Privacy Policy

Account information. When you sign up, we collect your name, email address, and password. We verify your email before you can use the app. Each time you sign in, we record the IP address and browser/device used for that session, for security purposes.

Content you add. Voice recordings, their transcripts, photos, captions, and the “chapters” and “sections” you organize them into. Recordings and photos are stored privately — never at a public URL — and only served back to people you've given access to.

Location data. When you upload a photo, we read the GPS coordinates embedded in it (if present) to suggest a map pin. You can also drop a pin manually. Location data is used to build your family's life map and is stored alongside the chapter it belongs to.

Parts of this app are powered by AI, and it's important you know exactly where and how:

• Photo safety scanning, captions, and headstone reading. Every photo you upload is automatically screened by OpenAI for safety (to detect and block harmful content, including child sexual abuse material), and may also be used to generate an AI-written caption or, for cemetery photos, to read the engraved inscription. This always runs through our own OpenAI account — there's no way to opt a specific photo out of the safety scan.
• Chapter narratives. If you generate an AI-written narrative for a chapter, the chapter's title, description, and recording transcripts are sent to Anthropic to write it. This uses your family's own Anthropic API key if you've added one in Settings; otherwise it falls back to our shared account.
• Audio transcription. Recordings are sent to Deepgram to generate a text transcript. Like narratives, this uses your family's own Deepgram key if provided, otherwise our shared account.

Per their standard API terms, OpenAI and Anthropic do not use content submitted through their APIs to train their models by default. Deepgram's default is the opposite — audio sent to their API is eligible for their model-improvement program unless a request explicitly opts out — so we send every transcription request with that opt-out set, meaning your family's recordings are excluded from it. In all three cases, we send only what's needed to perform the task (the photo, the audio, or the relevant text) — not your full account or family data.

Every photo is automatically screened before it's saved. Content identified as child sexual abuse material is blocked outright and never stored as viewable content. Other flagged content is held for review by an administrator.

Any family member can report content they believe is harmful. Reports flagged as CSAM or explicit content immediately block the content while we review it. Where the law requires it, we report child sexual abuse material to the appropriate authorities, including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Content involving a family member flagged as a minor (see “Children's privacy” below) receives additional moderation review beyond the standard automated screening.

Keep N Share Stories is built around family vaults. Everyone you invite into your family vault can see every chapter in it, based on the role you give them (viewer, contributor, or admin).

You can also share a single chapter with someone outside your family — they get access to just that chapter, without joining your vault or seeing anything else. Chapter admins can revoke this access at any time.

If a chapter is shared this way, its map locations become visible on the recipient's own family map, alongside their own — sharing a chapter with someone outside your vault effectively shares its location data with their family too, not just with them personally. Keep that in mind before sharing a chapter that includes sensitive locations (like a home address) with someone outside your vault.

An invitation link (whether to a vault or a single chapter) shows basic details — who invited you and to what — to anyone who opens the link, even before they sign in. This is what lets an invitee decide whether to accept without creating an account first; it also means anyone who gets forwarded the link, not just the intended recipient, can see that same basic information (though not any of the actual chapter content, which still requires signing in and being an accepted member).

We do not sell, rent, or share your family's content with advertisers or data brokers.

Running Keep N Share Stories means trusting a small number of infrastructure providers with the data needed to do their job:

• Vercel — hosts the app and stores your photos and recordings (privately).
• Neon — hosts our database, where account and chapter data lives.
• Upstash — used only to rate-limit requests (keyed by your IP or account ID) to keep the service reliable and abuse-free.
• Brevo — sends account emails: verification, password resets, and invitations.
• OpenAI — photo safety scanning, AI captions, and cemetery-photo reading, as described above.
• Anthropic — AI-written chapter narratives, as described above.
• Deepgram — audio transcription, as described above.
• OpenStreetMap — powers the map: place-name lookups (we send only coordinates, never a photo) and the map imagery itself, which loads directly in your browser.

We use a single cookie to keep you signed in. We don't use advertising or analytics cookies, and we don't track you across other websites.

When you delete a photo, recording, written note, or chapter, it's held for a recovery window before being permanently removed — 24 hours for photos, 30 days for recordings, notes, chapters, and accounts — in case it was deleted by mistake. These windows reflect our current data-retention practice and may change over time.

You can request a copy of your data, or ask us to delete your account entirely, by emailing us at the address below. Deleted accounts follow the same 30-day recovery window before permanent removal.

Your session is protected by a securely hashed password — we never store or have access to your actual password. All traffic to and from the app is encrypted in transit (HTTPS), and our hosting and database providers encrypt data at rest.

Access to your family's content is enforced at the database level, not just in the app's interface — every query is scoped so that even a bug elsewhere in the app can't leak one family's data into another's. If we ever experience a security incident affecting your personal information, we'll notify affected users as required by law.

Keep N Share Stories is not directed to children and isn't designed for anyone under 13 to use. Signing up only requires a name, email address, and password — there's no age-verification step today, so this is a policy commitment rather than a technical barrier. If we become aware that an account belongs to a child under 13, we'll delete it.

Because this is a family history app, adult family members may add photos, recordings, or stories that reference or feature minors in the family — that's expected and part of the product. Family admins can flag a family member as a minor; once set, that status is never exposed back through the app to anyone, including other family members — it exists only to trigger extra internal safeguards (see “Content moderation & safety” above). If you have concerns about content involving a specific minor, contact us using the information below.

You can ask us to access, correct, export, or delete the personal information we hold about you at any time — just email us. We'll respond as quickly as we can, and in any case within the timeframe required by applicable law. This policy and our services are currently intended for users in the United States and governed by U.S. law.

If we change how we collect or use information, we'll update this page and the date at the top. If a change is significant, we'll do our best to let you know directly.

Questions about this policy, or a privacy request? Email info@keepnsharestories.com.