FamilySearch Terms Scorecard

Grade B- — Mostly fair (score 72/100)

FamilySearch maintains broad, perpetual rights to user-contributed genealogical data and enforces strict, inconvenient legal venue requirements for all users.

Perpetual content license, unilateral changes, and inconvenient jurisdiction.

Terms at a glance

Sells your data
NO
Forced arbitration
NO
Trains AI on your content
UNCLEAR
Collects biometric data
NO
Shares data with government
UNCLEAR
Easy to cancel
UNCLEAR
Tells you before changes
NO
Deletes data on request
UNCLEAR

What the terms actually say

Licenses and Rights Granted to Us

you hereby grant us with an unrestricted, fully paid-up, royalty-free, worldwide, irrevocable, sublicensable, and perpetual license to use any and all information, content, and other materials

The company claims a permanent, global right to use your genealogical data for any purpose.

Agreement Terms

We reserve the right to change this Agreement at any time, so please check for changes to this Agreement each time you use this site.

The company can change the rules without notice, placing the burden on the user to monitor for updates.

Jurisdiction and Applicable Law

Any action you bring to enforce this Agreement or any matters related to this site shall be brought in either the state or federal courts located in Salt Lake County, Utah

Legal disputes are restricted to Utah courts, which is inconvenient for most users.

Limitations of Liability

In no event shall our total liability to you for all damages, losses, and causes of action exceed the amount paid by you, if any, for accessing this site

The company effectively limits its financial liability to zero for free users.

Last reviewed 2026-09-02 under rubric v3.5.

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