Effective date: October 3, 2026. Operator: Aaron Sedna. Contact: aaronsedna.work@gmail.com.
Kinfolk is a local family-history and reunion-planning application. No Kinfolk account, paid backend, hosted family database, live collaboration or hosted RSVP website is required.
Your family information
Names, alternate names, dates, biographies, relationships, photographs, audio recordings, reunion guest lists, RSVP notes, shirt sizes, seating notes, budgets and contributions are stored in the app's private storage on your Android device. Kinfolk does not upload this family content to its own service. Enter information and media only where you have the necessary permission, particularly for living relatives and children.
Microphone permission is requested only when you choose to record. Recording stops when the recording screen closes or the app enters the background. Android notifications are optional and used for local birthday and anniversary reminders. Kinfolk does not request location or contacts access.
Exports, backups and sharing
PDF, GEDCOM and backup export use locations you select in Android's file picker. If you select Google Drive or another provider, that provider receives the exported file under its own privacy terms. If you share an invitation through another app, your selected recipient/provider receives that invitation. There is no automatic Kinfolk cloud sync.
Backups may be unencrypted or encrypted with a password you choose. Kinfolk cannot recover forgotten backup passwords. Encryption is AES-256-GCM with a password-derived key. Exported PDFs and GEDCOM files are not encrypted by Kinfolk. Protect exported family records and share them carefully.
Photo selection
Profile photos are resized and orientation-corrected on your device; saved copies omit camera location metadata. The bundled Google ML Kit face detector suggests crop regions locally, including when offline. It does not identify people or associate faces with names. Kinfolk does not upload your photos or detected face regions. Suggestions and crop adjustments are processed only when you add or adjust a photo.
ML Kit may send SDK diagnostics and usage information to Google, including device/app information, per-installation identifiers, performance, image format/dimensions, event types and error codes. This SDK processing also applies to Pro, independently of advertising. See Google ML Kit data disclosure.
Advertising
The free version uses Google AdMob, subject to applicable consent choices. Google Mobile Ads may collect or share IP-derived approximate location, advertising/device identifiers, app interactions and diagnostic information to provide, measure and secure advertisements. Kinfolk does not send family-tree content, photos, recordings, guest names or genealogy search terms to AdMob. UMP handles applicable consent and privacy options; privacy choices are accessible in Settings when required.
Pro removes advertising and ad requests. On startup, ads are withheld until purchase ownership is checked; cached Pro access suppresses ads while offline. No analytics or crash-reporting service is separately integrated by Kinfolk.
Payments
Google Play processes subscriptions and payment details. Kinfolk receives purchase information such as product identifiers, purchase state and tokens to confirm entitlement and acknowledge purchases. It stores a local Pro state and last confirmation time. Payment card information is not stored or processed by Kinfolk. Cached entitlements may remain active offline until Google Play can be queried successfully.
Retention and deletion
Family content remains on your device until you edit/delete it, replace it with a restored backup, clear app storage or uninstall. Removing a person removes their graph connections while retaining their memories as unassigned memories. Exported files remain in the selected location and must be deleted separately there. Android automatic app backup is disabled; create your own backups before clearing storage or uninstalling.
No online Kinfolk account exists, so there is no account-deletion workflow. To delete all internal data use Android Settings → Apps → Kinfolk → Storage → Clear data, or uninstall. This is irreversible without a saved backup. Data retained by Google for ads/payments is subject to Google's policies.
Security and changes
App-private storage, bounded archive parsing, integrity manifests and optional encrypted backups protect data against common accidental corruption and unauthorized archive modifications. A compromised/unlocked device, weak password or shared export can still expose data. This policy must be updated when actual features, SDK behavior or processing change.
References: Google privacy policy, AdMob data disclosure, Google Play privacy.