Our Data and Privacy Policy

Who We Are

FamilyBytes is made and run by Axolotl LLC, and is open to people in the United States. If you're somewhere else, we're not open to you yet. When you sign up we ask you to say so, and we look at the country your connection appears to come from. We don't keep either.

Handling Your Data

• We don't sell your personal data.
• You choose what's public and what's not.
• Our content is only accessible by verified users.
• Your email is not shared with other members or organizations.
• We use only the cookies that keep you signed in and none that track you.
• FamilyBytes is for people 13 years or older.

What We Collect

Account Info

Your email, username, display name, the bio you write, a scrambled form of your password, whether your page and your garden are public, which tomato you picked for your picture, and when you joined. A username and an email can each be changed once every 30 days, so we also keep the date you last changed each of them.

Sign-Ins

The browser and device you signed in with, and when. Not your IP address.

Relationships

Who you follow, who follows you, requests to follow that are waiting for an answer, and who you've blocked, with when each began. Only you can see the people in your garden unless you make it public; then anyone who can see your page can see your friends and followers, and while your page is private that's the followers you've approved. The people you follow one way are always yours alone, and so is your blocked list; someone you block isn't told. A member only shows on someone else's list to people who could open their page anyway. One FamilyBytes account follows every new member and is followed back, so your garden isn't empty on your first day. You can remove it, turn down its request or unfollow it the same as anyone else, and it won't ask again.

Recipes

The dish's name, the story you write, the ingredients and the instructions, the origins, and when you posted it and last changed it. A recipe is as open as your page: anyone who can see your page can see every recipe on it, and while your page is private that's you and the followers you've approved.

Your Family Vine

The names of the people your recipes come from. You must be part of your own Family Vine, under the display name you already chose. The vine itself is yours alone — the only part of it anyone else sees is the name shown under a recipe they could already open.

Form Limits

A scrambled form of your IP address, kept for up to about an hour, to stop repeated password guessing and automated use of the sign-in and sign-up forms.

Search and Follow Limits

A scrambled count of how often your account searched or followed in the last minute, kept for up to about an hour to stop automated use. Not what you searched for.

Page Visits

Which pages are visited, counted without cookies.

Cookies

fb.session_token keeps you signed in on this device.fb.dont_remember is set when you sign in without ticking “Keep me signed in”.

What It's Used For

Nothing above is collected without a reason, and these are the reasons.

• To make your account work — signing you in, keeping you signed in, and showing you to others the way you chose to be shown.
• To keep what you write — your recipes and the people you keep them under — and show it to whoever your page is open to.
• To reach you about your own account — confirming your email, resetting your password, confirming you want to leave.
• To keep the site from being pulled apart by machines — repeated password guessing, bulk sign-ups, bulk searching and following.
• To see which pages are used, so we know what to build next.

That's the whole list. We don't use any of it to advertise to you, and we don't sell it.

Other Parties

FamilyBytes doesn't run on machines we own. Other companies host the site, store the database and send our email. They handle your data only to do that work for us, and their agreements with us don't let them use it for anything of their own.

We don't name them here. The pieces a site is built from are the pieces someone would attack it through, so we keep that list to ourselves.

Data Retention

Your account, and everything above that belongs to it, stays as long as your account does.

Sign-ins end when the sign-in does, and we delete expired ones every hour. Form, search and follow limits are gone within about an hour. Unused links — email confirmations, password resets, deletion links — are deleted every hour once they expire. Page visit counts aren't tied to you and are kept as counts.

In Your Hands

From your settings you can change your email, display name, bio, picture and password, and choose whether your page and your garden are public. A username and an email can each be changed once every 30 days. Changing your email takes two links: one to the address on your account, to approve it, and one to the new address, to finish. Your email doesn't change until you open the second one. You can change or delete any recipe you've written, and remove anyone from your Family Vine except yourself, once no recipe names them.

You can delete your account from the same page. We ask for your password, then send a link to your email. Opening that link deletes your account, your sign-ins, your password, your recipes, the people on your Family Vine, who you follow, who follows you and who you've blocked. It happens straight away, there's no waiting period, and we can't undo it.

We don't have a way to download your data. If that changes, this policy changes with it.

Policy Changes

The date at the top says when this page last changed. If a change affects what we collect or what we do with it, we'll email you before it takes effect. Smaller changes — wording, or a new detail about something already listed — just change the date.

Contact

For more information, email contact@familybytes.org.