Privacy Policy

Overview

This Privacy Policy describes how FamilyTellings (“we”, “us”, “our”) handles personal information when you use our website and story-making service (the “Service”), and the choices and rights you have. It works together with our Terms & Conditions. The short version: your memories are yours, we use them only to make and keep your stories, we never sell them, and you can delete everything at any time.

What we collect

Account information. Your email address, and a record that you confirmed you are an adult and accepted the current Terms and this policy. That is all we ask for: there is no password, and we do not ask for your name. You sign in with single-use links we email to you; we store only a hash of each link, never the link itself. Accounts made with an earlier version of the Service may also hold a name and a family role given at the time; they are deleted with the account.

Your stories and memories. The memory you write or dictate (three to five sentences), the recipient's first name and age band (3–5, 6–8, or 9–12), the name the hero goes by (you as a child – for example “Grandma”) and your age in the memory, the creative freedom level you choose, the hero and visual directions you pick, and the stories, illustrations, narration, and keepsake files generated from them.

Usage information. Basic events about how the Service is used – for example that a story was started, finished, or downloaded – together with timestamps, and how you found us (for example a newsletter link or a referral). These events carry no story text.

Membership information. Your plan, billing status, paid-period dates, and the identifiers our payment provider (Lemon Squeezy) uses for your subscription. When you start a checkout we also record that you agreed to the automatic-renewal terms: the plan, price, the wording you were shown, and the date. We never see or store full card numbers – those stay with the payment provider.

Communications. What you send us by email, and the information needed to answer you. We email you only about your account and your stories – sign-in links (the first one also confirms your address), telling you a story is finished or could not be finished, and changes to your plan or account. We do not send marketing email. Payment receipts and payment reminders come from our payment provider, Lemon Squeezy.

Sign-up protection. To keep automated sign-ups out, the sign-up form uses Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks your browser and network address to tell people from bots. It runs only once you start filling in that form – not when you simply visit a page – and nowhere else on the Service, sign-in included.

Dictation uses your browser's speech-recognition feature. Depending on the browser, audio may be processed on the browser vendor's servers; we do not receive or store your microphone recording, and only the text you choose to submit is saved. You can always type instead.

How we use it

We use personal information to:

• create and secure your account, and keep you signed in;
• generate your stories: the three tellings, the illustrations, the narration, and the keepsake files;
• run safety review on memories, and help you revise a memory that trips a rule;
• show your stories to you and keep them available across visits and devices;
• provide support, and respond to questions and requests;
• understand how the Service is used so we can improve it;
• prevent abuse and enforce our Terms, and meet legal obligations.

Where data protection law requires a legal basis, we rely on performance of our contract with you (making your stories), our legitimate interests (keeping the Service safe and improving it), your consent (where asked, and where optional features need it), and legal obligations (for example tax and accounting records).

AI processing and our providers

Your stories are made with the help of AI. To generate a keepsake, we send the memory you wrote and the choices you made – recipient first name, age band, hero, creative freedom, visual direction – through OpenRouter, a service that routes each request to the model provider that runs it. These are the providers involved today:

• Story text and AI safety review: the DeepSeek model, run by NovitaAI or DeepInfra. It receives your memory, the hero's name, your child's first name and age band, and your choices.
• Illustrations: Recraft. It receives picture descriptions written for each page, including the hero's name and how the hero looks – not your memory as you wrote it.
• Narration: Fish Audio. It receives the text of each page to read aloud, which includes your child's first name. It does not receive your name or email address.

Our OpenRouter account is set to refuse providers that OpenRouter lists as training on the requests sent to them. Fish Audio is still available with that setting, so OpenRouter does not classify it that way. However, Fish Audio's own published terms allow it to use content submitted to it to improve its models, and to keep it as long as it needs to. We tell you this plainly so you can decide what to include in a memory. Retention by the other providers follows their own terms. Processing locations are set by each provider; ask us and we will tell you what we know.

We do not send anything beyond what a story needs. There is no need for surnames, addresses, photographs, health or medical details, or any other sensitive personal information – please do not include them in a memory. Our first safety check runs on our own servers: a memory that mentions common health or medical terms is sent back for you to rewrite before it reaches any AI provider. A second, AI-assisted check can catch details the first one misses. If the providers above change, we will update this list.

When information is shared

We share personal information only in these situations:

• Service providers who help us run the Service – model providers for text, images, and voice; hosting and storage; payment processing (when billing is enabled); sending our service emails (Resend); bot protection (Cloudflare Turnstile). They may use the information only to provide those services to us, except as described for Fish Audio under “AI processing and our providers”.
• Legal reasons: if the law requires it, or where we reasonably believe it is needed to protect people from harm, to respond to lawful requests, or to defend our rights.
• Business transfers: if FamilyTellings is ever involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale, your information would move with it, under the same promises made here.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. Your memories are never used for advertising.

Children's privacy

FamilyTellings is for adults. We do not knowingly create accounts for, or collect personal information directly from, children under 18 – and we will delete such an account if we learn of one.

Children feature only as the recipients of stories an adult makes for them. The Service asks for a first name and age band, but free-text memories and generated stories can contain more about a child; please share only what the story needs, and avoid sensitive details. If you believe a child's personal information has been submitted to us inappropriately, contact us and we will remove it. We are evaluating this adult-operated service against children's privacy rules with counsel before launch.

How long we keep it

We keep account information and stories for as long as your account exists, so your library is there when you return. An unfinished story – including text-only drafts you have not turned into a story – is deleted, with its memory and drafts, after 30 days without activity.

When you delete your account, we stop future billing, revoke sessions, and delete the memories, stories, and media stored against it. We keep a small deletion record for up to four years, to handle billing disputes, show which terms you agreed to, and make sure a restored backup cannot bring a deleted account back. It holds your plan and subscription reference, the dates and versions of the Terms, Privacy Policy, and renewal terms you accepted, and a keyed hash of your email address. That hash is not anonymous: it is still personal information, used only for those purposes. Copies in secured backups age out on a rolling schedule; the exact schedule will be published here before launch.

The Free plan's credits end one month after sign-up; your account and stories stay. Sign-in links expire after 20 minutes (24 hours for the first one after sign-up) and work once; their hashes are removed a day after they expire. A session ends when you sign out, or after 60 days without a visit.

Usage events are kept in identifiable form only as long as they are useful, and are then aggregated or removed. Provider-side retention follows each provider's published settings; see “AI processing and our providers”.

How it is protected

We protect your information with measures appropriate to its sensitivity: encrypted transport, passwordless sign-in with single-use, short-lived links that we store only as hashes, an extra authenticator code for administrator accounts, access controls that limit who can reach production data, and account sessions held in httpOnly cookies. Your email inbox is the key to your account, so please keep it secure. No system is perfect – if we ever learn of a breach affecting your personal information, we will tell you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.

Your choices and rights

You can delete your account and its stories from the account page at any time; for your protection this needs a sign-in from the last few minutes, so we may email you a fresh sign-in link first. You can also ask us directly for a copy of your information, to correct it, or to delete it. Email us at the address below and we will respond within the time your local law requires, after a reasonable identity check. Account self-service editing beyond deletion is not yet available; requests are handled by support.

If you live in a US state with privacy law (such as California), you have rights to know, delete, correct, and opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information – rights we honour for everyone. We never discriminate against anyone for using these rights. If you live elsewhere, including the EEA or UK, you also have rights to object to processing, to restrict it, to data portability, and to complain to your data protection authority.

Cookies and similar technologies

We use two cookies of our own: a session cookie that keeps you signed in (it is httpOnly, holds only a random token, and stops working when you sign out or after 60 days without a visit), and a first-visit cookie that remembers how you found us, so we know which kinds of stories attract families. Neither is used for advertising, and there are no third-party advertising trackers on the Service. You can clear cookies in your browser at any time; signing back in simply sets a new session cookie.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control. We do not track you across other websites over time, and we do not allow third parties to do so on the Service, so we treat every visitor the way a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal asks: the Service works the same whether or not your browser sends one. The only third-party code on the Service is Cloudflare Turnstile on the sign-up form, loaded only once you start filling it in, which checks your browser and network address to tell people from bots and is not used for advertising.

Where information is processed

FamilyTellings operates in the United States, and information is processed and stored there and in the facilities of our providers. If you use the Service from another country, your information is transferred to the United States, where privacy rules may differ from yours. Where law requires safeguards for such transfers, we use the mechanisms it provides.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the Service changes. The version and effective date at the top always show the current text. If we make a material change, we will tell you – by email or inside the Service – before it takes effect.

Contact us

Questions about privacy, or requests about your information, go to support@familytellings.com. A real person reads these.

Related document: Terms & Conditions.