Terms of Service

1. Who These Terms Are With

AncestorOS is operated by Commoner Apps LLC, a limited liability company a United States limited liability company ("Commoner Apps," "we," "us," or "our").

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") form a binding agreement between Commoner Apps LLC and you, the person or entity accessing the Service ("you" or "your"). If you accept these Terms on behalf of a business, you represent that you have authority to bind that business, and "you" includes that business.

Your use of the Service is also governed by our Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, and Living Persons and Third-Party Information Policy, each incorporated into these Terms by reference.

2. Acceptance and Changes

By creating an account, subscribing, or otherwise using AncestorOS, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

We may change these Terms. If a change is material, we will give notice by posting the updated Terms with a new "Last updated" date and, where we have a working email address for you, by email at least 14 days before the change takes effect. Changes are not retroactive. Continuing to use the Service after the effective date means you accept the updated Terms; if you do not accept them, your remedy is to stop using the Service and cancel your subscription, and we will refund any prepaid, unused subscription fees covering the period after cancellation.

We will not apply a materially adverse change to the arbitration provisions in Section 20 to a dispute of which we already had notice.

3. Definitions

"Service" means the AncestorOS websites, applications, and application programming interfaces operated by Commoner Apps LLC.

"Your Content" means everything you upload, enter, import, or generate through the Service, including names, dates, places, biographical text, notes, photographs, scanned documents, audio, research logs, citations, DNA match records, client and business records, and any file you import (including GEDCOM files).

"Third-Party Information" means any part of Your Content that identifies or relates to a person other than you, whether living or deceased. This includes relatives, DNA matches, research subjects, and, on the Professional plan, your own clients and their contacts.

"Subject" means a living individual to whom Third-Party Information relates.

4. Eligibility and Age

4.1 Minimum age to contract. You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of legal majority where you live, to purchase a subscription or otherwise form a contract with us.

4.2 Minors aged 13 to 17. A person aged 13 to 17 may use the Service only with the consent and supervision of a parent or legal guardian who agrees to these Terms and accepts responsibility for that use. The account must be registered and paid for by that adult.

4.3 Under 13. The Service is not directed to children under 13 and we do not knowingly permit anyone under 13 to create an account. If we learn that an account holder is under 13, we will close the account and delete the associated data. See Section 12 of the Privacy Policy.

4.4 Information about children. Family trees frequently contain records of living children. Your obligations regarding that information are set out in Section 8 and in the Living Persons and Third-Party Information Policy.

4.5 Geographic scope. The Service is offered from the United States and is intended for users in the United States and Canada. We do not target the Service to, or design it for, individuals in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, and we make no representation that the Service complies with the laws of those jurisdictions. If you access the Service from outside the United States or Canada, you do so on your own initiative and are responsible for compliance with your local laws.

4.6 Not suspended. You represent that you have not previously been removed from the Service and are not barred from using it under applicable law.

5. Accounts and Security

5.1 You must provide accurate registration information and keep it current.

5.2 You are responsible for all activity under your account and for keeping your password confidential. The Service does not currently offer multi-factor authentication. Choose a strong, unique password and do not reuse it elsewhere.

5.3 Tell us promptly at support@ancestoros.com if you believe your account has been accessed without authorization.

5.4 Accounts are for a single individual or business entity. Do not share credentials. You may not resell, sublicense, or provide access to the Service as a service bureau without our written agreement.

6. The Service and Its Limits

6.1 What it is. AncestorOS is a tool for recording, organizing, and researching family history, with an optional Professional plan providing client, invoicing, and time-tracking features for genealogy practitioners.

6.2 Not professional advice. The Service does not provide legal, medical, genetic, financial, immigration, citizenship, tribal enrollment, or heritage-verification advice. Records assembled in the Service are not certified, notarized, or authenticated, and are not suitable on their own for establishing legal identity, inheritance rights, citizenship claims, tribal membership, or any other legal status. Consult a qualified professional for those purposes.

6.3 Accuracy. Genealogical records are frequently incomplete, inconsistent, or wrong. We do not verify the accuracy of any record, whether entered by you, imported from a file, or produced by an AI-assisted feature. You are responsible for evaluating the reliability of anything you record or rely on.

6.4 Changes to the Service. We may add, change, or remove features. If we discontinue a material feature you are actively using, we will give reasonable notice where practicable. Features described as beta, preview, or experimental may change or be withdrawn at any time and are provided without any warranty or service commitment.

6.5 Availability. We do not commit to any particular uptime, availability, or support response time. The Service depends on third-party infrastructure that we do not control.

7. Your Content

7.1 You keep ownership. As between you and us, you retain all rights in Your Content. We claim no ownership of it.

7.2 The permission you give us. You grant Commoner Apps LLC a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, transmit, display, reformat, index, and create technical derivative works of Your Content, solely to the extent needed to operate, secure, support, and improve the Service for you, and to provide features you actively use. This licence exists so that we can lawfully run the software; it does not permit us to publish, sell, license, or exploit Your Content for our own purposes.

7.3 What we will not do. We will not sell Your Content. We will not use Your Content for advertising, and we will not use it to train machine-learning models.

7.4 Ending the licence. The licence ends when you delete the relevant Content or close your account, except that: copies may persist briefly in routine backups and caches; content you have published through a share link remains available until that link is revoked or the underlying snapshot is deleted; and we may retain records where required by law or to resolve a dispute.

7.5 Your responsibility. You are solely responsible for Your Content, including its legality, accuracy, and your right to hold and use it.

8. Information About Other People

This section is central to these Terms. Genealogy software is unusual in that most of the information it holds is about people who are not its users. Read it carefully.

8.1 Your representations. Each time you add, import, or publish Third-Party Information, you represent and warrant that:

• you have a lawful basis to collect, hold, and use it, and to provide it to us for processing;
• you are not prohibited from doing so by any court order, settlement, confidentiality obligation, professional duty, or other legal restriction;
• where the Subject is living and the information is sensitive — including health, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, racial or ethnic origin, immigration status, criminal history, or genetic or DNA-relationship information — you have taken reasonable steps to confirm you may lawfully record and share it; and
• you will not publish Third-Party Information about a living Subject through a share link, export, or any other public means without a reasonable basis to believe you are entitled to do so.

8.2 Living people are your responsibility. The Service provides controls to exclude living people from share links and to mask them in exports. These controls are aids, not guarantees. Whether a record is treated as "living" is determined by the information you enter; incomplete or approximate dates may cause a record to be classified incorrectly. Before publishing a share link, review what it contains. You, not Commoner Apps, decide what to publish.

8.3 Requests from Subjects. A living person who is the subject of information held in the Service may contact us at privacy@ancestoros.com. Our process for handling those requests, and your obligations when we forward one to you, are set out in the Living Persons and Third-Party Information Policy. You agree to cooperate promptly and in good faith with any such request we forward to you, and you agree that we may remove or restrict access to specific content, or disable a share link, where we reasonably determine it is necessary to comply with law or to prevent harm.

8.4 Professional plan users. If you use the Professional plan to store information about your own clients, you are the controller of that information and are responsible for your own privacy notices, consents, engagement terms, and retention obligations to those clients. We act only as your service provider for that data. We do not provide a data processing agreement, business associate agreement, or equivalent instrument, and the Service is not designed for information subject to HIPAA, GLBA, FERPA, PCI-DSS, or similar regimes. Do not place such information in the Service.

8.5 Indemnity. Claims arising from Third-Party Information are covered by the indemnity in Section 19.

9. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

• use the Service to harass, stalk, intimidate, threaten, dox, or locate a person against their wishes, or to facilitate abuse, violence, or discrimination;
• publish information about a living person for the purpose of exposing, embarrassing, or endangering them;
• upload content that is defamatory, obscene, unlawful, or that infringes another person's intellectual property, privacy, or publicity rights;
• upload malware or anything designed to disrupt or gain unauthorized access to any system;
• probe, scan, or test the security of the Service except under a written authorization from us, or attempt to access data belonging to another user;
• scrape, crawl, or bulk-extract data from the Service by automated means, or resell or redistribute data obtained from it;
• circumvent usage limits, rate limits, paywalls, or access controls;
• use the Service to build or train a competing product, or to develop a machine-learning model;
• impersonate any person or misrepresent your affiliation;
• use the Service to send unsolicited commercial messages; or
• use the Service in violation of any applicable law.

We may investigate suspected violations and take any action we consider appropriate, including removing content, suspending access, and reporting to law enforcement.

Responsible disclosure. If you believe you have found a security vulnerability, please report it to security@ancestoros.com. We will not pursue claims against researchers who act in good faith, avoid privacy violations and service disruption, and give us a reasonable opportunity to remediate before disclosure.

10. Our Role in User Content

10.1 Content in the Service is created and controlled by users. We do not pre-screen, verify, or endorse it. We are an interactive computer service provider under 47 U.S.C. § 230 and are not the publisher or speaker of information provided by another information content provider.

10.2 We may, but are not obliged to, remove or restrict content that we reasonably believe violates these Terms or the law, or that presents a risk of harm. Doing so in one case does not create an obligation to do so in any other.

10.3 If you believe content in the Service is unlawful or infringes your rights, contact us at legal@ancestoros.com, or use the process in Section 22 for copyright claims.

11. AI-Assisted Features

11.1 Some features use third-party artificial intelligence services to assist with tasks such as transcribing an uploaded document, suggesting research directions, or generating historical background. Where you use such a feature, the relevant input — which may include a document image you upload and the names, dates, and places it contains — is transmitted to our AI provider for processing. The provider is identified in the Privacy Policy.

11.2 Output is unverified. AI output is generated by statistical models and may be inaccurate, incomplete, or entirely wrong, including transcribed names, dates, and relationships. It is a starting point for your research, not a source. You must independently verify anything you rely on. We disclaim all liability for decisions made in reliance on AI output.

11.3 Sensitive documents. Do not submit documents to AI features if you are not comfortable transmitting their contents to a third-party processor, or if you are prohibited from doing so.

11.4 AI features are optional. You can use the Service fully without them.

12. Subscriptions, Billing and Cancellation

12.1 Paid service. AncestorOS is a paid service with no free tier and no free trial. Current plans are Hobbyist at $15 per month or $150 per year, and Pro at $40 per month or $400 per year, in United States dollars.

12.2 Automatic renewal. Your subscription renews automatically. Monthly plans renew each month and annual plans renew each year, on the anniversary of your subscription start date, and the then-current price is charged to your payment method, until you cancel. There is no fixed term and no minimum commitment.

12.3 How to cancel. You may cancel at any time from Billing in your account using the Cancel Subscription control, or by emailing support@ancestoros.com from your account email address. Cancellation stops future charges. You keep access for the remainder of the period you have already paid for. No further action is required of you and we will not require you to call, chat, or complete a retention process in order to cancel.

12.4 Refunds. Fees are non-refundable except: (a) where required by law; (b) where we materially fail to provide the Service and cannot remedy it within a reasonable time; (c) for a duplicate or clearly erroneous charge; or (d) where we terminate your account without cause under Section 21.2, in which case we refund the unused portion of prepaid fees. Cancelling part-way through a paid period does not generate a refund for that period. We may grant refunds outside this policy at our discretion, without setting a precedent.

12.5 Payment processing. Payments are processed by Stripe, Inc. We do not receive or store your full card number. Your use of Stripe's checkout is subject to Stripe's own terms and privacy policy.

12.6 Failed payments. If a payment fails, we may retry it and may suspend paid features after a reasonable period. Your data remains in your account during any such suspension. We may terminate the subscription if payment remains unresolved.

12.7 Price changes. We may change prices. Any increase applies from your next renewal and we will give at least 30 days' notice by email to the address on your account, or by prominent in-product notice if we do not have a working email address for you. If you do not accept the new price, cancel before the renewal date.

12.8 Taxes. Stated prices exclude taxes. You are responsible for any sales, use, VAT, GST, or similar taxes, other than taxes on our net income. Where we are required to collect a tax, it will be added at checkout.

12.9 Chargebacks. If you dispute a charge with your bank without first contacting us, we may suspend the account pending resolution. Please email support@ancestoros.com first; billing problems are usually resolved quickly.

13. Our Intellectual Property

13.1 The Service, including its software, interfaces, design, text, graphics, and the AncestorOS name and logo, is owned by Commoner Apps LLC and protected by intellectual property law. Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the Service for its intended purpose.

13.2 You may not copy, modify, reverse engineer, decompile, or create derivative works of the Service, except to the extent that restriction is unenforceable under applicable law.

13.3 All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

14. Feedback

If you send us suggestions, feature requests, or other feedback, you grant us an unrestricted, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free right to use it for any purpose without obligation or compensation to you. Please do not send us anything you consider confidential.

15. Third-Party Services

15.1 The Service depends on third parties for hosting, storage, authentication, payment processing, email delivery, mapping, fonts, and AI processing. These are listed in the Privacy Policy. We are not responsible for their acts, omissions, outages, or changes to their terms.

15.2 The Service may link to third-party websites and records repositories. We do not control or endorse them and are not responsible for their content or practices.

15.3 Where you connect your own third-party account or credentials, you are responsible for that account and for complying with its provider's terms.

16. Data, Backups and Loss

16.1 Keep your own copies. Family history research often represents years of irreplaceable work. You are responsible for maintaining your own independent backups of Your Content. The Service provides GEDCOM export for people and relationships; other categories of content may not be exportable in full. Do not treat AncestorOS as your only copy of anything you cannot afford to lose, and keep your original source files, particularly any file you import.

16.2 We take reasonable measures to protect data but do not guarantee against loss, corruption, or unavailability, whether caused by us, by a third-party provider, by your own actions, or by events outside our control.

16.3 Deletion is permanent. Deleting content or closing your account is not reversible and we cannot restore deleted data. Export anything you want to keep before deleting it.

16.4 We do not offer a contractual data-recovery service and have no obligation to retain Your Content after your account is closed.

17. Disclaimers

17.1 THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITH ALL FAULTS AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, COMMONER APPS LLC DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, AND STATUTORY, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, QUIET ENJOYMENT, ACCURACY, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

17.2 WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE; THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED; OR THAT ANY CONTENT, INCLUDING GENEALOGICAL RECORDS AND AI OUTPUT, WILL BE ACCURATE, COMPLETE, OR RELIABLE.

17.3 No advice or information obtained from us creates any warranty not expressly stated here.

17.4 Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties. In those jurisdictions, the exclusions above apply to the fullest extent permitted, and you may have additional rights.

18. Limitation of Liability

18.1 TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, COMMONER APPS LLC AND ITS MEMBERS, MANAGERS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, CONTRACTORS, AND SUPPLIERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, GOODWILL, OR DATA, OR FOR THE COST OF SUBSTITUTE SERVICES, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR ANY OTHER THEORY, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES, AND EVEN IF A REMEDY FAILS OF ITS ESSENTIAL PURPOSE.

18.2 Cap. OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE TOTAL AMOUNTS YOU PAID US FOR THE SERVICE IN THE TWELVE MONTHS IMMEDIATELY BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED UNITED STATES DOLLARS ($100).

18.3 Data loss. WITHOUT LIMITING THE ABOVE, WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR LOSS, CORRUPTION, OR UNAVAILABILITY OF YOUR CONTENT. SEE SECTION 16.

18.4 Exceptions. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, gross negligence, willful misconduct, or death or personal injury caused by negligence.

18.5 Basis of the bargain. The disclaimers and limitations in Sections 17 and 18 are an essential basis of the agreement between us and are reflected in the price of the Service.

18.6 Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations of liability. In those jurisdictions, our liability is limited to the fullest extent permitted by law.

19. Indemnification

19.1 You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Commoner Apps LLC and its members, managers, officers, employees, and contractors from and against any third-party claim, demand, action, or proceeding, and all resulting losses, damages, liabilities, settlements, penalties, fines, costs, and reasonable legal fees, arising out of or relating to:

• Your Content, including any Third-Party Information, and any claim that it infringes, misappropriates, or violates the intellectual property, privacy, publicity, or other rights of any person;
• a claim by or on behalf of a living Subject relating to information you recorded, imported, exported, or published, including any claim under a genetic privacy, biometric, consumer privacy, or data protection statute;
• your publication of a share link or export, and anything disclosed through it;
• your breach of these Terms or of any law; and
• on the Professional plan, your relationship with your own clients, including your handling of their information.

19.2 We will notify you of any claim we seek indemnification for, and you may control the defense with counsel reasonably acceptable to us, provided that you may not settle any claim in a way that imposes any obligation or admission on us without our written consent. We may participate in the defense at our own expense.

19.3 This section survives termination.

20. Dispute Resolution and Arbitration

This section affects your legal rights. It requires individual arbitration and waives jury trials and class actions. Please read it in full.

20.1 Informal resolution first. Before starting arbitration or any proceeding, you agree to contact us at legal@ancestoros.com with a written description of the dispute and the relief you seek, and to allow us 60 days to resolve it. We will do the same before bringing any claim against you. This step is a condition precedent, and the limitations period is tolled while it runs. Many disputes are resolved at this stage.

20.2 Binding arbitration. If the dispute is not resolved, any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, rather than in court. The Federal Arbitration Act governs the interpretation and enforcement of this section.

20.3 Exceptions. Either party may bring an individual claim in small claims court if it qualifies, and either party may seek injunctive relief in court to protect intellectual property or to stop unauthorized access to the Service. Nothing here prevents you from reporting a matter to a government agency.

20.4 Class action and jury waiver. Disputes will be arbitrated only on an individual basis. You and we each waive any right to a jury trial and any right to participate in a class, collective, consolidated, or representative action. An arbitrator may not consolidate claims or preside over any form of representative proceeding. If this paragraph is held unenforceable as to a particular claim or remedy, that claim or remedy is severed and must proceed in court, while all other claims remain in arbitration.

20.5 Procedure and costs. Arbitration will be conducted in Collin County, Texas, or, at your election, by telephone, videoconference, or on written submissions where the rules permit. For claims of $10,000 or less, you may choose whether the arbitration proceeds by documents only, by telephone or videoconference, or in person. We will pay the AAA filing, administration, and arbitrator fees for any claim of $10,000 or less that is not frivolous. The arbitrator may award any relief available in court to the individual party, and the award is final and binding and may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.

20.6 Time limit. Any claim must be brought within one year after it arises, or it is permanently barred, to the extent permitted by law.

20.7 Your right to opt out. You may opt out of this arbitration agreement. Send written notice within 30 days of first accepting these Terms to legal@ancestoros.com with the subject line "Arbitration Opt-Out," stating your name and the email address on your account. Opting out does not affect any other part of these Terms and will not affect your service or pricing in any way.

20.8 Survival. This section survives termination of your account and of these Terms.

21. Suspension and Termination

21.1 By you. Cancel your subscription at any time as described in Section 12.3. You may delete your account from Settings. Deleting your account cancels any active subscription, removes your data from the Service, and is permanent.

21.2 By us. We may suspend or terminate your access: immediately, if you materially breach these Terms, if we are required to by law, or if your use presents a risk of harm to another person or to the Service; or for any other reason on 30 days' notice, in which case we will refund the unused portion of any prepaid fees.

21.3 Effect. On termination your licence to use the Service ends. Where we terminate without cause, we will where practicable give you 30 days to export Your Content. Where we terminate for a serious breach or a legal requirement, we may remove content immediately.

21.4 Survival. Sections 7.4, 8, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.4, and 24 survive termination.

22. Copyright and DMCA

We respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Our full notice-and-takedown procedure, counter-notice process, repeat-infringer policy, and designated agent details are set out in our Copyright and DMCA Policy.

Send notices to our designated agent at legal@ancestoros.com or by post to Commoner Apps LLC, DMCA Agent, at the mailing address available on request from legal@ancestoros.com.

23. Export Controls and Sanctions

You represent that you are not located in, and are not a national or resident of, any country subject to comprehensive United States sanctions, and that you are not on any United States government list of prohibited or restricted parties. You agree not to use the Service in violation of United States export control or sanctions laws.

24. General Terms

24.1 Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Subject to Section 20, the state and federal courts located in Collin County, Texas have exclusive jurisdiction, and you consent to personal jurisdiction there. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

24.2 Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, Living Persons and Third-Party Information Policy, and Copyright and DMCA Policy, are the entire agreement between you and Commoner Apps LLC regarding the Service, and supersede all prior discussions and agreements.

24.3 Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, it will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, or severed if it cannot be, and the remainder stays in effect.

24.4 No waiver. A failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of it.

24.5 Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, on notice to you.

24.6 Force majeure. Neither party is liable for a failure to perform caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including natural disasters, war, terrorism, civil unrest, labour disputes, governmental action, epidemics, power or internet failures, and failures of third-party providers.

24.7 Notices and electronic communications. You consent to receive communications from us electronically, including by email to the address on your account and by notices posted in the Service, and you agree that these satisfy any legal requirement that a communication be in writing. Notices to us must be sent to legal@ancestoros.com and, for formal legal notices, also by post to the address in Section 1. Keep your email address current; a notice we send to the address on your account is effective even if you do not receive it.

24.8 No third-party beneficiaries. These Terms create no rights in any third party, except that Section 19 benefits the persons named in it.

24.9 Relationship. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, employment, or agency relationship.

24.10 Headings. Headings are for convenience only and do not affect interpretation. "Including" means "including without limitation."

25. Contact

Commoner Apps LLC
United States

General support: support@ancestoros.com
Legal notices and DMCA: legal@ancestoros.com
Privacy and data requests: privacy@ancestoros.com
Security reports: security@ancestoros.com