Terms of Use
Effective 2 November 2026
The short version
- RootsAcross is free and run as a hobby. It comes as it is, without guarantees, so keep your own backups.
- What you add stays yours. You give us permission to store it and show it to your hub’s members.
- Only add information, photos and recordings of other people if you’re allowed to share them.
- Be kind. Don’t use RootsAcross to harass, track or pressure anyone, including asking relatives for money.
These terms are an agreement between you and the operator of RootsAcross (“we”, “us”), the website at rootsacross.com. By creating an account or using a hub, you agree to them and to the Privacy Policy. If you don’t agree, please don’t use RootsAcross.
1. The service
RootsAcross lets families and friends create private hubs to build a shared family tree, share photos and recordings, and plan visits. It is a free, non-commercial project run by an individual in their spare time. We may change, pause or stop features, or the whole service, at any time. If we decide to close RootsAcross, we’ll try to give at least 30 days’ notice on the site, so you can download your family’s information.
2. Who can use it
- You must be at least 13 years old, or older if your country requires a higher age to use this kind of service without a parent’s consent.
- An account is for one person. Give accurate sign-up details, keep your password private, and tell a hub admin or us if you think someone else has used your account.
- Creating a hub may need a creation code. Joining a hub may need its invite code.
3. Hubs and admins
The person who creates a hub becomes its admin, and can make other members admins. Admins decide who joins, can change hub settings, remove members, create password reset links, connect the hub to another family’s hub, download backups and delete the hub. Admins should use these powers fairly and keep the hub limited to people they trust. We aren’t responsible for how admins or members run or use a hub, but we may step in if these terms are broken.
4. Your content
“Content” means anything you add: family tree details, photos, recordings, stories, captions and plans.
- You keep ownership. We don’t claim any rights to your content beyond what’s needed to run the service.
- Permission you give us. You allow us to store, copy, process and display your content, only to provide RootsAcross to you and your hub. This includes showing it to your hub’s members, and through connected hubs and report links you or your admins create, as the app describes. This permission ends when the content is deleted, apart from short-term recovery copies described in the Privacy Policy.
- Your responsibility. You must have the right to share what you add. Get permission before sharing living people’s photos, recordings or contact details. For a child, that means their parent or guardian. Please tell people before recording them. In some places the law requires everyone’s consent before a conversation is recorded.
- Accuracy. Family history is often uncertain. Content is added by members and may be wrong, and we don’t check it.
5. Things you must not do
- Harass, threaten, bully or embarrass anyone, or post hateful or sexually explicit content.
- Use someone’s location, contact details or travel plans to stalk, track or turn up on someone who doesn’t want to be found, or share them outside the hub without permission.
- Use RootsAcross to ask for money or pressure relatives for financial help, run fundraising, sell things, send spam or advertise.
- Upload content you don’t have the right to share, or anything illegal.
- Add someone who has clearly asked not to be included, or ignore a living person’s request to remove their details.
- Try to get into hubs or accounts that aren’t yours, test or break the site’s security, overload it, or use automated tools to copy its content.
- Upload viruses or harmful code, or pretend to be someone you’re not.
6. Reporting a problem
If something in a hub is about you and you want it changed, ask the member who added it or a hub admin first. To report abuse, illegal content, a copyright problem or a security issue, email hello@rootsacross.com. Tell us where it is and why it’s a problem, and we’ll look into it promptly.
7. Suspending or ending accounts
You can delete your account, and admins can delete their hub, at any time from Members & settings. We may suspend or remove an account, content or a hub that breaks these terms, puts others at risk, or exposes us to legal liability. Where reasonable, we’ll explain why first.
8. Estimates are only estimates
Distances, drive and flight times, local times, “good time to call” hints and relationship names are worked out automatically and are approximate. Don’t rely on them for travel, safety, legal, medical or inheritance decisions.
9. Backups
We work to keep your information safe, but we can’t promise it will never be lost. Please download a copy of your family tree from time to time, and keep your own copies of important photos and recordings.
10. No guarantees
RootsAcross is provided free, “as is” and “as available”. As far as the law allows, we make no promises that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or suitable for any particular purpose, and we disclaim all implied warranties.
11. Limits on our responsibility
As far as the law allows, we aren’t responsible for indirect or consequential losses, such as lost data, lost memories, upset or disputes between family members, or for anything other members do. Because the service is free, our total responsibility for any claim relating to RootsAcross is limited to US $50, or the equivalent in your currency. Nothing in these terms limits responsibility that the law doesn’t allow to be limited, such as for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence. Nothing here takes away your rights under consumer protection law where you live.
If you misuse RootsAcross in a way that breaks these terms or the law, and that leads to a claim against us, you agree to cover our reasonable costs.
12. Other services
RootsAcross uses outside services, such as OpenStreetMap for places and Open-Meteo for time zones, and may link to other websites. We aren’t responsible for their content or availability.
13. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms. We’ll change the date at the top and, for important changes, show a notice on the site before they take effect. If you keep using RootsAcross after that, you accept the new terms. If you don’t accept them, you can delete your account.
14. General
These terms are governed by the laws of the place where the operator of RootsAcross lives. This doesn’t affect any mandatory consumer protections in your own country. If part of these terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies. If we don’t enforce a term right away, that doesn’t mean we give up the right to. These terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about RootsAcross.