The deal between you and us

You must be 18 or over. We ask for your date of birth when you register and we check it. If we find an account belonging to someone younger we remove it.

One account per person. Accounts are not transferable, and you may not sell, lend or share yours.

You need a working email address, because that is how we confirm you are real and how you get back in if you forget your password.

Use your real first name, recent photographs of yourself, and truthful answers. HeritageMingle exists so people can be understood, which fails immediately if the person on the other side is invented.

Impersonating somebody else, using another person's photographs, or presenting a life that is not yours is grounds for removal without warning.

You do not have to answer everything. Every sensitive question is optional, and leaving one blank is never a breach of these terms.

The community guidelines are part of these terms, and they are short. Read them.

Someone declining is a complete answer. To an introduction, to a question, to a conversation carrying on. Pressing after a no is harassment and we treat it as such.

The professional context is never for romantic approaches. Using it that way is a breach, not a grey area.

Do not screenshot, forward or republish another member's messages, photographs, or anything they chose to keep off their public profile.

HeritageMingle is not a marketplace. Asking members for money, in any framing at all, means an immediate ban.

Your photographs, your words and your profile remain yours. We claim no ownership of them.

You give us permission to store what you upload and show it to the people your own settings allow, which is simply what is needed to run the service. That permission ends when you delete the content or your account.

You keep the right to be identified as the author of what you write here.

You confirm that what you upload is yours to upload, and that showing it does not breach somebody else's rights.

Explained matches, connections and messaging are free for everyone, permanently. Plus does not gate them and will not in future.

On the free tier you can send five introductions a month. They refresh on the first of the month. Withdrawing or being declined does not give one back, because the introduction was still sent.

Plus prices are set for the region you are in rather than converted from one currency. Your billing currency comes from the country on your account, not from the currency picker, which only changes which prices you are shown.

Prices include tax. We will tell you before any price change affects you.

You can cancel whenever you like. Cancelling stops the next payment and you keep Plus until the end of the period you have already paid for. We do not refund part-used periods, and we do not cut you off early for cancelling.

If a payment fails we may pause Plus features. Your account, your connections and your conversations are untouched.

We can suspend or remove an account that breaks these terms or the community guidelines. Suspensions carry an end date. Bans do not.

Every decision a moderator makes is recorded with a reason, including decisions that reverse an earlier one.

If you think we got it wrong, use the contact form and a person will look again. Say what happened rather than only that you disagree.

We may remove specific content without touching the account behind it, where that is the proportionate thing to do.

You can delete your account from Settings at any time, without asking us and without explaining why.

Deletion is real. Thirty days after you ask, your account, profile and photographs are permanently erased. The delay exists so an account taken over by somebody else can be recovered.

Your messages are emptied rather than deleted, so the person you were speaking to keeps their own side of the conversation.

We may close an account that has been inactive for a very long time, and we will email you first.

We will run HeritageMingle with reasonable care and try to keep it available. We cannot promise it will never be down, never lose data, or never make a mistake.

We do not vet members beyond verifying an email address. A verified badge means we confirmed an address, not that we confirmed a person is safe. Meet somewhere public the first time, and tell a friend where you are going.

We do not promise you will meet anyone, form a relationship, or find the kinship scores useful. The matching is our honest best effort and it is published so you can judge it yourself.

Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow us to exclude. Beyond that, our liability to you is limited to what you have paid us in the twelve months before the problem arose.

We may update these terms. If a change matters we will tell you before it takes effect, and continuing to use HeritageMingle afterwards means you accept it.

If you do not accept a change, you can delete your account, and if you have paid for a period you will not use, tell us and we will refund the unused part.

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario, Canada, and the courts there have jurisdiction. If you live in the UK or the European Economic Area, this does not remove the protections your local consumer law gives you, and you can bring a claim where you live.

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.

These terms, the privacy policy and the community guidelines together make up the whole agreement between us.