Privacy Policy

Who we are

Heirloomie is provided by Ever Widening Circle Research by Coni Dubois LLC (the “Company”). In plain words: your family's story belongs to you. This page explains what information Heirloomie holds, why, and the choices you keep. When this policy says “we,” it means the Company — the business responsible for the account information that Heirloomie itself holds.

This policy is written in plain language so it can be understood. It is general information about how Heirloomie works, not legal advice.

Your family's data is your own

The people, family trees, documents, photographs, stories, memorials, notes, and other material you enter or upload in Heirloomie are yours. We do not claim ownership of your family's history. Heirloomie gives you tools to export your work and take copies home, and we encourage you to keep your own copies.

Accounts and sign-in

Heirloomie accounts are handled through Firebase Authentication, a Google service. You may sign in with Google or with an email address and password. We receive the basic account information needed to sign you in and keep your house separate from everyone else's — such as your name, email address, and a unique account identifier.

We do not receive or store your Google password. Email-and-password sign-in is handled by Firebase Authentication.

Where your data is stored

Your family's tree is kept first on your own device — your phone, tablet, or computer — under your own sign-in. Heirloomie is built so your private tree does not have to sit in a company database to work.

The systems we run on Google's Firebase service hold what is needed to run your account: your sign-in, your profile, the sample trees provided with the app, and anything you deliberately place in a shared space, such as a Kitchen Table you join. Google Maps powers the map features. When you talk with Ancestria, the guide, what you type or share in that conversation is processed by Google's AI services so the guide can answer you.

When you follow a link out of Heirloomie to a research site such as FamilySearch, Ancestry, or a library or archive, you are on that site under your own account there. Heirloomie does not send your tree to those sites.

Ancestria works only inside your own account

Ancestria is the guide who lives in the house. Ancestria works only within your own account and the material you have placed in your own Heirloomie house or shared at a shared project table. Ancestria does not go into other people's private trees or accounts, and does not carry your private research into anyone else's space.

Living people are kept private

Living people are private by default in Heirloomie. Sharing controls are in your hands: you decide who may look, who may help, and who may take a copy home. When you share a copy of a tree, living people are excluded unless you choose otherwise using the sharing controls provided.

For privacy, a person is treated as living unless a death date is recorded for them. As a working rule, anyone born within the last 110 years with no death information recorded is presumed living, and their details stay shielded.

Records about people who have died — historical documents, obituaries, cemetery records — are the heart of family research and are treated as historical material. The protections in this section are for the living.

Your responsibility for living people's information. Before you enter a living person's personal details — their name, birth date, where they live, photographs of them, and the like — into Heirloomie, or share those details with others through it, you are responsible for having that person's permission; for a child, the permission of their parent or guardian. This duty is also part of the Terms of Service.

If your own details appear in Heirloomie. If you are a living person (or the parent, guardian, or legal representative of one) and your personal details appear in Heirloomie without your agreement, contact us below. Where the information is held in systems we control — accounts and shared spaces — we will review the request and hide, redact, or remove the details as the situation requires. Information that lives only inside another person's own private tree is stored on that person's own device, under their control.

Sharing happens only when you choose it

Heirloomie is built for families to work together, but sharing is always an act you take on purpose — handing someone a key, laying an item on a shared table, or making an export. Nothing in your private house is made public by Heirloomie.

When another member takes a copy home from a shared table, that copy becomes part of their own tree, under their control. Copies already taken home are not pulled back if you later leave or delete your account — they were given, not lent. Content still held in a shared space under your account is removed with your account, as described under “Deleting your account and information.”

We do not sell personal data

We do not sell your personal information, your family tree, your records, or your stories — not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to anyone. Heirloomie is supported by subscriptions, not by selling family information. We do not mine your family material, your notes, or your journal entries for advertising, and we do not build advertising profiles.

What we may collect to run the service

• Account basics needed for sign-in, listed above.
• The family material you choose to enter, upload, or share inside your account.
• Basic technical information needed for the website and app to work, such as device, browser, and error information provided through standard hosting and app services.

How we protect information

Access to the shared systems behind Heirloomie is controlled by security rules that limit every tree to its owner and the collaborators that owner has invited, and each profile to its owner. Sign-in runs through Firebase Authentication, and protections against strangers probing which email addresses hold accounts are switched on. No system can promise perfect security — but Heirloomie is limited by design: private trees live on users' own devices, and what our systems hold is fenced to the people it belongs to.

Your choices

• Keep your own exports and take-home copies at any time.
• Change sharing by changing or taking back the keys you have given.
• Ask us about the personal account information we hold, or ask for your account to be deleted, by contacting us below. Deleting your account will remove access to the house held under that account, so export anything you want to keep first.

Deleting your account and information

You may ask us to delete your account at any time by contacting us below. When an account is deleted, the sign-in is removed, the profile and account records held under that account in our systems are deleted, and content placed in shared spaces under that account is removed. Because your private tree lives on your own device, deleting your account does not reach into your device; to remove that copy, delete it in the app or remove the app. Copies other members took home from shared spaces before the deletion are theirs to keep or delete, as explained under sharing. Some information may remain for a short time in system backups before those backups cycle out, and we may keep the minimum records the law requires, such as business transaction records.

Children

Heirloomie includes a road made for teachers, classrooms, kids, and beginners. Accounts are created by adults or through the sign-in methods provided. If you believe a child's personal information was entered in a way it should not have been, contact us and we will look into it.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that matters, the updated page will be posted here with a new effective date.