Privacy Policy

1. What we collect

• Family account: preferred family name, country of residency, postal code, cultural heritage (or reason if unknown), family stage, gothra, kuladevata(s), ancient village (structured or reason).
• Member profile: display name, age band, relationship, member ZIP (adults), occupation (optional), interests, personal languages, search bio, optional social links (max 3).
• Family declaration (soft suggestion length in the pilot).
• Consent records (required items are write-once with timestamp and version).
• Email for invite / magic-link authentication and platform communications.
• Session metadata needed to keep you signed in securely.

2. What we never collect

• Phone numbers are never written to Firestore.
• Exact home addresses or GPS coordinates.
• Payment card data (payments, when offered, are processed by Stripe).
• Advertising IDs or third-party ad tracking.

3. How we use information

To operate an invite-only family community: authenticate members, complete onboarding, enable consent-gated discovery and connections, deliver transactional email, enforce Community Standards and Terms, and comply with law.

We do not sell your data. We do not share it with advertisers. We do not use it for targeted advertising.

4. Visibility & consent

• Heritage searchability and village-map visibility require separate consents from the family head — providing heritage data alone does not make it searchable.
• Social links are shown to connected families only when social-link visibility consent is given; links are hidden in API and UI without that consent.
• Required consent records are retained permanently. Optional visibility consents may be changed where Account Settings allow.

5. Storage

Pilot data for kutumbam.co is stored in the kutumbam-staging Firebase project (US). A separate production project will be used for kutumbam.app when that host launches.

6. Children

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 for independent accounts. Minors may be listed by a parent or guardian family head. Teen independent login is out of Phase 1 scope.

7. Your rights & contact

For privacy questions, data requests, or deletion requests during the pilot, email hello@kutumbam.app. Self-serve account deletion UI may not yet be complete — we will process verified requests manually.