Terms of Service

These terms are an agreement between you and RootsnRites Ltd, a company registered in England & Wales (company no. [COMPANY NUMBER], registered office [REGISTERED OFFICE ADDRESS]) ("RootsNRites", "we"). By ticking the box at sign-up and using rootsnrites.com you accept them.

Your account

• You must be at least 13 to create an account. If you are under 18, you confirm that a parent or guardian permits your use. We apply extra privacy protections to accounts we believe belong to under-18s.
• Family members under 18 may appear in trees, added by an adult; under-18s are not shown in public or shared trees — a recorded birth date is what lets us detect and protect them.
• You are responsible for keeping your sign-in credentials safe and for activity on your account.

Your content

• You own the family data, photos, recordings and stories you add. You grant us only the limited licence needed to store, process and display them to the people you choose — that's what makes the product work.
• You are responsible for having the right to add the content you add, especially about living relatives. If a living person asks to be removed from your tree, we will remove their personal data — this is their right, not our discretion.
• We never sell your content, never use it to train AI models, and never show ads against it. See the Privacy Policy.

Public trees and edit suggestions

• Setting a tree to public is your choice as its owner. Public listings are reviewed by our curators before they appear in the directory, and curators may edit or unlist public trees to keep the directory accurate.
• Edit suggestions you submit on public trees may be accepted, rejected or edited by curators. By submitting one you allow us to use it to improve the tree.

Acceptable use

Do not use RootsNRites to:

• impersonate others or add knowingly false information about living people;
• harass, dox or expose private individuals;
• scrape or bulk-download other families' data;
• upload content you do not have the right to, or that is unlawful;
• break the law or help others break it.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that do.

Reporting content

If you see content that is illegal, harmful, harassing, or that concerns you or someone you represent, report it to [email protected]. We review reports promptly, remove content that breaches these terms or the law, and take action against repeat offenders. This is how we meet our duties as a service that hosts user-to-user content in the UK.

Copyright (DMCA)

If you believe content on RootsNRites infringes your copyright, send a notice to our designated agent at [email protected] (Designated Agent: [DMCA AGENT NAME / ADDRESS]) including the information required by 17 U.S.C. §512(c). We remove infringing material, provide a counter-notice process, and terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

India — intermediary duties (IT Rules 2021)

For users in India, RootsNRites operates as an intermediary under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. In addition to the Acceptable use rules above, you must not host, display, upload, publish, transmit, store, update or share any information that:

• belongs to another person and to which you do not have any right;
• is defamatory, obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, invasive of another's privacy (including bodily privacy), insulting or harassing on the basis of gender, libellous, or racially or ethnically objectionable;
• is harmful to a child;
• infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other proprietary rights;
• violates any law for the time being in force;
• deceives or misleads the recipient about the origin of the message, or knowingly and intentionally communicates any information which is patently false or misleading in nature but may reasonably be perceived as a fact;
• impersonates another person;
• threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign States, or public order, or causes incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence, or prevents investigation of any offence, or is insulting to any other nation;
• contains a software virus or any other computer code, file or program designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer resource.

On receiving a court order or a notification from an appropriate government agency that content is unlawful, we will remove or disable access to it as soon as possible and no later than 36 hours. For complaints about content that exposes a person's private or intimate parts, shows nudity or a sexual act, or is impersonation in an electronic form (including artificially morphed images), we will act to remove or disable access within 24 hours of receiving the complaint. We will also notify users at least once every year that non-compliance with these rules and our terms can result in removal of content and termination of access.

Grievance Officer (India)

In accordance with the IT Rules, 2021 and the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, the details of our Grievance Officer for users in India are below. You may contact the Grievance Officer for any complaint about content on the platform or about a purchase or consumer grievance:

• Name: [GRIEVANCE OFFICER NAME]
• Address: [INDIA REGISTERED ADDRESS]
• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: [PHONE]

The Grievance Officer will acknowledge your complaint within 24 hours and resolve it within 15 days of receipt. Grievances are handled by ONINE Innovations Pvt Ltd, which processes platform data in India on behalf of RootsnRites Ltd.

Ritual guidance

Ritual content, timings and checklists are respectful guidance, not religious authority. Practice genuinely varies by family, community and region — your officiating priest or elder is the authority for your family's rites.

Marketplace

A vendor marketplace (priests, caterers, decorators and others) is planned but not yet available. When it launches, vendors will be independent businesses, not our employees, the service contract will be between you and the vendor, and any bookings will come with the cancellation rights the law gives you. We will publish the marketplace terms before you can book anything.

Refunds & Cancellations

Paid plans come with a 30-day refund guarantee. If you are not satisfied, you can request a full refund within 30 days of your purchase — no questions asked. To request a refund or cancel, email [email protected] from the address on your account, or write to our Grievance Officer above.

• Window: requests made within 30 days of the original purchase qualify for a full refund.
• How to request: email [email protected] with the account email you used to buy; you do not need to give a reason.
• Processing: we approve eligible refunds within 5 business days of your request and return the money to your original payment method. It may then take a few additional days to appear, depending on your bank or card provider.
• Cancellation: you can cancel at any time. A one-time purchase is not billed again; cancelling stops any future renewal.

This policy is in addition to, and does not limit, the mandatory refund and cancellation rights you have as a consumer under the law of the country where you live, including under the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 in India.

Termination

You can delete your account at any time from your profile; deletion follows the Privacy Policy (within 30 days). We may suspend accounts that violate these terms, with notice unless the violation is severe.

Liability

RootsNRites is provided "as is". To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, and nothing affects your mandatory rights as a consumer.

Changes and governing law

We will notify you of material changes to these terms before they take effect. These terms are governed by the laws of England & Wales, and the courts of England & Wales have jurisdiction — without depriving you of the mandatory consumer protections of the country where you live.

Contact

RootsnRites Ltd · [email protected] · Registered office: [REGISTERED OFFICE ADDRESS]