Privacy Policy

FamKinnected is a service of True Riches Education, 3547 Dempster St. #1004, Skokie, IL 60076, United States.

You can reach us about anything in this policy at info@truericheseducation.com.

This policy covers the information we handle when you use the FamKinnected website at www.famkinnected.com, our applications, and any related services we offer (together, the “Services”).

FamKinnected keeps two different kinds of records about people, and the difference matters throughout this policy.

Your account is your login — your email address, password, settings, and communication preferences. You have one only if you created one.

Your member record is your place in a family’s directory and family tree — your name, how you are related to others, and whatever contact or profile details have been added about you.

Most people have both. But someone can be added to a family’s records by a relative without ever creating an account: a grandparent who does not use the internet, a young child, or a relative who has passed away. If that describes you, you have a member record and no account. This policy applies to you either way.

Information you give us

• Account information. Your name, email address, and password. If you sign in through Google or another provider, we receive your name and email address from them — we never receive or store your password for those accounts.
• Your family profile. Whatever you choose to add: phone number, mailing address, birth date, photograph, biographical notes, dietary or accessibility needs, and how you are related to other people in your family.
• Reunion and event information. RSVPs, attendance, meal choices, activity sign-ups, travel details, lodging arrangements, t-shirt sizes, volunteer commitments, and payments toward event costs.
• Content you upload. Photographs, documents, recipes, written family history, and the descriptions and tags you add to them.
• Messages. Posts to your family’s feed, and messages you send through the Services.
• Support and demonstration requests. If you contact us for help or ask for a demonstration of FamKinnected, we keep your name, email address, and what you told us. Demonstration requests are deleted after 24 months.

Information your relatives give us about you

This is central to how FamKinnected works, so we want to be plain about it.

Family directories and family trees are built by one person entering information about many. A family historian may enter names, contact details, birth dates, relationships, and photographs for dozens or hundreds of relatives — most of whom did not sign up, and some of whom may not know the record exists.

If someone added you, they told us they have a genuine family relationship with you and the right to share what they entered. Our Terms of Service requires that of them.

You have rights over that information regardless of whether you have an account. Section 12 explains what they are and how to use them.

Information collected automatically

When you use the Services, our systems record technical information: your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you visited, and when you visited them. We use this to keep the Services running, to diagnose problems, and to detect abuse.

We use cookies and similar technologies only for things the Services need in order to work — keeping you signed in, remembering which family you are viewing, and security. We do not use advertising cookies, and we do not permit third-party tracking across other websites.

Location information

If you choose to appear on your family’s map, we convert the address you provide into map coordinates using OpenStreetMap’s geocoding service. That means the address is sent to that service in order to place the pin.

Appearing on the map is optional and off unless you turn it on. Children are never shown on the family map.

Payment information

Subscription payments are processed by Stripe. We never receive or store your card number. We keep a record of what was paid, when, and the status of a family’s subscription.

We use information to:

• Provide the Services — run your family’s directory, tree, archive, reunion planning, and communications.
• Create and secure your account, and verify who you are.
• Send you messages about your account, your family’s reunion, and things you signed up for.
• Take payment and manage subscriptions.
• Answer your questions and provide support.
• Keep the Services secure — detect fraud, abuse, and unauthorized access.
• Fix problems and improve how the Services work.
• Meet our legal obligations.

We do not use your information for advertising. We do not sell it, we do not share it for anyone else’s marketing, we do not build advertising profiles, and we do not permit third-party tracking across other websites.

We may send you occasional email about FamKinnected itself — new features, or changes to this policy. We only send that kind of message to people who created an account. If your information was entered by a relative and you never signed up, we will not market to you. You can unsubscribe from anything promotional at any time; messages about your account and your family’s reunion continue, because they are the service you are using.

This is the question most people actually want answered.

Other members of your family can see your name, your place in the family tree, and whatever you have added to your profile — contact details, photograph, biographical notes. They can see your RSVPs and event sign-ups, your posts to the family feed, and photographs you appear in.

Your family’s administrators can additionally see everything in your member record, event payments and balances, and the family’s communication settings.

Guests can see less. A family may issue a time-limited guest pass so someone outside the family — a caterer, a family friend, a professional planner — can see reunion details. Guest passes are read-only, expire, and can be revoked. A guest pass does not give access to the family directory, the family tree, or the family archive.

Nobody outside your family can see any of it. Families are separated at the database level, not merely hidden in the interface.

Some things are more limited by design: children are not shown on the family map, and appearing on the map is optional for everyone.

If there is information you do not want your family to see, you can remove it or ask to be hidden — see section 12.

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it with advertisers.

We share information with companies that provide parts of the Services for us. They may only use it to deliver their service to us, and may not use it for their own purposes. These fall into the following categories:

• Cloud hosting and database services — store your family’s information and run the application.
• Authentication and file storage services — manage sign-in and store uploaded photos and documents.
• Payment processing — Stripe processes subscription payments. We never receive or store your card number.
• Email delivery — sends account, invitation, and family messages.
• Text message delivery — sends text messages to members who opted in.
• Mapping and geocoding — converts the address of members who opt into the family map into map coordinates, which means the address is sent to that provider in order to place the pin. We use OpenStreetMap’s Nominatim service for this.

We do not share your information with advertisers, data brokers, or analytics companies that use it for their own purposes. A current list of the specific providers we use is available on request at info@truericheseducation.com.

When you import a spreadsheet of family members, the file is read in your browser. Its contents are never uploaded to us as a file.

We may also disclose information:

• When the law requires it — in response to valid legal process, or where we believe disclosure is necessary to prevent serious harm.
• To protect people — to enforce our Terms, or to protect the safety of our users, our staff, or the public.
• If our business changes hands — if FamKinnected is acquired or merged, information may transfer as part of that. If that happens, we will tell you before your information becomes subject to a different policy.

1. By opting into the FamKinnected SMS program, you will receive text alerts and notifications from your registered family, such as newsletter notifications, family news, reunion registration deadlines and reminders, and account notifications from FamKinnected.
2. FamKinnected may send SMS messages for service purposes including authentication, informational notifications, reminders, and account or reunion updates.
3. Text messaging is optional and off by default. You will receive messages only after you confirm your mobile number and opt in through your account notification preferences. Consent to receive text messages is not a condition of using FamKinnected or of any purchase.
4. You can cancel at any time by replying STOP to any message, or by turning SMS off in your account preferences. After you send STOP, we will send one message confirming you have been unsubscribed, and you will receive no further messages unless you opt in again.
5. For help, reply HELP or contact us at info@truericheseducation.com.
6. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.
7. SMS consent and phone numbers will never be sold, shared, or rented to third parties for marketing purposes. Mobile information is not shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes.
8. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply for any messages sent to you from us and to us from you. You will receive a variable number of messages per month based on the features your family has enabled. If you have questions about your text or data plan, contact your wireless provider.
9. For questions about how we handle your information, see this Privacy Policy. For the terms governing your use of FamKinnected, see our Terms of Service.

You can unsubscribe from promotional email using the link at the bottom of any such message.

You will continue to receive messages about your account and about your family’s reunion, because those are the service you signed up for. Your family sets its own communication preferences for family messages; you can change yours in your account settings.

We protect your information with:

• Encryption in transit and at rest.
• Database-level separation between families. Every request is checked against your membership before any information is returned. A family’s information cannot be reached by another family even if something in the application goes wrong.
• Sign-in protection. Accounts are password-protected. Guest passes use single-use links that expire.
• Access logging. Administrative access to family information is recorded.

You are responsible for choosing a strong password and keeping it to yourself. Tell us immediately at info@truericheseducation.com if you think someone else has access to your account.

No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee that information will never be accessed improperly. If a breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as required by law, without unreasonable delay.

Our staff can access family information only where necessary to operate the Services — to fix a problem, respond to a support request, or investigate abuse or a legal matter.

This access is limited, time-boxed, and logged. We do not browse family archives, read family messages, or look at family trees out of interest.

Deleting your account

You may delete your account at any time, for any reason. You do not need anyone’s permission, and no family administrator can prevent it.

When you delete your account, we remove your login, your password, your settings, and your communication preferences, and you stop receiving messages from us. We complete account deletions within 30 days.

Deleting your account does not by itself remove your member record from your family’s directory or tree. Those are handled separately, below, because that information also belongs to your relatives’ record of their own family.

Removing your information from a family’s records

We treat the information in a member record as three layers, and we handle each differently.

Contact and profile information — removed at your request.

This is the information that is only about you: your mailing address, phone number, email address, your location on the family map, your photograph, biographical notes, and similar details. If you ask us to remove any or all of it, we will, and we do not require your family’s agreement to do it. We complete these requests within 30 days.

Photographs — removed or untagged at your request.

If you appear in a photograph in a family archive, you may ask to have your name removed from it. If you are the main subject of the photograph, you may ask us to remove the photograph itself. Where a photograph shows several people, we will remove the identification of you rather than the image, so that the picture remains available to the relatives it also belongs to.

Your name and family relationships — normally kept.

We normally keep your name, your relationship to other people in the family, and years of birth or death.

We want to explain why, because we know it is the part people ask about.

A family relationship is a fact about two people, not one. Your parents’ record of their children, and your children’s record of their parents, are records of their own families and their own history. Removing your name from a family tree does not remove information about only you — it erases part of your relatives’ account of where they came from, and it can break the connections between generations above and below you.

So our approach is this: we remove everything that is about you alone, and keep only the link itself.

If your circumstances mean that even this is a problem, please tell us. We will look at your situation individually rather than applying a rule.

If you need to be hidden

Some people need distance from their family without wanting to argue about a family tree — after an estrangement, a custody dispute, or leaving an unsafe situation.

At your request, we will hide you: your record will not appear in the family directory, you will not appear on the family map, you cannot be tagged in photographs, and you will not receive family communications. Your record stays intact, but it stops being visible to the family.

We act on these requests within three business days, and we do not ask your family’s permission. If this is what you need, say so and we will act on it first and ask questions afterward.

Children’s records

Children do not have FamKinnected accounts. Children do not interact with our Services. A child appears in a family’s records only because an adult relative — usually a parent — entered them.

A parent or legal guardian may review, correct, or remove their child’s record at any time, including the child’s name, birth date, photograph, and family relationships. A parent’s decision about their own child’s record takes priority over other family members’ preferences. This is authority over the child’s record; it is not a way for one relative to control another adult’s information.

Where parents or guardians disagree, or where custody arrangements are unclear, we will hide the child’s record from the family directory and map while we work with the parties to resolve it.

When a child reaches 18, the record becomes theirs. From that point they hold the same rights over their own record as any other adult described in this policy, and they may exercise them without a parent’s involvement.

If you believe a child’s information is in FamKinnected and should not be, contact us at info@truericheseducation.com and we will act on it.

Requests about someone who has died

A family’s records may include relatives who have passed away, including dates of death and memorial pages.

A close relative — a spouse, parent, child, or sibling — may ask us to remove a deceased person’s photographs, contact details, or memorial content. We generally keep the name, relationships, and dates of birth and death, for the same reason described above.

How to make a request

Write to us at info@truericheseducation.com. Tell us who you are, which family’s records you are asking about, and what you want removed or hidden.

We may need to confirm your identity before we act, particularly where a request affects a record we cannot obviously connect to you. We will not ask for more information than we need to do that.

Requests are handled by FamKinnected staff. We keep a record of every removal request and what we did about it.

How to reach a person

If we decline part of a request, we will tell you why in writing, and you may ask us to reconsider. Write to us and explain your situation. A person will read it.

We keep information for as long as your family uses the Services, and afterward as described here.

If your family’s subscription lapses or is cancelled, your family’s archive, directory, and tree are locked, not deleted. Members lose access, but nothing is erased. If your family returns, everything is where you left it.

We keep a lapsed family’s information for 24 months. Before we delete anything, we will notify the family’s administrators at the email addresses on file, at least 60 days in advance, and give them an opportunity to export their information or resume their subscription.

If a family account is deleted at the family’s request, we remove the family’s information and stored files. Some records — billing history, and logs we are required to keep — are retained as the law requires.

Backups. Deleted information may persist in encrypted backups for a period after deletion, and is removed as those backups age out.

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Know whether we hold information about you, and get a copy of it.
• Receive a copy in a portable format, or have it sent to another service.
• Correct information that is wrong or incomplete.
• Have information deleted.
• Object to or restrict how we use it.
• Withdraw consent you previously gave. This affects future use, not what happened before.
• Appeal if we decline your request.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for targeted advertising or profiling, so there is nothing to opt out of in those categories.

To exercise any of these rights, write to us at info@truericheseducation.com. We may need to verify who you are first, particularly where a request concerns a record we cannot obviously connect to you. We aim to respond within 30 days.

We will not treat you differently for exercising these rights.

Section 12 explains how these rights work in the specific situation of information a relative entered about you.

Some browsers send a “Do Not Track” signal. There is no agreed standard for how services should respond to it, and we do not respond to it. We do not track you across other websites regardless.

The Services are not directed to children, and children do not have FamKinnected accounts or interact with the Services.

A child may appear in a family’s records because an adult relative entered them. Section 12 explains what a parent or guardian can do about that, including reviewing, correcting, or removing a child’s record at any time, and what happens when the child turns 18.

If you believe a child’s information is in FamKinnected and should not be, contact us at info@truericheseducation.com and we will act on it.

FamKinnected operates in the United States, and information is stored and processed there. If you use the Services from another country, you are sending information to the United States, where privacy laws may differ from your own.

We may update this policy. If we make a change that meaningfully affects how we handle your information, we will tell you — by email, by a notice in the Services, or both — before it takes effect.

The date at the top shows when this policy was last updated. Continuing to use the Services after a change means you accept the updated policy.

Questions, requests, or concerns:

True Riches Education
3547 Dempster St. #1004
Skokie, IL 60076
info@truericheseducation.com

We aim to respond within 30 days.