Privacy policy
Koseki Roots is run by Mitsuru Otaka in Chiba, Japan ("we"). We handle family documents that contain personal information about you and your relatives. This policy explains what we collect, why, who helps us process it, and what you can ask us to do. We follow Japan's Act on the Protection of Personal Information.
What we collect
- Contact details you give us: name, email address and country.
- If you order a service as a gift: the name of the person it is for; how you sign it; the short message you ask us to put on the cover.
- Information about your family that you send us, including images of family registers and other documents. These often name living relatives.
- Payment confirmations from Stripe or PayPal, including the billing address you enter when you pay. We keep it as a record that the service was supplied abroad, for Japanese tax rules. Stripe and PayPal handle your card or account details; we do not see or store your full card number.
How we use it
We use it only to deliver the service you ordered, to answer your questions, and to meet legal and accounting obligations. We do not sell or rent your information. We do not publish your family's information or use it for marketing. We send you news by email only if you ask for it, and every such email has a link to stop it.
Who processes it, and where
We use these providers. Each processes data to provide its service to us, under its own terms.
| Provider | What it does | Country |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | AI software that makes a first reading of your document images and a first draft of the translation. We have turned off the setting that lets Anthropic use our conversations to train its models. | United States |
| Cloudflare | Website hosting, our order form and the storage of the images you upload | United States |
| Stripe | Card, Apple Pay and Google Pay payments | United States and Japan |
| PayPal | Payments, if you choose PayPal | United States and Japan |
| Our email (Gmail) | United States |
The United States has no single national privacy law like Japan's. Privacy there is protected by federal laws for certain sectors and by state laws. We chose providers whose contracts limit how they may use your data and require them to protect it. We send each provider only what it needs.
How we protect it
- Within Koseki Roots, only Mitsuru Otaka handles your documents. The accounts we use to run the service are protected by two-step sign-in.
- Uploads travel over encrypted connections, and stored images are encrypted.
- We delete document images on the schedule below.
- If a data breach affects your information, we will tell you and report it to the authorities as the law requires.
Retention
We delete document images 90 days after delivery unless you ask us to keep them longer, or sooner if you ask. We keep delivered reports for one year so that we can resend them, then delete them. For a gift order, we delete the name of the person it is for, your signature and the cover message one year after delivery, together with the report. We keep our emails with you for one year after delivery, then delete them. We keep accounting records for as long as the law requires.
Living relatives
Family registers can include living relatives. Please send only documents you are entitled to hold. On request, we will leave the names of living people out of what we deliver. We do not take orders to look into another person's background.
Your rights
You can ask us at any time to show, correct or delete the information we hold about you, or to stop using it. You can also ask us which providers received it. Email [email protected], and we will reply within two weeks. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission or to the privacy authority where you live. If the GDPR or the UK GDPR applies to you, you also have the rights it gives you, and nothing in this policy limits them.
Cookies and analytics
Our website does not use advertising or tracking cookies. To count visits, we may use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which does not use cookies.
Children
Our service is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information.
Changes
If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page.