Terms & Conditions

Welcome to TamizhConnect, operated by Tharviyan Limited (Company No. 12127865), registered in England and Wales. These Terms & Conditions govern your use of the TamizhConnect website, mobile apps, APIs, and related services (the "Services").

1. Acceptance

By creating an account, subscribing to a paid tier, or otherwise using the Services, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, you must not use the Services.

2. Services we provide

The Services include:

Search across licensed archives — indenture, emigration, civil registry, and related genealogical archives that we have licensed or ingested. Coverage is described on regional landing pages and the search interface.
Family tree tools — a private workspace to build and annotate your family tree, add relatives, attach research notes, and connect ancestors to matched archive records.
Descendant matching / Connections — an opt-in feature that matches you with other descendants of the same ancestor based on ancestor pins you have set up. Details of opt-in and visibility are managed through your account settings.
Contributor Portal — a submission and review flow through which community historians and family researchers can contribute records, photographs, and oral histories for inclusion in the archive.
AI-assisted research — features that use large language models to summarise records, help identify matches, or surface leads. See Section 8 for the disclosures that apply to these features.
Subscription tiers — free and paid tiers that provide different levels of access to the features above. Available tiers, prices, and features are shown in-app and on the pricing page.

3. Your account

You must provide accurate registration information and keep it up to date. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your login credentials.
You must be at least 16 years old to create an account. See our Privacy Policy for our children's privacy position.
One account per person. Accounts are personal and non-transferable.
You are responsible for activity performed under your account and must notify us at support@tamizhconnect.com if you suspect unauthorised use.

4. Pricing and payment

Fees are shown in-app and at checkout before you confirm payment. Taxes and currency displays are determined by your billing region. Payments are securely processed by Stripe and PaymentSense; we do not store your card details.

Subscriptions are billed on the interval shown at checkout (monthly or annual) and auto-renew unless you cancel via your account settings.
Failed payments may result in a temporary loss of paid access. We will attempt to retry the charge and notify you before terminating paid access.
Pricing may change from time to time. Changes take effect at your next renewal, not mid-period; you will be notified in advance.

5. Refunds and cancellation

Our refund policy is set out in full on the dedicated Refund Policy page. In summary:

14-day cooling-off: full refund available within 14 days of your first paid subscription, on request to support@tamizhconnect.com.
Service failure: full or pro-rated refund at any time during a paid membership if a verifiable material failure has occurred (defined in the Refund Policy).
Cancellation: you may cancel auto-renewal at any time via Account → Billing. Cancellation stops future charges; access continues to the end of the paid period.
Not refundable: "search returned no results", "archive coverage is thinner than I hoped", change-of-mind outside the cooling-off window, and chargebacks filed without first contacting support. See the Refund Policy for the full list.

6. Delivery of services

All Services are delivered digitally via our website and mobile apps immediately after successful payment and authentication. For details, see our Delivery Policy.

7. Acceptable use

When using the Services, you must not:

Use the Services to harass, threaten, defame, or violate the privacy of others;
Upload material that infringes intellectual property, contains malware, or is otherwise unlawful in the jurisdictions where the content will be accessed;
Scrape, systematically extract, or bulk-download archive records outside the export tools we provide;
Attempt to reverse-engineer, decompile, or gain unauthorised access to any part of the Services;
Use the Services to build a competing archive or genealogy database for commercial resale;
Impersonate another person, including by falsifying the identities of deceased ancestors in ways likely to mislead other users;
Use automated agents, bots, or scripts to interact with the Services, except for the public search API where such use is documented and permitted.

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that materially breach these rules.

8. AI-assisted features

Some Services use large language models ("LLMs") to summarise records, identify possible matches, translate text between languages, and surface research leads. When you use these features:

You may see AI-generated summaries or suggestions clearly labelled as such;
AI-generated content is provided as research assistance, not as authoritative fact. You are responsible for verifying AI outputs before relying on them (for example, before publishing findings or attributing statements to named ancestors);
Content you submit to AI features may be sent to third-party LLM providers (currently including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, subject to change). Those providers' terms of use apply to the interaction. We do not permit our LLM providers to train models on customer content;
We do not use AI to make automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects on you (Article 22 UK GDPR).

9. Contributor Portal and user content

The Contributor Portal allows community historians and family researchers to submit records, photographs, transcriptions, and oral histories ("Contributions"). When you submit a Contribution:

You retain ownership of your Contribution.
You grant TamizhConnect a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, display, adapt for platform use, and make available to other users the Contribution, together with the attribution line you have specified on your contributor profile.
You represent that you have the right to submit the Contribution and to grant this licence, and that the Contribution does not infringe the rights of any third party.
You represent that any personal or family material you submit was obtained lawfully and, where applicable, with the consent of the individuals concerned or their descendants.
We may remove or refuse to publish Contributions that we determine, at our discretion, infringe rights, breach these Terms, or are factually unreliable in a way that would mislead other users.
You may request removal of your Contributions at any time by emailing support@tamizhconnect.com. Removal from public display is prompt; complete removal from backups follows the timeline in our Data Deletion Policy.

10. Descendant matching and Connections

The descendant-matching feature is opt-in: no ancestor pin becomes visible to other users unless you choose to make it so. You can change the visibility of your pins at any time from your account settings.

Where you accept a connection with another user, contact information is exchanged out-of-band (typically by email). We do not provide in-platform messaging for connections, and we do not moderate correspondence between matched users after a connection has been accepted. Please use your own judgement about how much personal information to share.

11. Intellectual property

The Services, including software, design, curated archive collections, data indexes, and platform content, are owned by Tharviyan Limited or our licensors and are protected by intellectual property laws. Your paid access grants you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non- transferable licence to use the Services for personal research purposes.

You do not receive rights to redistribute archive records in bulk, to incorporate them in another database for public consumption, or to create derivative products for commercial resale. Fair-use excerpts for personal or educational purposes are allowed.

12. Third-party links and services

The Services may link to or integrate with third-party services (such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter/X, Stripe, and PaymentSense). We are not responsible for the content, terms, or privacy practices of third-party services. Their terms apply to your use of them.

13. Termination

You may terminate your account at any time by requesting deletion via our Data Deletion Policy. We may suspend or terminate your access if you materially breach these Terms, if we are required to do so by law, or if it is necessary to protect the integrity or security of the Services. Where possible we will give you notice and an opportunity to remedy the issue.

14. Disclaimer and limitation of liability

The Services are provided "as is" and "as available". We do not guarantee that:

Our archive coverage includes any particular ancestor;
Search results, AI outputs, or match suggestions are accurate, complete, or authoritative;
The Services will be error-free or continuously available.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Tharviyan Limited is not liable for indirect or consequential losses (including loss of profits, loss of business opportunity, or loss of goodwill) arising out of your use of the Services. Our aggregate liability for direct losses relating to any twelve-month period is capped at the amount you paid us for the Services during that period.

Nothing in this section limits liability that cannot be excluded under applicable law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud, or fraudulent misrepresentation, or your non-waivable statutory consumer rights.

15. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

If you are a consumer resident in the EU, this choice of law and forum does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory consumer laws of your country of residence.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we make material changes, we will notify you by email or via an in-app notice at least 14 days before the changes take effect. Continued use of the Services after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not accept the changes, you may cancel your account before the effective date.

Business Entity: Tharviyan Limited (Company No. 12127865)
Registered Office: 5 Brayford Square, London, E1 0SG, United Kingdom
Contact: support@tamizhconnect.com | +44 1689 810072