Privacy
A family tree is full of information about living people. That is why FamilyTree does everything on your own computer.
What FamilyTree does not do
- There is no account and no sign-in.
- Nothing is sent anywhere: no data, no photographs, no usage statistics, no crash reports.
- No internet connection is needed. The gazetteer, the map, face recognition and background removal all run on your own machine. No tile server is contacted.
- Nothing is downloaded after installation, and FamilyTree does not check for new versions by itself.
- FamilyTree has no access to your e-mail: it cannot read messages and cannot send them. On the Ask family tab it can prepare an e-mail: it opens as a draft in your own e-mail program, and you send it yourself. Your contacts, calendar and other programs stay closed too. What you fill in as sender and recipient is remembered on this computer, not in the family tree.
- No cloud AI is involved. Face recognition and background removal use models that ship inside the program.
Face recognition
To recognise faces, FamilyTree stores a series of numbers for each linked face (a
‘face index’). It lives only in the .thumbs folder next to your
file, never goes into an export or backup, and you may delete it at any
time: the app rebuilds it the next time you look for faces. A face is never linked
without your confirmation.
Where your data lives
In the .ged file you choose, and in the folder next to it: the
photographs, the originals, custom map points and a thumbnail cache. Nothing else.
Delete that folder and it is all gone; copy it and you have taken everything with you.
Backups
Every save copies the previous version to a .bak file, and a merge makes a
timestamped copy first. Those stay on your own disk. The Backup button
makes a ZIP with the whole file and every photograph, next to your file. Bear in mind
that all these copies contain information about living people, including when you keep
them in a cloud service or share them.
Sharing with others
When you hand someone your own .ged file you hand over everything about the
living people in it. Share through the Export tab instead: there you
choose whether living people are shown, reduced to their name, or left out altogether.
Living means: no death or burial and younger than 100, or no year known at all. The
choice applies to every format at once — PDF, GEDCOM and the family website —
and their photographs stay at home too. Still, always check what you send.
Exported files mention FamilyTree.clardware.be. Nothing in them reports
back: nothing is loaded from outside — no scripts, fonts, pixels or map tiles. The
family website works entirely offline.
What Windows does
FamilyTree draws its window with WebView2, a part of Windows. Whatever Windows and the Microsoft Store report to Microsoft themselves falls under your Windows privacy settings and Microsoft's policy, not under FamilyTree. A link you click in the About window opens in your own browser.
This website
FamilyTree.clardware.be consists of static pages. There are no cookies, no
trackers and no analytics scripts. The screenshots come from an invented demo file; no
real family tree appears on this site.