Explicit Consent

Last updated: 2026-08-24

RootMe's core functions — building your tree, editing it, exporting it, sharing it with your family — require no consent at all. This document covers only the optional features that do rely on consent.

The items below are independent of one another. You can use RootMe fully without accepting any of them, and you can withdraw any you accept at any time.

The data controller has not been configured. Whoever operates this installation must set LEGAL_CONTROLLER_NAME, LEGAL_CONTROLLER_ADDRESS and LEGAL_CONTACT_EMAIL before going live.

1. Cross-tree discovery

If you switch this on, the DECEASED people in your tree are compared with deceased people in other users' trees, and matches that might indicate a shared ancestor are shown to both sides.

Living people never enter this comparison.
Being shown a match does not create a connection; a connection is separate and needs mutual acceptance.
It is off by default and you can switch it off again in Settings at any time.

Withdrawal: Settings → turn discovery off. Your tree stops entering comparisons immediately.

2. Connecting to another tree

When you accept a connection, the people within the scope you choose become visible in the other person's tree. You choose that scope, and you can narrow it later or sever the connection entirely.

Trees are not merged; the other side cannot edit your records.
Living people appear to the other side as unnamed silhouettes.
You can exclude individual people from every connection.

Withdrawal: Settings → Tree connections → pause or sever.

3. AI features

When you use an AI feature, the text and any document photograph you submit for that operation are sent to Anthropic (United States) and processed there.

This is an international transfer. The contract and transfer mechanism it requires are not yet in place, so we do not recommend accepting this item — and the feature only appears at all if the installation has enabled it.

Data is sent only when you start an AI operation; nothing runs in the background.
Results are never written into your tree directly; you approve each fact individually.
With no key configured, these features do not appear and no data leaves.

Withdrawal: stop using the feature. A request already sent cannot be recalled.

4. Special-category data (religion)

The application lets you add a fact of type “religion” to a person. Under KVKK art. 6 this is special-category data and may only be processed with the explicit consent of the person it is about.

Note carefully: that consent is not YOURS to give. If the record is about somebody else, the consent required is theirs, and obtaining it is your responsibility.

The application does not currently collect, store or verify that consent.
Such records are included in cross-tree sharing and exports like any other fact.

We recommend not using this field. Until a separate consent mechanism exists, legal responsibility for such a record rests entirely with whoever entered it.

5. Withdrawing consent

Each item can be withdrawn independently; the relevant section says how. Withdrawal is not retroactive: processing carried out lawfully before you withdrew remains valid.

Refusing every consent-based feature does not prevent you from using RootMe.