Privacy policy

1. Who we are

The Family Record is run by Anomaly Africa, South Africa. We are the "responsible party" (POPIA) and "controller" (GDPR) for account information. For family content, the family's owner decides what is recorded and we look after it on their behalf.

Information Officer: the owner of Anomaly Africa. Contact: info@anomalyafrica.com.

2. What we collect

• Your account: name, email address, password (stored scrambled, never readable), and sign-in details from Google if you use it.
• Family content you or relatives add: names, dates and places of birth and death, relationships, places lived, portraits, photographs, voice notes, films, stories, keepsakes, recipes and shared memories.
• Membership: which families you belong to and your role (owner, curator, contributor or viewer), invitations, and when you accepted these terms and upload rules.
• Payments: the plan, amount and date of each payment. Card details are handled by PayFast and never reach us.
• Technical: short-lived server logs (address, browser, errors) used to keep the service running and secure.

3. Why we use it (lawful basis)

• To provide the family record you signed up for (performance of a contract).
• To keep the service secure and prevent abuse (legitimate interest).
• To keep payment records required by South African tax law (legal obligation).
• Information about relatives who are not members is recorded by family members for private family history. Living relatives can ask us to correct or remove it at any time (see section 8).

We do not sell your information, show advertising, or use your family's photos or stories to train AI.

4. Who can see a family record

Only invited members of that family. Every record is kept separate, and files are stored privately and shown through short-lived links. The owner and curators control who is invited and what role they have.

Living relatives: the privacy shroud hides exact birth dates and private notes from viewers. It is switched on automatically for living relatives under 18.

5. Upload rules

Before your first upload you'll be asked to agree to these rules:

• Only upload photos, recordings and documents you have the right to share.
• Living people shown should agree, or would reasonably expect to be included in a private family archive.
• Photos or recordings of children under 18 need permission from a parent or guardian.
• No nudity, hateful, violent or unlawful content, and nothing meant to embarrass or harm a relative.

Report content that breaks these rules to the family's owner or to info@anomalyafrica.com. We may remove it.

6. Where it is stored

Data is stored with our cloud hosting provider, which may keep it on servers outside South Africa. Where that happens, we rely on providers bound by data-protection terms that give protection comparable to POPIA and GDPR.

7. How long we keep it

• Family content is kept while the family record exists.
• When an owner deletes a family record, everything in it (people, stories, photos, voice notes, films, keepsakes, memories, invitations and memberships) is removed immediately and permanently. There is no recovery.
• When you delete your account, your sign-in and profile are removed immediately. What you added to a family stays with that family.
• Payment records are kept for 5 years, as South African tax law requires, without the family content.
• Server logs are kept for a short time and then discarded.
• When a paid plan ends, nothing is deleted. The record becomes a read-only archive.

8. Your rights

You can ask to see, correct, download or delete your information, object to how it is used, or withdraw consent. Most of this you can do yourself: edit profiles, download a backup from Preserve & export, or delete your account in Account. For anything else, email info@anomalyafrica.com. We reply within 30 days.

You can complain to the South African Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za) or, in the EU/UK, your local data-protection authority.

9. Children

Accounts are for people 18 and older, or younger people with a parent's or guardian's permission. Children may appear in a family record when added by a relative, with the protections above.

10. Cookies

We only use what is needed to keep you signed in. No advertising or tracking cookies.

11. Changes

If we make important changes, we'll show a notice in the app before they apply.