Roots — Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 12, 2026

Roots is a family-tree app. This policy explains what data the app handles, why, and the controls you (and people who don't use the app) have over it. Questions or requests: hello@illsn.xyz.

What we collect

Only what you put into your tree:

• About you: your first name, an optional photo, an optional birth year, and — only if you choose to secure your account — your email address.
• About your family: names, optional photos and birth years of relatives you add, and the relationships between them.
• Technical: a push-notification token if you allow notifications, and standard service logs kept by our infrastructure provider.

We collect no advertising identifiers, no location, no contacts from your address book, and we run no third-party analytics or ads.

People who don't use Roots

The heart of Roots is adding relatives before they join — a "proxy" profile with a name and, optionally, a photo and birth year, entered by the family member who added them. If that's you:

• Your profile is visible only to the small circle of relatives connected to it — never publicly listed or searchable outside that family.
• If you're invited, claiming your place transfers control of your profile to you.
• You can ask us to remove a profile about you at any time — email hello@illsn.xyz with the name used and, if you have it, the invite link you received. We remove it within 30 days.

Where data lives and who sees it

Trees are stored with our backend provider, Supabase, in the cloud (or entirely on your device while the app runs in offline mode). Data you assert about a person is visible to the relatives who are connected to that person in the graph. We never sell data or share it with advertisers. Push notifications are delivered via Expo's push service; only the delivery token and message pass through it.

Deleting your data

In the app: Settings → Delete account & data removes your account, everything you asserted (names, photos, birth years), your invites, push tokens and your uploaded photos. Relatives you added remain in your family members' trees as unclaimed profiles — they can be removed by the relatives connected to them or by emailing us. You can also request deletion from the web.

Your rights

You can export everything you can see as JSON (Settings → Export my data), correct anything in the app directly, and delete your account at any time. If you're in a jurisdiction with statutory data rights (e.g. GDPR), these tools plus the email above are how to exercise them.

Children

Roots is not directed at children and accounts are for ages 13 and up. Family trees may include profiles of minors created and managed by their adult relatives; those profiles follow the removal rules above.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, we'll note it here and in the app's release notes.