Privacy Policy

What We Collect

When you create an account

• Your name and email
• A password, or just an email link if you use our passwordless sign-in
• A phone number, if you choose to give us one

When you do an interview

• Your answers to the interview questions — the story you tell us
• Your spoken answers, if you talk to the interviewer out loud
• Video and sound recordings of the interview, if it is recorded
• Photos, documents, audio, video, or other files you or your family upload

When you buy something

• Your billing address and what you purchased
• Your payment card goes directly to our payment processor. We never see or store your card number

When you use the site

• Standard web information: your IP address, your browser, what pages you visit, and how long you stay
• Cookies that keep you logged in and remember your place

That's it. We don't track you across other websites for advertising.

How We Use It

• To run your interview
• To turn your interview into your finished Life Story and keepsakes — documents you can download, the interview video if it was recorded, and your family's private collection
• To send your story to the email addresses you tell us to send it to
• To help you when you contact us for support
• To send service and account messages, such as sign-in links, receipts, finished-story notices, and renewal reminders
• To improve the product — by looking at how the site is used, not by reading your story

Automated technology helps choose the Interviewer’s questions and write your story. The company that provides this technology has agreed in its business terms not to train its systems on your story or use or keep it for its own purposes. We never use your story to train computer systems either.

Who Sees Your Information

• You.
• Your family. Stories live in your Family Room. Relatives who have been given access can see the family tree and the stories allowed for them. A Family Organizer decides who gets in, and access can be revoked.
• The person who bought it, if your interview was a gift. They can see the finished story unless the person interviewed turns their viewing off. This is explained below, under “When You Share Your Story.”
• Hold Us Together staff. A small number of people on our team can access account information when needed to help you with support, fix a bug, or recover lost data.
• The service providers we use to run the platform. Each one is listed in the next section.

That's the entire list. We never sell your information. We never share it with advertisers. We never give it to data brokers.

Service Providers We Use

These companies handle different parts of the service. None of them owns your story.

• Interview and writing technology. A technology company receives the conversation as it happens, so the interviewer can ask the next question, and receives your answers, so your story can be written. What it has agreed to is described above, under “How We Use It.”
• Speech services. If you talk out loud, a speech service turns your spoken answers into text, and a voice service gives the interviewer, and stories read aloud, a spoken voice.
• Stripe. Handles card payments. Your card number goes straight to Stripe; we never see or store it.
• DreamHost. Hosts the website and the database that holds your account and your stories.
• Bunny Stream. Stores and plays interview videos and family videos.
• Cloudflare. Stores and shows family photos.
• Brevo. Sends our emails, such as your finished story, sign-in links, receipts, and reminders.
• Google. Supplies the lettering (fonts) our pages use, and runs Google Analytics on our public pages to count visits, unless your browser asks not to be tracked or you switch analytics off (see Cookies and Site Tracking below).

Each of these providers has its own privacy and security obligations. We choose partners that take this seriously.

Voice and Video Recordings

If your interview is recorded, or your family uploads video, those recordings include biometric information — your voice and your face. We store them so you can play them back, share them with family, and keep them as part of your family’s collection.

Recordings are stored online. They play only for signed-in family members who have access, through links that stop working after a short time.

If you live in Illinois, Texas, or Washington, your state has specific biometric privacy laws. You have the right to know what we collect, request its deletion, and withdraw consent. Email stories@holdustogether.com to exercise those rights.

The optional testimonial interview. After your life story, we may invite you to record a short, optional interview about what the experience was like, which we may use on HoldUsTogether.com and in our marketing. It is separate from your life story, which stays private. The recording is kept private unless you choose, on a separate screen, exactly what we may use and how you may be named, and you can withdraw permission for future use from your story page at any time. Material already printed or already posted to another company's platform may not be possible to take back, and we will tell you honestly what can and cannot be undone.

When You Share Your Story

Sharing has two doors, and your family controls both. Inside the family: stories live in your Family Room, where invited relatives see what their access and each person's privacy choices permit. Outside the family: nothing is visible unless someone intentionally creates a share link — and that link can be turned off.

When a family member is invited by email, they get access through their account and Profile. They never receive the Subscription Owner's password or payment details. A Family Organizer can revoke their access at any time.

Gifts. If someone bought your interview for you as a gift, they can see your finished story — that is part of what they paid for. But it is your story. After you look it over, you can turn their viewing off from your Family Room. Turning it off does not erase your story, and it does not give the buyer ownership of it.

A Family Room is the private online place where invited relatives find the shared Family Tree, Life Stories, photographs, videos, and memories. One login may belong to several Family Rooms. When people share an email login, they still keep their cards, capsules, and privacy choices separate.

Making a public clip is the one intentional exception to private Family Room viewing. When someone makes a clip, we save a separate short copy, so the public link never opens the full private video. Clips sent to us as a testimonial or as support feedback are kept under their own permissions and stay private unless we review and approve them for that stated purpose.

Cookies and Site Tracking

Essential cookies keep you logged in, remember your place in an interview, and support checkout. These are separate from analytics.

We count visits so we can see what is working and fix what is not. To do that, we use a random browser identifier to understand new and returning visits, traffic sources, page engagement, devices, and actions such as opening checkout. We also use Google Analytics on our public pages. Our own analytics does not record what you type, interview answers, family-story contents, recordings, full internet addresses, or the private codes inside family links. Private family pages are measured using general page names only.

You can switch analytics off for this browser at any time, without losing access to anything on the site. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, analytics stays off automatically. Switching analytics off does not remove the purchase or account records needed to provide the service.

Local analytics is available only to site administrators and is removed in scheduled batches. Google processes public-page analytics under its own privacy terms. Browser and device settings can limit how accurately visits are counted. Learn more about Google’s use of information from partner sites.

Security

• An encrypted connection on every page
• Passwords are scrambled before they are stored — we can't see your password, even if we wanted to
• Passwordless sign-in as an option, so a leaked password isn't a worry
• Videos play only for signed-in family members with access, through links that stop working after a short time
• Video plays are counted so unusual activity can be flagged for our own review; details that could identify a viewer are scrambled in a way that changes regularly
• Regular offsite backups

We can't promise nothing will ever go wrong — no one can — but we take this as seriously as it deserves.

Your Rights

You can:

• See all the information we have about you
• Correct anything that's wrong
• Export your story as a PDF or text file any time
• Delete your account and everything in it
• Choose not to renew a Family Room Membership and still keep the Life Stories and Time Capsules you bought; videos your family uploaded are kept for 12 months after the membership ends, as described below

The fastest way to do any of this is from your account settings. Or email stories@holdustogether.com and we'll handle it.

Once your account is deleted, your story is removed from active systems within 30 days and from backups within 90 days. Copies family members downloaded while you had it shared with them may still exist on their devices — that's outside our control. Deletion is permanent. If you might want your story later, don't delete your account.

How Long We Keep Your Information

• Your account and stories saved to your account stay with us until you ask us to delete them.
• Free short stories and their recordings: we keep completed stories and recordings temporarily for 30 days unless you save them to your account. A viewing link does not save them to an account. If you request a save email, we remind you before temporary copies are deleted. You decide who receives a viewing link; anyone with that link can view that story and recording.
• Life Stories and Time Capsules you buy stay available. They are yours to keep, whether or not your Family Room Membership is active.
• Videos your family uploads: if your Family Room Membership ends, we keep them for 12 more months and send renewal reminders. After those 12 months they may be deleted, because storing them is part of the yearly membership.
• Video-play safety records: deleted after 90 days. If one leads to a review, that review record may be kept longer to protect accounts and prevent misuse.
• Some records we have to keep longer for legal reasons — tax records, payment records. Those don't include your story.

For California Residents

If you live in California, you have specific rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA):

• The right to know what personal information we collect and how we use it
• The right to request a copy of your information
• The right to ask us to delete your information
• The right to opt out of the "sale" of your information — though we don't sell any information to anyone, ever
• The right not to be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights

To exercise any of these rights, email stories@holdustogether.com.

For Visitors from Europe and the UK

If you're in the European Union, European Economic Area, or United Kingdom, you have rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and UK GDPR — to access, correct, delete, restrict, or move your information, and to object to certain uses of it.

The lawful basis we rely on for processing your information is your consent when you sign up, and our legitimate interest in operating the service. You can withdraw consent any time by deleting your account.

If you believe we've handled your information improperly, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. We'd much rather you contact us first so we can fix it — but the right is yours.

Children's Privacy

HoldUsTogether is built for adults. We don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If a parent finds out their child has created an account, contact us and we'll remove it.

When This Policy Changes

If we change this policy in a way that affects your rights, we'll email you before the change takes effect. The date at the top will always show when this policy was last updated. If you don't agree with a change, you can delete your account before it takes effect.

This Privacy Policy applies to HoldUsTogether.com and the services connected to it.