Kin Album

What has changed

Every change to our Privacy Policy and Terms, newest first

A policy page shows you one version and one date. This page shows you the rest: what we changed, when, and what it meant in practice. We keep it because a promise you cannot check the history of is not much of a promise.

This page is also how we tell you about a change: every change to our Privacy Policy or Terms of Service is listed here, with the date it took effect.

Changes that affected what we collect, see, or promise

• September 24, 2026 · Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

  We removed the promise to email account holders before a change to either document takes effect, because we had not been sending that email. Both documents now say what we actually do: every change, this one included, is listed on this page with the date it took effect and what it meant in practice, and this page is how we tell you about a change.

• September 24, 2026 · Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

  Corrections, so both documents describe what the product actually does. Where your photos can be read: the Privacy Policy said a breach of our storage would expose only ciphertext, but an album that sends photos by email keeps small preview copies of its photos in that same storage for about 30 days, so a breach would expose those copies too, and the policy now says so. Emailed invitations: an invitation link does not stop working the first time it is used — until it expires, 14 days after it was sent, it keeps unlocking the album for people who are already in it, which is how the invited person opens it on a second phone or computer — and revoking an unused invitation stops it at once, while removing someone from the album stops it working for them. The policy now also says that the link passes through our server and our email provider on its way, and the Terms no longer say that encryption keys exist only on your family's devices, because that email is the one moment the secret that unlocks the album passes through our servers. And the answers you give on the iPhone app's opening screens: we had said they were attached to your account and kept by us, but they never leave your iPhone, and they are removed when you delete the app.

• September 15, 2026 · Privacy Policy

  We now count page views on our public website and we say so. It is our own software writing to our own database — the page, the country, and the site that linked to you. It sets no cookie, your address is never stored (it becomes a scrambled value using a key that changes daily, so the same visitor cannot be recognised the next day), and a page reached by a private link such as an invitation is recorded only by its shape, never by the link. We chose to build this rather than use a hosted analytics service precisely so the promise elsewhere on this page — that we use no third-party analytics services — stays true. Separately, the waitlist section now describes the one thing we ever share about a person on that list: if you reached the site by clicking an advertisement, we tell that advertising platform a signup happened, sending a scrambled version of your address and the platform's own tracking code from the link it sent you — never the address in readable form and never the list. It is sent from our server, so no advertising code runs on the site and no cookie is set for it; arrive any other way and nothing is sent to anyone.

• September 14, 2026 · Privacy Policy

  Email recipients can now receive an occasional “one year ago” note — a moment from that week in the album's past, named by its caption and who shared it, with a link to the album. It carries no photograph: the preview copies prepared for email are deleted once a post leaves the 30-day window, so an older memory has none to send. A family admin can switch these off for the whole album, and any single memory can be excluded. We also corrected a sentence that said we store “when we last sent to you”: we now keep that separately for each kind of email, so the page says so.

• September 12, 2026 · Privacy Policy

  Added a section for people who joined the pre-launch waitlist: we hold the email address you gave us and use it for one message — that the app is live — and you can have it deleted by writing to support.

• September 8, 2026 · Privacy Policy

  Corrected how long deleted content can linger in our backups: the page said 7 days, and the true outer limit is longer. Our backups are taken once a day and we keep eight of them, so a residual copy can survive up to eight days after a purge — one day past what we had promised. The page now says 14 days, which is the real limit with room to spare. Nothing changed about what we keep, how long your album lives, or who can see it; only the number we were willing to stand behind.

• September 6, 2026 · Terms of Service

  The Terms caught up with the shipped product: the recovery password is named and explained, and the yearly price is stated in the Terms themselves rather than only at checkout.

• August 24, 2026 · Privacy Policy

  We widened the description of email photo previews because the old wording undersold it. Turning the setting on for even one person means preview copies are prepared outside encryption for every photo posted to that album, by every member — not only the photos that person is sent. Turning it off deletes the copies already made, within a day.

• August 21, 2026 · Privacy Policy

  Added a section addressed to people who receive family photos by email without ever making an account, covering what we hold about them, that every email carries a one-click unsubscribe, and that marking our mail as spam stops it permanently.

• August 20, 2026 · Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

  Added a clause against automated scraping and bulk downloading, with an explicit carve-out so your own export of your own album is never restricted.

• August 18, 2026 · Privacy Policy

  Disclosed that crash and performance reporting is on, and what a crash report may contain.

• August 11, 2026 · Privacy Policy

  Described browser notifications for family members who view the album on the web rather than on an iPhone.

• July 27, 2026 · Privacy Policy

  Disclosed that the answers given during setup are kept with the account, and what they are used for.

• July 21, 2026 · Terms of Service

  Added a fair-use sentence about storage, so the limits are stated rather than implied.

• July 20, 2026 · Privacy Policy

  Named the one moment an invitation link travels through email, and what that means — the clearest exception to the encryption promise, said out loud rather than left to be discovered.

• July 17, 2026 · Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

  Pinned database backup retention to seven days, added a copyright takedown section, and added our postal address to both pages and to our emails.

• July 16, 2026 · Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

  Named Cobblestone, LLC as the operating company, set Georgia as the governing law, stated that accounts are for adults 18 and over, and disclosed the weekly internal metrics email.

• July 15, 2026 · Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

  First published, alongside the 18-and-over attestation at sign-in.

Wording and naming

These changed how the pages read, not what they say.

• September 7, 2026 · Privacy Policy

  Corrected the Privacy Policy's effective date from August 20 to August 24. The date had been left behind by two changes made on the 21st and the 24th, so the page named a date earlier than some of the text under it. The wording of the policy itself did not change. Both legal pages now link to this history page.

• August 7, 2026 · Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

  The product was renamed to Kin Album. Wording only — nothing about the terms themselves changed.

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