Last updated: 27 August 2026
Descendant is a private place for one family to keep its story: the family tree, the conversations, the photographs, the events, and the memories that would otherwise be lost when the people who hold them are gone.
That purpose shapes this policy. A family's history is not ordinary app data. It contains children, it contains the dead, it contains things people would only ever say to their own family. We have written this document to say plainly what we hold and what we do with it, rather than to reserve rights we do not need.
We do not sell your information. We do not advertise. There are no analytics or tracking tools of any kind in this app. Those are not promises about the future — they describe the software as it is built today.
Descendant is published by Pierre Venture Group LLC ("we", "us"), which is the data controller for the information described here.
For anything in this policy — a question, a correction, a request to see or delete your information — write to privacy@pventuregroup.com.
We answer privacy requests within 30 days.
We collect only what the app needs to work. Everything below is entered by you or by someone in your family. None of it is bought, inferred, or gathered from other sources.
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your name | So your family knows who wrote what |
| Your email address | To sign you in, and to identify your account |
| Your password | Stored only as a cryptographic hash — see section 6 |
| The date you joined | To order family membership |
Your email address is used to sign in and to reach you about your account. It is not shown to other members of your family, and we do not send marketing.
Names, gender, dates of birth and death, and how people are related to one another. Dates may be recorded as a full date or as a year alone, because "1948" and "12 March 1948" are different facts and the difference matters.
Most people on a family tree do not have an account and have not agreed to anything. They are there because a relative recorded them. This is what a family record has always been, and it is the point of the app — but it means the person entering that information carries a real responsibility, and section 5 covers it.
The app lets you record health information about yourself: conditions, medications, allergies, surgeries, and family medical history, each with a title and optional details.
Under GDPR, health information is a special category of personal data. Our lawful basis for holding it is your explicit consent, given when you choose to record it, and again when you choose to share it. You may withdraw that consent at any time by deleting the note or by making it private again.
The app generates codes so that people can be connected without exchanging personal details: a family invite code, a personal code that identifies your account to a relative, and a per-person code that lets someone claim their own place on the tree. A code identifies an account or a tree entry and nothing else.
We want to be specific, because "we may collect" language in most policies hides how much is actually taken. Descendant contains no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK, no crash-reporting service, and no tracking of any kind. We do not collect:
The app stores a small amount of information on your own device so you do not have to sign in every time: a sign-in token, your user id, your name, and which family you are currently viewing. Photographs you have recently looked at are held briefly in memory so lists scroll smoothly.
All of this is cleared when you sign out.
Everything else is stored in a database operated for us by our hosting provider, SmarterASP.NET, who process data on our instructions and for no purpose of their own.
⚠️ [TO CONFIRM BEFORE PUBLISHING] — the physical location of that data centre. Confirm the region with SmarterASP.NET and replace this paragraph with the country. If any of your family is in the EU or UK, this determines whether you need Standard Contractual Clauses for the transfer, and you must not guess at it.
This is the part most people actually want answered.
| Information | Who can see it |
|---|---|
| Your email address | Only you and us |
| Your password | Nobody, including us — see section 6 |
| Family tree entries | Every member of that family |
| Group messages | Only members of that group |
| Events marked "everyone in the family" | Every member of that family |
| Events marked for a group | Only that group |
| Events marked for named people | Only the people invited, and the organiser |
| Private health notes | Only you |
| Shared health notes | Members of your family |
| Memories and interview answers | As set by the visibility you chose |
We do not read your family's messages, memories or health notes. Our staff access the database only when it is necessary to fix a fault or to answer a request from you, and we do not browse content.
You may belong to more than one family. Families are entirely separate: nothing crosses between them, and members of one cannot see the other.
You must be 18 or older to hold a Descendant account. We do not knowingly create accounts for children. If we learn that a child holds an account, we will delete it and its personal information.
An adult may record a child's name, dates and photographs on the family tree, as families have always done in albums and bibles. If you do that, you are responsible for it — for having the right to record that information, and for respecting the wishes of the child's parents.
The same applies to any adult relative you add who has not joined the app. If someone asks you to remove them from your tree, please do so. If they cannot reach you, they can write to privacy@pventuregroup.com and we will help.
We also hold information about people who have died. We treat it with the same care as everyone else's, because that is the entire purpose of this app.
No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach affects your personal information we will tell you and the relevant regulator without undue delay, and within 72 hours where GDPR requires it.
We keep your information for as long as your account exists.
One honest exception: content you contributed to a shared family record does not automatically vanish. If you wrote a message in a family group, added people to the tree, or created an event others have replied to, that remains part of your family's history, shown without your name attached. This is deliberate — a family's record would be full of holes if any one person could erase their part of it years later. If you want that content removed as well, ask us and we will do it.
Wherever you live, you may ask us to:
Write to privacy@pventuregroup.com. We will not charge you, and we will not treat you differently for asking.
Our lawful bases are: contract, for the information needed to give you an account and run the app; consent, for health information specifically; and legitimate interests, for keeping the service secure and working. You may object to the last of these at any time.
You have the right to complain to your national data protection authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
We do not make automated decisions about you, and we do not profile you.
You have the right to know what we collect, to delete it, to correct it, and to opt out of its sale or sharing. We do not sell or share your personal information, and we never have — so there is nothing to opt out of. You will not receive worse service for exercising any of these rights.
In the twelve months before the date at the top of this policy, we disclosed personal information to no one except our hosting provider, acting as our service provider.
You may access the personal information we hold about you and challenge its accuracy. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca).
Events can carry links — a gift registry, a venue, a livestream — and locations can be opened in your maps app. Following one of those takes you to a website we do not control, and this policy stops at that point. What Amazon or Google does with your visit is governed by their policies, not ours.
Descendant only ever opens ordinary web addresses, and it always shows you the site's real address next to the link, so you can see where you are going before you tap.
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top and, for any change that materially affects your rights, tell you in the app before it takes effect.
Pierre Venture Group LLC privacy@pventuregroup.com