Family Footsteps Privacy Policy
Last updated 18 October 2026
Family Footsteps is made by Marshall Goodman ("we"). This policy says what the app collects, why, and who else sees it.
What You Give Us, And Why
- Your family tree: the file you bring, or the names, years and places you type in. We use it to research the towns your family came from and to plan your film.
- Your telling: the recording of your voice and the words written out from it. Your voice is your film's soundtrack. The words are written out on your phone; no speech service hears your recording.
- Your photographs: the family photographs and photographs of yourself you choose to add. They appear in your film as you gave them, and they guide the painter so the people in the paintings look like your family.
- Your notes and answers: what you write under a picture, and your answers to the questions in the app.
- A city name, when you ask Wherever You Are about a place.
- Your Apple sign-in: Sign in with Apple gives us an anonymous account number. We do not receive your email unless you choose to share it.
- Your purchases: Apple tells us what you bought so we can unlock it. We never see your payment details.
What Stays On Your Phone
Your location. If you tap "Use my location" to find restaurants, the search runs on your phone with Apple Maps and your location is not sent to us.
Living Relatives
Anyone in your tree who may still be living is kept private: they are never named in a script and never painted.
Who Else Sees It
To make your film, parts of your material are sent to the services that do the work: Anthropic (reading, research and writing), OpenAI and Google (painting pictures from descriptions and from the photographs you add). They process it to make your film and, under their business terms, do not use it to train their models. Your files are stored on our server (Fly.io, in the United States). We do not sell your information, and we do not use it for advertising or tracking.
How Long We Keep It
Your films and their materials are kept so you can watch them, make changes and use the extras. Delete your account in the app (at the foot of the opening page), or write to us, and we delete your films and everything you gave us from our server within 30 days.
Children
Family Footsteps is not directed at children under 13.