Terms of Service

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A note on how this document was prepared: These Terms were researched and drafted by comparing the practices of several established genealogy services and cross-checking against GDPR and Bosnian law. They are not the product of a licensed attorney's review. One important honest note up front: these Terms can limit our liability for things like bugs, downtime, or an inaccurate match suggestion — but they cannot waive your data protection rights under GDPR or Bosnian law. Those exist regardless of what this document says, so you won't find a clause here claiming otherwise.

1. Acceptance of these terms 2. What the service is 3. Your account 4. Content you add (family data) 5. Acceptable use 6. Matches and sharing with others 7. Intellectual property 8. Free service — no guarantees 9. Limitation of liability 10. Ending the service 11. Changes to these terms 12. How this service was built 13. Governing law 14. Contact

1. Acceptance of these terms

By creating a Roots Vault account, you confirm you're at least 18 years old and agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you don't agree, please don't use the service.

2. What the service is

Roots Vault lets you build, edit, and store a family tree, with an optional feature to find and connect with other users who may share common ancestors.

3. Your account

You're responsible for the accuracy of the information you provide when registering.
You're responsible for keeping your password confidential.
One account is for one person — please don't share your account with others.
Let us know right away if you suspect unauthorized access to your account.

4. Content you add (family data)

You remain the owner of the family data you enter. By adding information about relatives (including living people), you confirm that:

You have a legitimate, personal/family reason for recording this information;
You won't enter false, defamatory, or malicious information about anyone;
If a person (or their legal guardian) asks you to remove their information from your tree, you'll consider that request in good faith.

5. Acceptable use

You may not:

Use the service to harass, threaten, or harm other users;
Create fake identities for fraudulent purposes;
Attempt to gain unauthorized access to other accounts or data;
Use automated tools (bots) to scrape or bulk-collect data from the service;
Do anything that disrupts or compromises the service's operation or security.

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate an account that violates these terms.

6. Matches and sharing with others

The matching feature is optional and only activates with your consent (Settings → Privacy). What exactly is shared with other users, and when, is described in detail in our Privacy Policy. You always have the final say on whether to accept or decline a match.

7. Intellectual property

The Roots Vault software, design, and branding belong to us. The data you enter (names, photos, notes about your family) remains yours — we use it only to provide the service to you.

8. Free service — no guarantees

Roots Vault is provided free of charge, run independently, without a dedicated support team or service-level guarantees. We do our best to keep it reliable, but we don't promise uninterrupted availability, and features may change or be discontinued over time.

9. Limitation of liability

The service is provided "as is," without warranties of any kind. In particular:

We don't guarantee that suggested matches are accurate — matching is a statistical estimate based on the information entered, not a confirmed genealogical fact. Always verify a suggested connection independently before relying on it.
We don't guarantee the service will be available without interruption or free of bugs.
To the extent permitted by law, we aren't liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages arising from your use of the service.

Nothing in this section limits any right you have that cannot legally be waived — including your data protection rights described in our Privacy Policy, which apply regardless of this being a free service.

10. Ending the service

You can delete your account at any time. We may discontinue the service, in whole or in part, at any time — for a planned shutdown we'll aim to give reasonable notice so you can export your data first; immediate suspension may occur in cases of a terms violation or a security concern.

11. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. We'll notify you of significant changes by email or via a notification in the app before they take effect.

12. How this service was built

Parts of the Roots Vault application and this website were developed with the assistance of AI-based coding tools, used as a development aid under human direction and review — not as an autonomous author of the service. Regardless of which tools were used to build it, we remain fully responsible for the service, for how your data is handled, and for compliance with these Terms and our Privacy Policy.

This disclosure is about how the software was built, not about how your data is processed. We do not use AI to analyze, profile, or make automated decisions about you or your family data — see Section 7 of the Privacy Policy for how the (non-AI) matching feature actually works.

13. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Bosnia and Herzegovina. If you're a consumer resident in the EU, this doesn't take away any mandatory consumer-protection rights you have under the law of your own country of residence.

14. Contact

For any questions about these terms, contact us at privacy@roots-vault.com.