Legal

Terms, privacy and refunds

Last updated 20 August 2026. EmbleHart

Terms of service

1. Who we are and what this covers

EmbleHart is a private photograph library and family tree provided by us ("we", "us"). These terms cover your use of the website and the application. By creating an account you accept them.

2. Your account

• You must be 16 or over to hold an account. A parent or guardian may add a younger child to a family tree, but the account itself belongs to an adult.
• You are responsible for keeping your password to yourself. Tell us at once if you think somebody else has it.
• One person, one account. Do not share sign-ins.

3. Families and roles

A family album has an owner, who is responsible for its subscription and for who is let in. Admins can manage content and members. Members can add and tag photographs. Viewers can look but not change. The owner decides these roles and can change them at any time.

4. Your content stays yours

You keep every right you have in the photographs you upload. You give us only the permission we need to run the service for you: to store your files, make the thumbnails and viewing copies the app displays, and show them to the people in your family album.

We do not use your photographs to train anything, we do not sell them, we do not advertise against them, and we do not run face recognition over them. Tagging is something you do by hand. The one automated check we apply to the contents of a file is the illegal-image matching described in "What you must not upload", which is narrow, looks at no subject matter, and involves no person seeing your photographs.

5. What you must not upload

• Material you have no right to share.
• Anything unlawful, or any image that sexualises a child.
• Photographs of people who have asked you not to share them.
• Malware, or anything intended to break the service.

Anyone in a family can report a photograph to us. We look only at the item reported, we record every time we do so, and we may remove it or suspend an account. We will tell you why.

Automated checks for illegal images. We may also run automated checks on uploads to detect known illegal material, in particular child sexual abuse imagery. This works by comparing a mathematical fingerprint of your file against fingerprint lists of images already identified as illegal by the relevant authorities. It does not look at what your photographs are of, it does not recognise faces, and no person sees your photographs as part of it.

If a file matches, we may remove it, suspend the account and report it to the authorities or to the relevant child protection body, and we may be required to do so by law. In that situation we may not be able to tell you in advance. Nothing else in these terms limits what we must do when we are legally obliged to act.

This is the only automated processing we apply to the contents of your photographs. It is separate from, and does not change, everything in "Your content stays yours": we still do not advertise against your photographs, use them to train anything, or run face recognition over them.

6. Plans and payment

• Prices are shown on the pricing page and include VAT where it applies.
• Subscriptions renew automatically on the date shown on your billing page until you cancel. We email a reminder seven days beforehand.
• If a payment fails we will try again and tell you. After four failed attempts the subscription ends and the 15-day download period begins.
• We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice by email. The new price applies from your next renewal, and you can cancel before it takes effect.

7. If you stop paying

There is no free plan to fall back on. If you cancel, or a payment stops and we cannot take it after four attempts, your family enters a 15-day download period.

• During those 15 days you can sign in and download everything, including full-resolution originals. You cannot add anything new.
• We show the exact deletion date and the time remaining in your account, and we email you when the period starts and again three days before it ends.
• At the end of the 15 days your photographs are deleted permanently. They cannot be recovered by us or by anyone else.
• If you subscribe again at any point during the 15 days, nothing is deleted and your library continues exactly as it was.

Your account, your family tree and your invoices are not deleted at the end of this period — only the photographs and the comments, tags and reactions attached to them.

8. Availability

We work hard to keep the service up but we do not promise it will never be unavailable. We may take it down for maintenance, and we will give notice where we reasonably can.

9. Ending the agreement

You can close your account at any time from your account settings. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, and will tell you why and give you a way to reply.

10. Our liability

Nothing here limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. Subject to that, our total liability to you in any twelve-month period is limited to what you paid us in that period.

Keep your own copies of anything irreplaceable. No service should be your only copy of a photograph you could not bear to lose.

11. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you live elsewhere in the UK or in the EU you keep the protection of your local consumer law.

Privacy notice

The operator of this service is the data controller for your account. For the photographs inside a family album, the family owner decides what goes in and who sees it, and we process it on their behalf.

What we hold, and why

Photographs of children

Family albums contain pictures of children. That is the point of them, and it is also why the service is private by default: there is no public feed, no sharing by default, and no indexing. Whoever uploads a photograph is responsible for having the right to share it with their family.

We may run automated checks that compare a mathematical fingerprint of an uploaded file against fingerprint lists of images already identified as illegal by the relevant authorities. This is a comparison of fingerprints, not a look at what your pictures are of: it does not identify people, it does not describe a scene, and no person sees your photographs as part of it. Where a file matches, we may remove it, suspend the account, and report it as we are required to. See "What you must not upload".

How long we keep things

• Your photographs: until you or your family owner delete them, or 15 days after a subscription ends — see "If you stop paying". After that they are deleted permanently.
• Invoices and tax records: six years, because we have to.
• Sign-in records: 12 months.
• Staff audit records: six years.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, or take it elsewhere. The export tool covers most of this instantly. Write to privacy@emblehart.com and we will reply within one month. If you are unhappy you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, or to your local supervisory authority in the EU.

Where your data is

Our servers are in the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area. Where a supplier is outside that area we rely on the UK International Data Transfer Addendum and the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

Cookies

We use one cookie: kf_session, which keeps you signed in. It is strictly necessary, so there is no banner asking you to accept it — you cannot use an account without being signed in.

We do not use analytics cookies, advertising cookies, or third-party trackers. When Stripe is handling a payment it sets its own cookies for fraud prevention; those are covered by Stripe's privacy policy.

Refunds and cancellation

Your right to change your mind

Consumers in the UK and EU have 14 days to cancel a digital service from the day the contract is made. Because the service is available immediately, you are asked to agree that it starts at once, which means the 14-day right ends once you begin using it. In practice we are more generous than the law requires — see below.

What we actually do

• Within 14 days of a first subscription: a full refund, whether or not you have used it. Just ask.
• An annual plan cancelled mid-term: a pro-rata refund of the whole months you have not used.
• A monthly plan: cancel any time; it runs to the end of the month you have paid for and does not renew.
• Charged by mistake: refunded in full, always, and we will fix whatever caused it.

Refunds go back to the method you paid with, usually within five working days. Write to billing@emblehart.com.

Who we share your data with

We never sell your data

We do not sell, rent or trade your photographs or your personal information to anyone, for advertising or for any other commercial purpose. We have never done so and we do not have a business model that depends on it — EmbleHart is paid for by subscriptions, which is the whole reason it does not need to be paid for by your data. Nobody on the list below is an advertising business, and none of them are permitted to use your data for their own purposes.

Who receives it, what they get, and why

We only provide your data to third-party service providers and partners that we use to provide, operate, maintain or improve our services. They may only use it where necessary to deliver that service to us and to you, they act on our written instructions, and they may not use it for anything else.

We will also disclose data where the law requires it — a court order, or a legal obligation we cannot refuse. If that happens we will tell you unless we are legally prevented from doing so.

If we are ever bought or merge with another company, your data may transfer as part of that. You would be told before it happened, and the new owner would be bound by this same notice.

Contacting us

General	hello@emblehart.com
Privacy and data rights	privacy@emblehart.com
Billing and refunds	billing@emblehart.com
Reporting content	support@emblehart.com
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