Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

FamilyLife, including this website and its associated apps (the "Service"), is built and maintained by Faithful Path Ventures LLC, a Missouri limited liability company ("we", "us"). This policy explains what information the Service collects, how it's used and shared, and the choices you have.

2. Information we collect

Information you give us when you create an account: the name others will see (a nickname or alias is fine, and you can change it any time), your email address and password. Passwords are stored only as a secure, one-way hash; we can't see them.

Information you and your family add to the Service, which may include:

• Family member profiles: names, relationships, birth dates, contact details, school information, photos, important dates, emergency contacts, and (if you choose) medical and insurance details.
• Household records: vehicles, properties, possessions, maintenance, service providers, expenses and mileage, calendar events, tasks, activities and documents or photos you upload. If you share a calendar event as a post, its name, date, time and place are shown to the audience you choose (never its notes or who's going).
• Foster care records, if you use that part of the Service: licenses, training, placements, case team contacts, daily logs and a foster child's identifying information (see section 6).
• Things you share: feed posts, comments, reactions, tags (@ mentions), messages and photos, and your profile (the name you choose, an optional photo and short bio). Your camera is used only when you choose "Take a selfie", and profile photos are made smaller on your device before upload, which removes hidden details such as where a photo was taken.
• Your connections: friends, friend requests, people you block, and requests to join a family.

Location, only if you (or, for a profile you manage, you as the parent) turn on location sharing, and when you send an SOS alert (see section 7).

Technical information: the IP address and time of security-relevant actions (kept in your family's audit log), error and security logs, if you turn on phone alerts, the push address your browser gives us, and, if you turn on background location in the Android app, a record of the linked phone (its secret key is stored only in a form we can't read back) and when it last reported. If you connect Google Calendar, we store the access token needed to send events to your calendar.

We do not use third-party analytics, advertising trackers or social media pixels.

3. How we use information

We use information only to:

• provide the Service to you and your family: showing your records, the feed and messages, reminders, notifications and emails, location sharing and SOS alerts;
• keep accounts and data secure: verifying identity, preventing abuse, investigating problems, and keeping audit records;
• communicate with you about your account and the Service (for example confirmation emails and important changes); and
• comply with the law.

We do not sell or rent personal information, use it for advertising, or build marketing profiles about you or your family.

4. Who can see your information

• Your family. Members of a family you belong to can see that family's information according to their role and permissions, which the family's owner and administrators control.
• Linked families. If your family links with another family, they can see feed posts you share with "Extended family", events you share there, and a basic family directory (names, relationships, photos, birthday month and day, phone and email). They never see medical details, documents, records or foster care information, never see foster children, and can't tell whether your family fosters.
• Friends. People you've accepted as friends see your profile, your Public and Friends posts, and can message and tag you. They never see your family's posts, records, members or family name.
• Everyone signed in. Anyone with an account can see your profile (name, photo, bio) and your Public posts, including in Discover. You can turn off being found by name in your profile settings, and block anyone: blocked people can't see your profile or posts.
• Families you ask to join. If you ask to join a family, its owners and administrators see your profile and your note. A family appears in family search only if its owner turns that on, and then only its name, description and number of members are shown.
• People you message or tag. Messages are visible to the people in that conversation; a tagged person may be notified.
• Legal reasons. We may disclose information if required by law, subpoena or court order, or to protect the safety of a person, but only as much as is required, and we will tell you when we're allowed to.
• Business changes. If Faithful Path Ventures LLC is involved in a merger or sale, information may transfer to the new owner, who must keep honoring this policy, and we'll tell you before it happens.

The Service's administrator tools show only account-level information (such as account emails and plan), not your family's records, and don't show whether a family uses the foster care features. People at Faithful Path Ventures LLC with technical access to the servers use it only to operate, secure and repair the Service, and the most sensitive information is encrypted. We will not look at your family's content to help you with a support request without your permission.

Invite links. When someone joins or adds a friend through your personal invite link, we record who invited whom and how often the link was opened. Only FamilyLife's platform administrators can see this, to understand how people find the Service; it isn't shown to other users.

5. Service providers

We use a small number of companies to run the Service. They process information only on our behalf and only as needed:

• Web hosting and database: SmarterASP.NET, which runs the Service and stores its data and encrypted files on servers in a data center in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States.
• Email delivery (our email provider), to send confirmation emails, reminders, notifications and SOS emails.
• Google Maps, to display the family map. When you open the map, your browser loads map images from Google, and Google's privacy policy applies to that request.
• Google Calendar, only if you choose to connect it: we send your family calendar events to your Google Calendar. Foster care items are anonymized by default.
• Browser push services (such as Apple, Google or Mozilla), only if you turn on phone alerts. Alert contents are encrypted before they're sent, so these services can't read them.

6. Foster care information

Foster care records receive extra protection:

• They're visible only to the family that entered them, and within that family only to its parents: the owner and the administrators (an owner can also remove an administrator's foster care access). Foster care access can't be given to any other member.
• No one else can see them or tell that your family fosters: not other members of your family, not linked families, and not other users. Foster children don't appear in member lists, member counts, the activity feed, the audit log, search, tags, messages or the family directory for anyone without foster care access, and reminder emails describe foster items only as "a private reminder".
• Foster children are always shown by an alias chosen by their foster parents; their legal name is never shown outside the encrypted foster record.
• A foster child's identifying information (legal name, birth date, Social Security number, state client ID, case and Medicaid numbers and similar details) is encrypted and is shown only to those parents after they re-confirm their identity. Every view is recorded in your family's audit log.
• Foster children are never shown to linked families, their location is visible only to those parents, and foster items are anonymized in calendar sync by default.

You remain responsible for following the confidentiality rules of your licensing agency and state (for example, not posting foster children's names or photos in shared areas). We do not share foster care information with anyone, including any agency; you decide what to export and give to your caseworker. People at Faithful Path Ventures LLC don't look at foster care records, and the identifying details are encrypted.

7. Location and SOS

• Location sharing is off until a person turns it on for themselves. Family owners and administrators can choose who sees an adult's location or turn it off, but can't turn it on for them, and the person is notified of changes.
• Your location updates while FamilyLife is open on your device. If you also turn on background location in the FamilyLife Android app (which asks you to allow location "all the time"), the app sends your location about every 15 minutes even when it's closed, but only while your location sharing is on. You can unlink the phone in Background location settings or turn sharing off at any time.
• We keep only your most recent location, and turning sharing off deletes it.
• Friends. Adults can also choose individual friends who see their location and/or get their SOS alerts. Those friends see only you and where you are, never your family or which family you're in, and they're told when you start sharing. Unfriending or blocking someone ends it. Children and foster children can't share with friends.
• When you send an SOS alert, your location (if available) and message are shared with the people alerted: your family members, members of linked families who are nearby and have chosen to help, and any friends you chose to alert. To decide who is nearby we use those members' own most recent shared location; it is never shown to you.

8. Children

Accounts (logins) are only for adults 18 and older. Parents and guardians may add profiles for their children, including foster children, that are managed by the adults in the family; children don't have their own logins. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we'll delete it.

9. Security

We use industry-standard protections, including HTTPS for all connections, encryption of sensitive fields and every uploaded file, hashed passwords, optional two-factor authentication, extra verification before identifying information is shown, permission checks that keep each family's data separate, and audit logs. No system can be perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach affecting your information we will notify you as required by law.

10. Keeping and deleting information

• We keep your information while your account is active.
• When you delete your account, we delete your login, remove your feed posts, comments, reactions and messages, end your memberships, and close any family you solely own along with its records. Notifications other people already received may stay in their history.
• When a foster child moves on (a foster parent marks it, or a foster youth with their own login leaves), their access ends right away, but the family's records about them are kept, encrypted and visible only to the foster parents, until a foster parent permanently deletes them. Placements can be permanently purged once they've ended. A foster youth can download their own posts and photos before leaving.
• Copies may remain in our hosting provider's backups for a limited time before they are overwritten. Security and audit records may be kept longer where needed to protect accounts or meet legal obligations.

11. Your choices and requests

• Access and export: family owners can export the family's data from household settings, and foster parents can export placement records.
• Correct: you can edit your information at any time.
• Delete: you can delete your account from Account & security.
• Control notifications in notification settings, and location sharing and phone alerts in Location & SOS settings.

You can also email us at [email protected] to request a copy of your information, a correction or deletion. We'll respond within 30 days and may need to verify your identity first. If you live in a state that gives you additional privacy rights, we will honor them.

12. Cookies and local storage

We use only cookies that are necessary for the Service to work: keeping you signed in, protecting forms against forgery, remembering which family you're viewing, and remembering a recent identity verification. Your browser also stores small preferences, such as light or dark mode and which chat windows are open. We don't use advertising or tracking cookies.

13. Changes to this policy

If we make material changes, we'll update the effective date above and tell you in the Service or by email before the changes take effect.

14. Contact us

Faithful Path Ventures LLC
Email: [email protected]