ToldForward Acceptable Use Policy

Version 4. Effective 30 October 2026. Part of the Terms of Service.

Last updated: 30 October 2026.

ToldForward holds the words people leave for the people they designate. These rules protect those words, the people in them, and the people who will one day read them. They are short on purpose. The most important parts are in bold.

1. About this policy

1.1 It applies to everyone. This policy applies to everyone who uses ToldForward: members, on either membership; the people a member designates for their record: designated recipients (“designees”), designated trustees and backup designated trustees (“trustees” and “backup trustees”); the helper a member chooses; anyone acting for a member under a power of attorney or a guardianship; and visitors to our website.

1.2 It is part of the Terms of Service. This policy is part of the Terms of Service between you and D2X Enterprises LLC, which provides ToldForward as a service (“we”, “us”). When you accept the Terms of Service, you accept this policy too. If this policy and the Terms of Service disagree, the Terms of Service win, except that a stricter rule here about protecting a record or a person still applies.

1.3 Your role may add duties. Section 11 lists the duties that come with each role, and where to find them in full: the Participant Agreement for Archive members, the Access Terms for the people a member designates, and the helper’s acceptance for helpers.

1.4 Being mentioned is not a role. People a member writes about, or adds to a family tree, have no role in that record because of it. This policy protects them (section 8); the duties in section 11 fall only on people who have a role.

1.5 “Record” and “the service”. In this policy, “record” means any member’s record, including its family tree and earlier versions, and anything released from it or handed over as a copy. “The service” means the website, the API behind it, the guide, our emails and texts, and anything else we run for ToldForward.

2. Only what is yours to reach

You may not:

try to read, copy, change or delete a record, or any personal information, that you are not allowed to reach, including a record you are designated for, before the member’s death confirmation and waiting period allow;
use anyone else’s account, sign-in, passkey, authenticator, one-time code, invitation link, cancellation link or download link, or let anyone use yours;
as a helper, reach a member’s account other than through your own sign-in and the link the member gave you, or do anything there the member has not asked you to;
ask our staff, by any means, to tell you what a record holds, to show you any part of it, or to make an exception for you;
trick, pressure or deceive anyone, including our staff, a member or the people a member designated, to get access, information or a sign-in code.

3. No getting around the safeguards

The safeguards are the product. You may not try to get around, weaken or test:

the waiting period, of at least 6 months after a death is confirmed, or any longer wait the member set;
the identity checks, for a member, a helper or a designated person, including by using someone else’s identity document or face;
the age rules, including the rule that no one under 18 uses the guide;
a sealed designation, the safety check after a death report, or the review of death documentation;
the rule that a record is never public or searchable while the member is living;
the refusal to bring an exported copy back into ToldForward;
the limits of a membership: the number of people a member may designate, the 12-year limit on paying ahead, the size limits, free trials (one per person), invitations (one person, one code), and the rules on who may buy what;
rate limits, sign-in protections, encryption, or any other technical or security control.

4. Honest identity, honest reports

You may not:

impersonate anyone, or give us false details about yourself or anyone else at sign-up, in an invitation, in an identity check or later;
report a death that you know is false, or that you do not know has happened, or give us a false, altered or borrowed document. A false report can do grave harm, and may be a crime;
designate someone for a record under a false name or with another person’s contact details, or create an account for someone else;
claim to act for a member, an estate or a court without the legal authority to do so.

If you make an honest mistake, tell us at once through https://toldforward.com/contact.

5. Only the member’s own words

A record holds only the member’s own words, given by them. You may not:

put anyone else’s words into a record: not another person’s letters, emails, messages or writing, even with good intentions;
create a record about someone else, or in someone else’s name;
as a helper, an agent or a guardian, write or answer for a member, or add anything the member did not say;
put into a record anyone’s private information that is not yours to share, such as another person’s medical records, account numbers, passwords or identity documents.

6. No imitation of anyone

ToldForward never imitates a person, and you may not use it to. You may not:

use a record, a copy of one, or the guide’s answers to make anything that speaks as the member or imitates them: a chatbot, persona, avatar, voice, video, image or other likeness of them;
try to make the guide speak as the member, invent what they did not say, answer as them, drop its labels or its AI notice, or ignore its rules, for example by role-play, hidden instructions or repeated prompting;
use ToldForward to recreate anyone’s voice or face.

For example, David Marsh may read and quote his mother Eleanor’s words for himself. He may not load her record into another AI service to build a chatbot that answers “as Eleanor”.

7. No publication, sale, extraction or commercial use

You may not:

publish a record or any part of it, in print, online or anywhere else;
sell, license or use a record for any commercial purpose, including advertising, marketing, data products, or research for pay;
extract a record beyond the copy we give you: copying it out of the service in bulk, by automated means, or into another system;
use a record, or anything the service gives you, to train, fine-tune or evaluate an AI model;
use any automated means to reach the service (bots, scrapers, crawlers, scripts or automated queries to the guide), except a standard web browser or an assistive technology you use yourself;
copy, frame or resell the service, or use our name or the ToldForward name to suggest that we endorse anything.

Private sharing is allowed, unless the member forbade it. A designee may share their own copy privately and without payment, for example with members of their family, unless the member forbade it in their settings, as the member’s wishes in every copy say. Sharing privately never includes publishing, selling or putting a record where the public can reach it.

8. No harm to people

You may not use ToldForward, or anything you learn from it, to:

harass, threaten, stalk, shame or intimidate anyone, including the member, the people they designated and the people in their stories;
reveal anyone’s address, contact details or private information to harm or expose them;
pressure, deceive or exploit a member, especially an older or unwell member, about what they write, who they designate, what they buy or what they sign;
send invitations, family-tree connection requests or messages that are unwanted, misleading or for any purpose other than the service;
add or keep anything in a record that is unlawful, such as sexual material involving a minor, or that threatens violence.

A member may record their honest account of their own life, including hard things about other people. That is not harassment. The rule is about using ToldForward to harm someone.

9. No harm to the service

You may not:

probe, scan or test the security of the service without our written permission, or try to break, bypass or weaken its authentication, encryption, access rules or logs;
introduce malware, overload or disrupt the service, or interfere with anyone else’s use of it;
reverse engineer, decompile or take apart the service, except as 17 U.S.C. § 1201(f) allows for interoperability;
use the service in a way that could make us break the law.

If you find a security problem, please tell us (section 12). We will not take action against anyone who reports a problem to us in good faith, does not reach, keep or share anyone’s data, and gives us reasonable time to fix it.

10. Lawful use, and lawful requests

10.1 Use ToldForward only in the United States, and only lawfully.

10.2 Ask for legal access the lawful way. An executor, personal representative, agent, guardian, court or law-enforcement agency that wants information about a record must ask us in writing, with the documents the law requires. We answer under the member’s instructions and the law that binds us (Terms of Service, section 10.9). Asking any other way, or pressing our staff to make an exception, breaks this policy.

11. Duties that come with each role

11.1 Members. You are responsible for what you put in your record, including what you say about other people (Terms of Service, section 8.4; Participant Agreement, section 4.6). Make the choices that are yours alone yourself, in the private step, with your own sign-in. Never give a helper your sign-in. Keep the contact details of the people you designate current, and review them each year.

11.2 Helpers. A helper may type what the member says, read questions aloud and work the device, and nothing more. As a helper you must:

never add a word the member did not give, and never answer for them;
step away, and never watch or take part, when the member makes the choices that are theirs alone: their membership and renewal, the people they designate and their trustee, their agreement, the deed of gift and the AI training opt-in;
keep what you see in the member’s account to yourself, and use it only to help them;
never pressure the member, and never use your help to benefit yourself, for example to be designated, or to change what someone else receives;
stop when the member removes you, or when their death is confirmed.

11.3 Designated recipients (designees). The Access Terms set your duties: your own sign-in and no sharing of access (section 10), how you may use the record (section 11), and using the guide fairly (sections 11.4 and 12).

11.4 Designated trustees and backup designated trustees. The Access Terms set your duties: report a death only when you know it has happened and can show it, and confirm that what you report is true (sections 13 and 14).

11.5 Agents and guardians of a member. Someone acting under a member’s power of attorney, or as their court-appointed guardian, may handle only administrative matters on the account where the law allows: billing, cancelling and contact details. While the member is living they receive no copy of the record and nothing from it, unless the member withdrew their direction on who may receive it and the law requires it, or a court orders it. They may never write or answer for the member, sign the member’s agreements, or choose or change who receives the record.

12. Reporting misuse or a security problem

Tell us through https://toldforward.com/contact, or by mail to D2X Enterprises LLC, 30 S 15th St Ste 1550 PMB 852931, Philadelphia, PA 19102, if you see misuse of ToldForward, believe someone has reached your account, believe a member is being pressured or exploited, or find a security problem. If someone is in immediate danger, call 911.

13. What we do when the rules are broken

13.1 We look into it. We may review the facts, including our own logs. Our staff never read a record to do this except under the emergency access the Privacy Policy describes, which is time-limited, logged entry by entry and reviewed.

13.2 A written warning first. For a first breach of the rules on using a record or someone’s access (sections 2, 6 and 7, and the Access Terms, sections 10 and 11), we write to the person, say what happened and what must stop, and keep a record of the warning.

13.3 Access ends on a second breach. If the same person breaks those rules again, their access ends: their role in the record, their use of the guide, and any copy they have not yet downloaded. A copy already downloaded cannot be recalled, and the rules in this policy still apply to it.

13.4 When we act at once. We do not wait for a second breach where someone is in danger, for a false death report or a false document, for impersonation, for an attempt to get around the waiting period or the identity checks, or for an attack on the service. Then we may, as far as is fair and proportionate: stop a death report or reverse a confirmation; pause or limit a feature; suspend access while we look into it; end a role, a helper’s link or the use of the guide; close an account; keep the evidence; and report the matter to the police or another authority, or cooperate with them, where the law allows or requires. We tell the person what we did and why, unless doing so would be unsafe, would harm an investigation, or the law forbids it.

13.5 A member’s record and wishes are protected. Acting against someone who broke these rules never deletes a member’s record, never changes what it contains, and never overrides the member’s instructions for after their death, except under a court order or where the law requires it. Ending one designee’s access never changes what the member’s other designees receive. If a member is the one who broke the rules, we may close the features they misused, but we only delete a record as the Terms of Service and the Participant Agreement allow.

13.6 Other remedies. Breaking these rules may also give us, the member, the member’s estate or the owners of the copyright in the member’s words a legal claim against you (Terms of Service, section 18.9, which does not apply to residents of New Jersey: Terms of Service, section 19.4).

13.7 If you disagree. Write to us through https://toldforward.com/contact within 30 days of our decision. Our founder reviews every disputed decision. We write to you with the outcome and the reasons, and keep a record of the review with the decision.

14. What we do not do

14.1 We do not read or check records. We cannot read a member’s record while they are living, except under emergency access, and we do not review what members write. We do not check whether what a member says about anyone is true, and we are not responsible for it.

14.2 We do not watch everyone. We are not obliged to monitor how anyone uses the service, and we do not promise to find every breach of these rules. Not acting on one breach does not mean we allow it.

14.3 We do not decide family disputes (Terms of Service, section 10.14).

15. Changes to this policy

This policy changes only with the Terms of Service, and in the same way (Terms of Service, section 17). No change ever allows imitation of a person, shortens the waiting period or makes a record public while the member is living.