any artificial intelligence or machine-learning model.
To operate the Service, you grant us a limited, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to host, copy, transmit, display, and process Your Content solely for the purpose of providing the Service to you and to the tree members you have invited. This license ends when you delete the content or your account, except that we may retain routine encrypted backups for up to thirty (30) days and may retain data longer where required by law.
Per-memory archive emails. If you have enabled per-memory archive emails (the default), copies of your voice recordings and the corresponding transcripts are also transmitted to the email address on your account each time a memory finishes processing. The email is sent over an encrypted (TLS) connection by our transactional-email provider and is then subject to your email provider's terms and retention. Disabling this option in Settings → Privacy stops future archive emails but does not affect copies already delivered to your inbox.
Family genealogy inherently involves information about people other than yourself. You are responsible for ensuring that:
If a person asks you — or asks us directly — to remove information about them, we will work with you in good faith to do so.
Child Photo Protection. Rootkin includes a Child Photo Protection feature that allows the owner of a tree, and any tree members the owner designates as Protectors, to restrict who can view photos and certain personal details (such as full name, date of birth, and place of birth) of persons in the tree who are under the age of 18. Designating a user as a Protector is your representation that the designation is appropriate for your family. Rootkin does not and cannot verify legal guardianship, parental authority, or custody arrangements. Rootkin is not a custody or co-parenting tool. If you do not trust the owner of a tree with information about your child, do not add your child to that tree, and ask the owner to remove any existing record about your child.
Limitations of Child Photo Protection. Child Photo Protection applies the visibility rules of the persons a photo is attached to. A photo attached only to an adult's record may also depict children, but in the current version of the Service it is shown to anyone who can view the adult's record — Rootkin does not automatically detect or redact children in group photos. To restrict a group photo that includes a child, attach the photo to the child's record (in addition to or instead of the adult's) so that the child's protection settings apply. We may add automatic detection of children in group photos in a future release; until then, this remains a known limitation.
Because voice is biometric information and is subject to specific legal protections in many jurisdictions, you are solely responsible for obtaining lawful consent before recording another person.
Before you can save your first memory, you must affirmatively confirm that you have the consent of each person being recorded. By checking that confirmation you represent and warrant that:
Voice audio is transmitted over encrypted (TLS) connections to a third-party transcription provider and processed under that provider's API terms, which do not retain audio for model training. Audio files and transcripts are stored in the same private Cloud Storage bucket as your photos and are accessible only to members of the tree you saved the memory in, except where you choose to share an individual memory through a Shareable Memory Link as described in the next paragraph.
Shareable Memory Links. Any member of a tree may create a Shareable Memory Link to an individual voice memory and send it outside the app — for example, by email or as a printed QR code. A Shareable Memory Link grants whoever holds it the ability to listen to that one memory, and nothing else about your tree, its members, or its other content. To listen, a recipient must install Rootkin and create a free account; there is no public web playback of the recording. You can revoke any link you create at any time, and you may cap the number of times it can be opened. A memory whose subject is a protected minor cannot be shared this way. If you are not the person speaking in a memory, that person may set a preference that prevents others from sharing it without their permission. By creating a Shareable Memory Link, you represent that you have the right to share that recording, and the personal information it contains, with the people you send it to.
If you have enabled per-memory archive emails (see Section 6), the audio file and transcript will also be transmitted to your account email after the memory finishes processing. Once delivered, those copies are subject to your email provider's terms and retention; deleting a memory in Rootkin does not delete archive copies that have already been sent to your inbox.
You agree not to use the Service to:
The Rootkin name, logo, app design, and software are the property of the Operator and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual-property laws. These Terms do not grant you any license to Rootkin intellectual property except the right to use the Service as provided.
Your use of the Service is also governed by our Privacy Policy. The Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, the third-party services we rely on, and how you can exercise your privacy rights, including data export and account deletion.
Your right to delete. You may delete your account at any time from within the Settings screen of the app. When you delete your account:
Our right to terminate. We may suspend or terminate your account if you materially violate these Terms, if we are legally required to do so, or if your account has remained inactive for an extended period with an undeliverable email address.
The Service relies on third-party infrastructure including Google Firebase, Expo Application Services, OpenAI Whisper (or equivalent) for voice transcription, and Anthropic (or equivalent) for family-description parsing and other AI-assisted features. Your use of the Service is subject to the applicable terms of those providers where they govern their own services.
If you downloaded the mobile app from the Apple App Store or Google Play, additional terms apply:
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE OPERATOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.
We strongly encourage you to retain independent copies of your family history. The built-in GEDCOM export captures your tree's structured data (persons, relationships, dates, places). The per-memory archive email — on by default in Settings → Privacy — automatically sends a copy of every voice recording and transcript to your account email as it is saved, so your audio history exists outside Rootkin in your own inbox.
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE OPERATOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES — INCLUDING DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF DATA, LOSS OF PROFITS, LOSS OF GOODWILL, OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION — ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO YOUR USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICE.
OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ALL CLAIMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID US (OR TO APPLE OR GOOGLE FOR AN IN-APP PURCHASE FROM THE SERVICE) IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS ($100).
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Operator from any claim, demand, damage, loss, or expense arising out of: (a) content you add to the Service; (b) your violation of these Terms; (c) your violation of any applicable law or third-party rights; or (d) your use of the Record Memories feature to record any person without sufficient consent.
We may revise these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email or by prominent in-app notice at least fourteen (14) days before the changes take effect.
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, United States. Any dispute shall be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Orange County, Florida. Before filing any legal claim, you agree to contact us first and give us at least thirty (30) days to resolve the issue informally.
For questions about these Terms, account issues, or legal notices:
Email: support@rootkin.family
Website: https://rootkin.app
By creating an account or otherwise using Rootkin, you acknowledge that you have read and understood these Terms and agree to be bound by them.