Terms & Conditions

1. Who we are

Storyus (storyus.life) is operated by See More Potential Ltd, trading as Storyus - a company registered in England and Wales, company number 06669823, registered office: The Old Counting House, 82e High Street, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, OX10 0BS, United Kingdom. When these terms say "we", "us" or "our", that's who they mean; "you" means the person using Storyus. Questions about these terms: [email protected].

2. These terms

Creating and using a Storyus account means these terms apply between you and us. You accept them when you sign up, and if we materially change them we'll ask you to accept the new version the next time you sign in - the version and date at the top of this page always tell you what's current. If you don't agree with the terms, please don't use Storyus.

Our Privacy Policy explains what we do with personal information; it's part of the same picture and worth the read.

3. Your account

• You must be at least 13 years old to hold a Storyus account. Younger children can absolutely appear in family stories - as the people the stories are about - and, through junior authoring (below), they can tell their own. They just can't hold accounts of their own yet.
• Give us a real email address that reaches you - account emails (like password resets) go there.
• Keep your password to yourself. You're responsible for what happens under your account - except where it's caused by our breach of these terms, a failure of our systems, or circumstances outside your reasonable control. Tell us straight away if you think someone else has got into it.
• One account, one person. Don't impersonate anyone.

Junior authors and guardians

A member of a collective can set up a junior author - a byline for a child under 13 - and by doing so becomes that child's guardian on Storyus, accepting responsibility for the arrangement. Guardianship can be shared: an additional guardian must accept the role from their own settings before it takes effect.

• A junior author is a byline, not an account. The child holds no password and signs nothing. Junior Mode is a supervised, PIN-locked state of the guardian's own session, on a device the guardian chooses to hand over - so everything done in Junior Mode happens under the guardian's account and under these terms, and the guardian is responsible for it, just as for anything else done under their account.
• A junior byline stays inside the family. Stories made in Junior Mode are shared with the collective or kept private. A guardian can widen a junior-bylined story afterwards, as far as guest level - junior-bylined stories cannot be made public.
• The Junior Mode toolset is deliberately reduced. Story forms built on location data (journeys, told on maps) and externally hosted video are not available in Junior Mode - a child's whereabouts are an adult's call. Guardians can still make any story form attributed to the child from their own adult session, under the same guest ceiling.
• A future username can be reserved for the child, held for them until they are old enough for an account of their own.

4. Your content stays yours

Everything you upload - stories, photographs, videos, words - stays yours in the fullest sense we can offer: as between you and us, you keep whatever rights you hold in your content, and we claim no ownership of it, ever. (Whether you hold those rights in the first place is your side of the bargain - see section 5, especially for photographs of other people.)

So that Storyus can work, you give us the limited permission we need to run the service: a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store your content, back it up, make the technical copies and conversions the service needs (resizing images for different screens, processing video), and display it only according to the privacy level you've chosen - exercisable through the contracted providers who host and deliver Storyus (listed in the Privacy Policy). That permission exists solely to operate, secure and improve the delivery of Storyus for you and your collective. It doesn't cover using your content in our marketing or promotion - if we ever wanted to feature something of yours, we'd ask you separately - and it ends when the content is deleted (allowing a short period for backups to cycle out).

We do not sell your content or your data, we do not show you advertising, and we do not use your stories or photographs to train AI models. If any of that were ever to change, these terms would change first (section 12) and you'd be asked to accept the new version before carrying on.

5. Privacy levels and sharing

Every story carries a privacy level, and you choose it. From most private to most open:

• Private - visible only to you, its author. Not even your collective's admins can read it.
• Collective - visible to the members of your collective.
• Inner circle, then outer circle - visible also to the people your collective has welcomed into those circles.
• Guest - visible also to the collective's guests.
• Public - the open internet: anyone can see it, and search engines can index it.

A new story starts at collective unless you've chosen a different personal default in your settings - sharing more widely is always your explicit choice.

You're responsible for the sharing choices you make, and for having the right to share what you upload - especially photographs and stories involving other people. Within a family that's mostly a matter of courtesy and good sense; for living people it can also be a matter of law. If someone asks you to take down content that features them, take the request seriously - and if it can't be resolved between you, either of you can bring it to us (section 7). We review those complaints, and we can remove content where these terms or someone's rights have been breached.

A collective's owners and admins manage its membership, its settings and its shared spaces, and can administer content within the collective - that's part of how a shared family archive works. Stories marked private are the exception: they stay with their author. Separately, a very small number of platform staff can access accounts and content where running Storyus requires it - support you've asked for, security, and meeting our legal duties.

6. What's not allowed

Don't use Storyus to do anything unlawful, and don't upload content that is unlawful, that infringes someone else's rights (including copyright), or that harasses, threatens or abuses anyone. Don't upload malware. Don't scrape, bulk-download or harvest other people's content or data. Don't attempt to access accounts or content you're not entitled to. Don't use Storyus to send spam, and don't resell or commercially exploit the service. We can suspend or close accounts that break these rules (see section 11).

The detail of what's not allowed - and how reports, enforcement and appeals work - lives in our Safety & Community Rules, which form part of these terms.

7. Reporting content

If you see something on Storyus that shouldn't be here - illegal content, content that could harm children, or content about you shared without your agreement - tell us at storyus.life/report (or email [email protected]). We review every report, and we can remove or restrict content and suspend accounts where these terms have been broken. If we act on something you posted, or decline to act on something you reported, and you think we got it wrong, reply or email [email protected] and a human will look at it again.

We don't review content before it appears - responsibility for what's uploaded rests with the person who uploaded it. Our part is to enforce these terms, act on reports, and meet our legal duties as a UK service, which include reporting child sexual abuse content to the authorities.

8. The service

We provide Storyus "as is" and "as available". We work hard to keep it running well and to look after what you've put in it, but we can't promise the service will always be uninterrupted or error-free, and we may occasionally suspend it for maintenance or security. Features will evolve - we may add, change or withdraw them as Storyus grows.

We keep regular backups, but please keep your own copies of your original photos and videos. Storyus is the place your family's stories are told; it shouldn't be the only place your files exist. You can also take a complete copy whenever you like: your settings page includes a full export of the stories and media you've authored, built to be readable offline, originals included - and owners and admins can export their collective's whole archive from its admin page. An export only ever contains what you can already see on the site.

9. Storyus itself

Your content is yours; Storyus is ours. The software, the design, our written words and the Storyus name and branding belong to us or our licensors. Signing up gives you a personal, non-commercial permission to use the service - not to copy the platform, present it as your own, or exploit it in ways these terms don't allow (reverse engineering stays within what the law permits). Building your own thing is fair; copying ours isn't.

If you send us ideas or feedback about Storyus, thank you - we're free to use them to make the service better, without fee or obligation. (That's about ideas for Storyus; your stories are covered by section 4, and stay yours.)

10. Our liability

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that the law doesn't allow us to exclude or limit - including liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud.

Beyond that: we're not liable for losses that weren't a foreseeable result of our breaking these terms, and we're not liable for business losses - Storyus is provided for personal, family use. Our total liability to you is capped at the amount you've paid us for the service in the 12 months before the claim arose; if you haven't paid us anything in that period, that means our liability is limited to what the law won't let us exclude.

If you're a consumer, nothing here affects your statutory rights.

11. Ending things

You can stop using Storyus whenever you like - and you can take your stories with you first, using the full export on your settings page. To close your account, email [email protected]; we'll delete your account and profile data as described in the Privacy Policy. Stories you authored in a shared collective are treated as part of the family's archive: by default they remain with the collective - a legacy is the point of the place - but they're yours, and if you'd rather they went with you, say so when you close your account (or at any time) and we'll remove them. Either way, we recommend talking it through with the collective's owner first.

We may suspend or close accounts that seriously or repeatedly break these terms - with reasonable notice, unless the breach is serious enough that we need to act at once.

If we ever decide to wind Storyus down, we'll give you reasonable notice so your family has time to take its stories and media out.

Family archives outlive their makers. We don't yet have self-service tools for this; if you need help with the account or stories of someone who has passed away, email [email protected] and we'll endeavour to work with your family's collective owners on what should happen next.

12. Changes to these terms

When we make material changes we'll publish the new version here, update the version and date at the top, and ask you to accept it the next time you sign in. Carrying on using Storyus after accepting means the new terms apply. If you don't want to accept a new version, you don't have to: you can export your content and close your account instead (section 11) - the export doesn't require accepting the new terms.

13. The legal odds and ends

These terms, together with the Safety & Community Rules, are the whole agreement between you and us about using Storyus. The Privacy Policy isn't part of the contract: it's our explanation of how we process personal information, and our data-protection duties to you exist in law regardless of anything agreed here. If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still stands. If we don't enforce a term straight away, we haven't waived it. We may transfer this agreement to a successor company if Storyus ever changes hands, provided your rights under it aren't reduced; your account is personal and can't be transferred. Formal notices to us go to [email protected]; we'll send any to the email address on your account.

14. The law that applies

Storyus is operated from the United Kingdom and is aimed primarily at people in the UK. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and disputes belong to the courts of England and Wales - though if you live elsewhere in the UK or the EU, you keep any mandatory protections and rights to bring proceedings under your local law.