Privacy Policy.

1. Information RootsLanding May Access

RootsLanding may access files and information that you choose to use with the application. This may include:

• Photographs and other image files
• Photo filenames and related file information
• Family names, titles, descriptions, captions, or stories you enter
• Folders or locations that you choose for RootsLanding to access
• Information needed to create and maintain your Digital Family Home

Family photographs and other content may contain personal information about you or other people. RootsLanding accesses this material only as necessary to provide the functions you choose to use.

2. Local Creation and Storage

RootsLanding is designed to create and preserve a Digital Family Home on the user's computer. When you add supported photos and videos, RootsLanding leaves the selected source files untouched and creates exact local copies inside the Digital Family Home. It also creates separate web-ready images, thumbnails, video versions, and other generated website files locally. Adding material does not by itself publish it to the internet.

These local copies and generated files use additional disk space. Copies kept on the same computer are not an independent backup. You remain responsible for the photographs, stories, and other information you choose to include and for maintaining independent backups of irreplaceable family material.

3. Optional Online Publishing

RootsLanding may provide the option to publish or share a Digital Family Home online. Online publishing is optional.

If you choose to publish online, RootsLanding transmits generated web-ready images, thumbnails, video versions, website files, text, and other material needed to create or update the online version of your Digital Family Home. For imported album photos and videos, the exact local preservation copies are kept separate from these generated publishing files.

Information transmitted for online publishing may be processed or stored by internet infrastructure, hosting providers, content delivery services, domain services, or other providers necessary to make the published Digital Family Home available online.

RootsLanding offers optional 20 GB hosting through separate Microsoft Store subscriptions at $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year, each with a one-month trial for eligible customers. The 20 GB description is the included hosted-storage allocation; it is not a statement that version 1.0 automatically applies a server-side hard limit. RootsLanding may use hosted storage measurements to administer the plan and contact you about usage above the included allocation.

4. Information You Provide to RootsLanding

If you contact RootsLanding for support, participate in testing, report a problem, or otherwise communicate with us, we may receive information such as:

• Your name
• Your email address
• The contents of your communication
• Technical information you voluntarily provide for troubleshooting
• Limited Microsoft Store transaction and entitlement information made available to RootsLanding, such as whether the software or a hosting subscription is entitled and the applicable subscription status or expiration information

We use this information to respond to you, provide support, administer product or service access, improve the product, and address technical, security, billing-support, or legal issues.

Hosted-content reports and reviews

When you use Report content, we collect the reported hosted site and URL, category, short explanation, and your email address if you provide one. We associate the report with the relevant hosted home and keep review status, dates, actions, and resolution records. Do not submit images, attachments, access credentials, or unnecessary sensitive information.

We use this information to assess abuse and rights concerns, protect people and services, respond to requests, and meet applicable legal, safety, and hosting-provider requirements. Limited technical and security data may include request timing, network information processed by our hosting provider, short-lived pseudonymous abuse counters derived from IP addresses, and form-validation tokens. The report page does not load our analytics, advertising measurement, or session-replay scripts.

Reports and review records are accessible to authorized personnel and relevant service providers. We may disclose information when reasonably necessary to handle a concern, protect rights or safety, or respond to lawful requests or legal or provider requirements, including to authorities or rights holders where appropriate. We cannot promise anonymity or confidentiality.

We retain report information only as long as reasonably necessary for review, security, disputes, and applicable obligations. Preservation requirements may delay deletion; backups and provider records may have separate retention periods. Contact contact@rootslanding.com to ask about a report or exercise applicable access, correction, or deletion rights, subject to identity checks, legal duties, and permitted exceptions.

These reviews apply to hosted copies, not private local Digital Family Homes or source files.

5. Technical and Service Information

When RootsLanding communicates with online services, ordinary technical information may be processed as part of providing those services. This can include information such as an IP address, request time, browser or device information, and server or security logs.

Some of this information may be generated or retained by hosting, security, domain, network, or other service providers as part of their normal operation.

When you publish or update a hosted Digital Family Home, RootsLanding and its infrastructure providers may process upload metadata and operational records such as file names, file sizes, transfer status, hosted storage usage, request times, IP addresses, and security or error logs. These records are used to deliver the hosted service, troubleshoot failed publishing, protect the service, and administer the included hosting allocation.

6. Website Analytics and Advertising Measurement

Google Analytics

RootsLanding uses Google Analytics 4, a website measurement service provided by Google, to understand visits, page views, engagement, scrolling, link and download activity, and basic form-interaction events. We use these reports to learn which public pages are useful, improve navigation and content, and understand how visitors move through the product information and purchase-related pages.

When measurement is enabled, Google may receive page and event information, visit times and duration, browser and operating-system details, device type, language, screen resolution, and cookie-based identifiers that distinguish browsers and sessions. Google receives an IP address as part of the connection and may use it for approximate location, spam detection, and operation of the service, as described in Google's linked policies. Analytics cookies may connect visits in the same browser when analytics storage is allowed.

Google processes this information to provide Analytics measurement and reporting to RootsLanding. Google's handling of data is also described in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services and the Google Privacy Policy. Our website configuration keeps Google advertising storage, advertising user-data sharing, advertising personalization, and Google Signals disabled, even when you allow website analytics.

We do not send submitted names, email addresses, payment information, private family content, or other form field values to Google Analytics. Automatic user-provided data collection is disabled in our tag configuration. When measurement is allowed, GA4 receives the recognized public page address, the referring-page URL, and standard campaign or advertising parameters used for acquisition reporting, such as UTM parameters and advertising click identifiers. RootsLanding discards unrecognized query parameters, URL fragments, credentials, and unknown page paths from the page and referrer values it supplies to GA4. Campaign and referrer information can still contain data chosen by the referring site or link creator, so links should not place personal information in campaign parameters.

Microsoft Clarity and Advertising

The RootsLanding marketing website uses Microsoft Clarity for analytics, including session replay and heatmaps, to understand how visitors use the site and improve its design. Clarity may process page views, clicks, scrolling, pointer movement, browser and device details, IP address, approximate location derived from IP address, and related technical identifiers. It may use cookies and similar technologies to connect activity across pages or visits when permitted.

RootsLanding also uses Microsoft Advertising Universal Event Tracking (UET) to measure website visits and conversions and to evaluate advertising effectiveness. UET may process page and conversion events, referrer and campaign information, browser and device data, IP address, cookie or device identifiers, and related technical information. Microsoft collects or receives this information to provide Microsoft Advertising and may use it for measurement, reporting, service improvement, and other purposes described in the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

Consent and opting out

RootsLanding uses one regional tracking control for Google Analytics, Microsoft UET, and Microsoft Clarity. For visitors in the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, or Switzerland, and when we cannot determine the region, these scripts are not loaded until the visitor chooses Allow. Dismissing the choices with the close button, Escape, or an outside click does not grant consent. Outside those regions, measurement loads by default where lawful, unless a saved decline or supported Global Privacy Control signal applies. A Global Privacy Control signal turns tracking off on each page load; you can explicitly allow it for the current page.

Anyone can open Tracking choices at any time to allow or decline. Your choice is saved in this browser when local storage is available. Older saved declines remain effective; permissions saved under an earlier Analytics or attribution disclosure are not treated as consent to this update. If storage is unavailable, your choice applies to the current page. Clearing browser storage removes the saved choice.

Declining disables further GA4 measurement on the current page, sends denied consent signals to Google and Microsoft, and removes accessible first-party GA4 cookies. It prevents these scripts from loading on subsequent page views in that browser. For Microsoft scripts already loaded on the current page, denial instructs them to stop consent-based cookie use. Withdrawing consent does not undo information already sent. You can also use the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on where supported; it controls Google Analytics independently of the Microsoft services.

These tools measure activity only on the RootsLanding marketing website. They do not access photographs, stories, or other family content stored in your Digital Family Home.

7. How We Use Information

Information processed through RootsLanding may be used to:

• Create and maintain your Digital Family Home
• Administer software entitlements, optional hosting plans, transactions, and related customer support when applicable
• Provide features you choose to use
• Publish content online when you choose to publish it
• Provide customer or technical support
• Diagnose errors and improve reliability
• Protect RootsLanding and its services from misuse or security threats
• Comply with applicable legal obligations

8. Sale of Personal Information

RootsLanding does not sell your family photographs, stories, or other personal information to data brokers or advertisers.

9. Advertising

RootsLanding does not use the photographs, stories, or family content in your Digital Family Home for targeted advertising.

Website analytics and advertising measurement concern visits to and interactions with the RootsLanding marketing website, not the private family content in your Digital Family Home.

10. Service Providers

RootsLanding may rely on third-party companies to provide services such as hosting, domain services, security, content delivery, software distribution, and other technical infrastructure.

These providers may process limited information when necessary to provide their services. Their handling of information may also be governed by their own privacy policies and terms.

The Microsoft Store provides software distribution and processes RootsLanding software and hosting-subscription purchases, one-month hosting trials, recurring billing, payment methods, applicable taxes and refunds, cancellations, and entitlement information under Microsoft's own terms and privacy practices. The monthly and annual hosting subscriptions are separate Store products, and eligibility for a trial is determined for each product under Microsoft Store rules. Payment-card information entered into the Microsoft Store is processed by Microsoft or its payment providers and is not received through the RootsLanding marketing website. RootsLanding receives only the limited transaction and entitlement information Microsoft makes available when needed to verify software or hosting access, administer the service, keep required records, and provide support.

The former beta invitation form used FormSubmit as a form-processing and email-relay service. Information previously submitted through that process may remain in RootsLanding LLC email or records while needed for program administration, support, security, disputes, or legal obligations, subject to the retention and privacy-rights sections below.

11. Information About Other People

Family photographs and stories often contain information about people other than the person using RootsLanding.

You are responsible for deciding what material to include in your Digital Family Home and what material, if any, to publish or share online. You should consider the privacy of relatives and other people before publishing information about them.

12. Children

RootsLanding is intended as a family-history and family-preservation tool. It is not designed as an online service directed specifically toward children.

Adults using RootsLanding should exercise appropriate care when including or publishing photographs or personal information concerning children.

13. Data Security

RootsLanding takes reasonable measures intended to protect information handled through the product and its associated services. However, no computer system, internet transmission, hosting service, or method of electronic storage can be guaranteed to be completely secure.

Users should maintain appropriate computer security and backups of important family photographs and other irreplaceable material.

14. Your Choices

RootsLanding is designed to give users choices about how their Digital Family Home is used. Depending on the features available in your version of RootsLanding, your choices may include:

• Choosing which photographs and information to add
• Keeping a Digital Family Home on your computer
• Choosing whether to publish a Digital Family Home online
• Choosing what family content to share with others
• Removing or changing material in your Digital Family Home
• Allowing or declining Google Analytics and Microsoft website measurement through Tracking choices
• Choosing whether to purchase or continue optional RootsLanding hosting and managing recurring billing through the Microsoft account used to acquire the subscription

15. Data Retention

Information retained directly by RootsLanding is kept only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this policy, including providing services, supporting users, maintaining security, resolving disputes, and meeting legal obligations.

Former beta invitation submissions and later transaction, entitlement, hosting-plan, support, or service records may be retained for as long as reasonably necessary for administration, accounting, security, dispute resolution, legal obligations, or the other purposes described in this policy. You may request access, correction, or deletion where applicable as described below.

Information stored locally on your computer remains under your control, subject to the operation of your computer, storage devices, backups, and other software.

When a hosting entitlement expires or hosted service otherwise ends, the hosted Digital Family Home may be taken offline and hosted files may be deleted. Operational copies, backups, logs, transaction records, and material subject to a security, moderation, dispute, or legal hold may remain for a limited period until normal deletion or retention processes are complete. Keep the local Digital Family Home and independent backups because RootsLanding does not promise recovery of expired hosted files.

16. Your Privacy Rights

Depending on where you live, applicable law may provide rights concerning personal information about you. These rights may include requesting access to, correction of, or deletion of certain information.

To make a privacy-related request concerning information held directly by RootsLanding, contact us using the information below.

17. Changes to This Privacy Policy

RootsLanding may update this Privacy Policy as the product develops, features change, or legal requirements change.

We will revise the Last updated date when we change this policy and provide additional notice or seek renewed consent when required. The current version will be made available through the RootsLanding website.