Privacy Policy
1. Who we are
MyFamKin is operated by LLL LEARN LIFELONG (OPC) PRIVATE LIMITED ("MyFamKin", "we", "us", "our"), a company incorporated in India. This policy applies to the MyFamKin mobile app (iOS and Android) and the myfamkin.app website, and describes how we collect, use, share, and protect personal information.
If you have questions about this policy or how your information is handled, see Contact us below.
2. Information we collect
Account information
| Data | Why we collect it |
|---|---|
| Email address and/or WhatsApp number | To create your account and sign you in with a one-time code (we don't use passwords) |
| Country | To show pricing in your local currency and language options relevant to your region |
| Language preference | To display the app in your chosen language |
Family-tree information
This is the core of the app, and most of it is information about people other than the account holder — see section 3 for how we handle that.
| Data | Notes |
|---|---|
| Full name, nickname, family name | Required for full name; nickname and family name are optional |
| Gender, age (or age at death) | Used to show the right default avatar and for basic tree display |
| Living / deceased status, year of death | Deceased profiles are marked with a small indicator across the app |
| Marital status and family relationships | Who is whose spouse, parent, or child — this is what makes it a tree |
| Birth city, current city | City-level only — we deliberately do not collect street addresses or precise location. Current city can be hidden by the profile owner, and is always hidden for profiles of people under 18 |
| Photos | Either a default clip-art avatar, or an uploaded photo of the person's face (see below) |
Photos you upload
If you upload a real photo, it is automatically checked (using Amazon Rekognition) to confirm it shows a single, clear face and contains no inappropriate content, before it is accepted. Photos are stored on secure cloud storage and served only to people who already have permission to view that part of the tree.
Payment information
We never see or store your full card details. Subscriptions are processed by Apple, Google, Razorpay, or Stripe depending on your platform and region; we only receive confirmation that a payment succeeded or failed, and the subscription status that follows from it.
Technical and usage information
Basic device and app-usage information (app version, device type, crash reports, and aggregate usage events such as "tree viewed" or "invite sent") to keep the app working and to understand which features are used. See section 11.
3. How family-tree data works (the important part)
Most genealogy and social apps assume every person in the system has agreed to be there. MyFamKin doesn't make that assumption, because family trees are built by one relative at a time, adding people who haven't joined yet. We designed the following safeguards specifically because of that:
- Minimal by design. We deliberately collect only name, approximate age, gender, relationship, city (not address), and an optional photo for people who haven't joined the app — no more than a family member would typically know or share about a relative.
- Contribution is limited. A user can only add their own immediate family — their spouse, children, and parents. They cannot add distant relatives directly; those people are only added by someone in their own immediate circle, or by claiming an invite.
- Notify on claim. When the real person behind a profile signs up (usually via a family invite sent over WhatsApp), they take ownership of that profile: they can then see, correct, or remove what's there, subject to the rest of this policy.
- Visibility is scoped. Nobody can browse a global directory of MyFamKin users. You can only ever see the part of your own connected family tree that your account is entitled to (a limited number of relationship "steps" on the free tier, more with a subscription) — never other unconnected families.
- "This is me" / removal, even without an account. Anyone can request that a profile about them be corrected or removed, even if they've never signed up, using the link in any invite message or by contacting us directly (see section 7).
- Duplicate detection. When two relatives independently add what looks like the same person (for example, two siblings both adding their grandfather), our system flags the likely duplicate for the family members involved to review and merge, rather than leaving two conflicting copies.
4. How we use your information
- To provide the core app — building, displaying, and navigating your family tree
- To authenticate you (one-time codes by email or WhatsApp)
- To process subscription payments and apply the correct regional pricing
- To send you service messages: OTP codes, invite confirmations, and notifications about activity in your tree (for example, "a relative you invited joined")
- To detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and duplicate/fake profiles
- To moderate uploaded photos and respond to reports of inappropriate content
- To improve the app based on aggregate, anonymized usage patterns
We do not sell personal information, and we do not use your family-tree data to serve third-party advertising.
5. Who we share information with
We share information only with the service providers needed to run MyFamKin, and only to the extent needed:
- Cloud infrastructure — Amazon Web Services, for hosting our database, file storage, and backend services.
- Payments — Apple, Google, Razorpay, and Stripe, to process subscription payments.
- Messaging — Amazon SES (email) and the WhatsApp Cloud API, to deliver OTP codes and, where you choose to invite someone, to help send that invite.
- Photo moderation — Amazon Rekognition, to automatically check uploaded photos.
- Analytics and crash reporting — to understand app stability and usage at an aggregate level.
We do not share your family-tree data with data brokers or advertisers. We may disclose information if required by law, to protect the rights and safety of our users, or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets (in which case we'll notify affected users).
6. How long we keep information
We keep account and family-tree information for as long as your account is active, or as long as your profile remains part of a connected tree that another user maintains. If you delete your account, your own profile is removed following the process in section 7. Records required for legal, tax, or fraud-prevention purposes are kept only as long as required by law.
7. Your rights, including erasure
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export, or delete your personal information, and to object to or restrict certain uses of it. In particular:
- Access and correction — you can view and edit your own profile at any time from within the app once you've claimed it.
- Erasure — you can request that your profile be removed. This is currently a manual process handled by our team for each request, typically completed within 3 business days. Because family trees are a shared, connective structure, removing a profile clears your personal details (name, photo, city, contact info, and so on), while the family connections around you are preserved without any of your personal data attached — so your relatives' trees stay intact.
- Requests from non-users — if you're not a MyFamKin user but a relative has added a profile for you, you can still request its correction or removal — see Contact us.
- Data portability — you can request an export of your account and tree data in a common format.
To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details in section 13.
8. Children's information
MyFamKin accounts are for adults (18 and older) — we do not knowingly allow anyone under 18 to create their own account. However, family trees naturally include children, since parents and grandparents add their family members. For any profile marked as belonging to someone under 18, we apply additional restrictions automatically:
- Only a default clip-art avatar is shown — no uploaded photo is displayed, unless added by a verified parent
- Current city is always hidden, regardless of the profile's other privacy settings
- The profile cannot be claimed by signing up directly — it can only be managed by the adult relative who holds editing rights over it
If you believe a child's information has been added inappropriately, or you're a parent or guardian who wants a child's profile corrected or removed, please contact us and we will act promptly.
9. Where your information is stored
MyFamKin's servers and database are hosted on Amazon Web Services in the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) region. If you use MyFamKin from outside India, your information will be transferred to and processed in India. We apply the security measures described below regardless of where you are located.
10. Security
We use industry-standard measures to protect your information, including encryption of data in transit (TLS) and at rest, access controls limiting who inside our organization can view personal data, and an audit log recording changes made to tree data. No system is perfectly secure, and we encourage you to use a unique, secure email account and to keep access to your devices protected.
11. Analytics and crash reporting
The MyFamKin app uses lightweight analytics and crash-reporting tools to understand how the app is used and to catch bugs. These tools collect device type, app version, anonymized usage events, and crash logs — not the content of your family tree. The myfamkin.app website does not use third-party advertising cookies.
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time as the app evolves. If we make material changes, we'll notify you in the app or by email before they take effect. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page always reflects the most recent version.
13. Contact us / Grievance Officer
LLL LEARN LIFELONG (OPC) PRIVATE LIMITED
Email: connect@myfamkin.app
Registered address: Kothanur, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India - 560077
For users in India, under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, our Grievance Officer can be reached at the email address above. We aim to acknowledge grievances within 7 days and resolve them within 30 days.