Privacy
What The Family Archive keeps about you, where it lives, and who can see it.
What we keep
When you ask to join, we keep the name, email address, phone number and address you give us, so an admin can tell who you are. If you are let in, we keep your password only as a one-way scrambled hash; nobody, including the admins, can read it back.
Admins add photos, videos and documents, each with a short description. Those files are the archive itself.
Where it lives
Account details and file descriptions are kept in a private database. The files themselves are kept in the family’s own Google Drive, and the emails the archive sends (your password, replies to the contact form) go out from the family’s own Gmail account.
What the archive can do with the family’s Google account
Only two things. It can manage the files it created itself in one Drive folder, and it can send email. It cannot open any other file in that Drive, and it cannot read the Gmail inbox. Nothing it gets from Google is used for advertising, sold, or passed to anyone else.
Who can see what
Nobody sees the photos, videos or documents without signing in with an account an admin has approved. The public front page shows only tiny blurred previews. Admins can see the details people gave when they asked to join. The archive is hidden from search engines.
Cookies
One cookie, which keeps you signed in. No analytics, no advertising, no tracking of any kind.
Changing or removing your details
You can change your name, phone and address from your account page. To have your account removed, or a photo of you taken down, get in touch and an admin will do it. Deleted files sit in the Drive trash for 30 days before they are gone for good.
Last updated 22 September 2026.