Acceptable Use Policy

This policy forms part of the Terms of Service and applies to everything stored in or sent through Famvaults, by any member of any vault.

• store or share material that is unlawful where you or the subject lives — in particular any sexual content involving minors, which we report to the authorities without exception;
• harass, threaten, defame, blackmail or stalk anyone, or build a dossier intended to harm someone;
• store content you have no right to store — material that infringes copyright, or confidential information belonging to someone else;
• impersonate another person, or misrepresent your relationship to a family in order to gain access to their vault;
• distribute malware, or attempt to breach, overload, probe or reverse engineer the service or other users’ vaults;
• resell the service, or use it as general-purpose file hosting or a content delivery network — the 5 GB per vault is for a family archive, not a backup drive;
• send bulk or unsolicited email through our invitation system.

A family archive is mostly information about other people, and most of them never agreed to be in it. That is normal and it is the point of the product — but it carries obligations, and they are yours, not ours.

• Be truthful. Record what you know, and mark family lore as lore.
• Take particular care with sensitive details — health, mental illness, addiction, sexuality, immigration status, criminal history. Ask yourself whether the person would want it written down and shared with everyone you have invited.
• Take particular care with information about children.
• If a living relative asks you to remove or correct something about them, do it.
• Do not upload someone else’s private letters, photographs, medical records or documents where you have no right to.

If you believe a vault contains something that breaks this policy, or holds information about you that should not be there, email hello@famvaults.com. Tell us what you found and where, and how to reach you.

Because vaults are private, we cannot see the content you are reporting until you tell us about it. We take reports seriously and will acknowledge yours within a few working days.

Where we can, we start with a conversation: most problems are a misunderstanding, or one page rather than one person. Depending on severity we may ask for content to be removed, remove it ourselves, suspend a member’s access, or close an account.

We will tell you what happened and why, unless the law prevents it. For anything involving imminent harm or material that must be reported, we will act first and explain afterwards.