Privacy Policy
Your privacy is a top priority for us at YOUR ANCESTORS. We are dedicated to looking after your personal information in a way you feel is 100% safe and secure, handling it in a responsible manner and complying with data protection laws. When it comes to your privacy, we follow 3 main principles:
SIMPLE. We want to make it simple for you to understand how we use your personal information. We aim to use easy-to-understand language to describe our privacy policy and processes to help you make informed choices.
TRANSPARENT. We want to be transparent about the personal information we collect, why we collect it and how we process it.
CONTROL. We give you control over the personal information you provide to us. We let you choose how and when it is used, shared, kept or deleted.
Our full Privacy Statement is below and we suggest you take the time to read and understand it.
1. About Us
YOUR ANCESTORS is committed to protecting your privacy and maintaining the security of any personal information received from you. We strictly adhere to the requirements of the data protection legislation in the UK. Our Data Protection Officer will be happy to deal with any queries or requests regarding the data we hold about you. They can be contacted at gdpr@yourancestors.co.uk
2. Information we collect
A. Information we collect about you
When you register on our website or place an order, we collect your name and email address. This allows us to process your registration, fulfil your order and send you important service messages. When you first register or create a family tree, we ask for your date of birth and postcode. Providing this information is optional.
We do collect some information from cookies, pixels and similar software which allows us to understand how you arrive on our websites, how you use and navigate around them, and how you interact with our email. This information is used to improve our services and communication. We obtain information about your location to give us insight on usage across different geographic areas.
We obtain some information from Google Analytics and Facebook. The Facebook information we obtain is limited to your email address and only that which you have previously agreed with Facebook that they can share.
In order to purchase a subscription or credits for YOUR ANCESTORS you must be over 18 years old.
B. Information you provide to us
If you create a family tree or create content on our website, we also collect that information, which may include personal information about you and other people (for example, names and birthdays of people in your family). You should ensure, if you provide personal information about people in your family who are living and not deceased, that you have the consent from the relevant individual to include that personal information on the website.
We do not collect sensitive personal information (also known as ‘special categories of data’) about you except when you specifically knowingly provide it and have consented to this.
C. Personal Photograph Submissions
Some YOUR ANCESTORS members may choose to submit a personal photograph to the YOUR ANCESTORS Photo Collection. During the submission process, we will ask you for some additional information such as the name of the person in the photo, the time and place it was taken and any further contextual detail. The amount of information you provide is up to you, but the more information we have the better the experience will be for others who discover the photograph. We will ask for:
- Description of the photograph
- Names of people who appear in the photo
- Date and location of the event
- Your name and email address
We collect this information on the lawful basis of consent.
How will you use the photograph and information provided during the submission process?
Your full name will appear on the photograph as the copyright holder. Your name and all provided contextual information will appear on the transcript of the photograph.
By contributing a photograph to YOUR ANCESTORS’s Photo Collection, you understand that the photograph and all provided contextual information will be available to all YOUR ANCESTORS members who you grant access to your family tree.
Any photos or documents submitted by subscribers for inclusion in their family tree will only be viewed by the subscriber and YOUR ANCESTORS admin. If two subscribers or more are deemed to be linked through their family trees, permission from the originator of the photo or document will be sought before it is made available for viewing.
D. Removal
If you feel at any time that you no longer want any photos or documents you submit to appear on YOUR ANCESTORS, please contact us at admin@yourancestors.co.uk and we will be happy to delete it from the Photo Collection and our systems. However, please keep in mind that if other users have downloaded or saved the photo, they may still have a copy and we will be unable to identify or contact them. For more information regarding your individual privacy rights please consult section 11.
We also reserve the right to remove a photograph if we receive a complaint or a person challenges the ownership of the photograph.
Please note that if you would like a particular photo or document removed that is already in the public domain then you need to send an e-mail to admin@yourancestors.co.uk to explain the reason(s) behind your request.
3. How we use the information
A. We will use your personal information for a number of purposes including:
- To manage our website (including your account);
- To process orders and provide our services, goods or online content, to provide you with information about them and to deal with your requests and queries;
- For administration purposes. This means we may contact you regarding goods or services ordered or online content you have signed up for, to let you know that a service or online site has been suspended for maintenance, if your subscription is about to expire to ask if you wish to renew it, or if an online account has become dormant to ask if you wish to retain the account before we close it;
- To provide advanced website features to you and others;
- (For IP addresses and device identifiers) to identify the location of users, to establish the number of visits from different countries, to limit/cap adverts of a certain type, and to personalise content and emails;
- To undertake analysis and research to improve our services and goods offered;
- To improve your search results;
- To tailor a certain amount of advertising to individual users based on viewing and/or purchase habits. This is a common practice known as online behavioural advertising;
- To conduct surveys with you (where you have consented to us contacting you for such purpose);
- To provide personalised communications (more details below);
- To offer users a more relevant, tailored service, based on our analysis of personal information you provide and your activity on our (and other) services; and
- To undertake marketing and strategic development activities, where we will only use and disclose information in aggregate (so no individuals are identified).
B. Communications
i. Service messages
We send service emails to you to administer the service. Service emails include registration and payment confirmations and emails that provide useful information about how to use a service or feature when you sign up or start using it. We will also send you a service email if we make a fundamental change to the website, or to our terms & conditions that we think we need to make you aware of, or to let you know important information about your account.
ii. Marketing messages
We use your email address to update you on new products, services and subscription offers. We will only contact you with your consent. You are entitled to withhold this consent and refrain from receiving such communications by selecting the appropriate option on the web form that collects your details. You can also update these options at any time by logging into your account and adjusting your preferences, by contacting us by email at admin@yourancestors.co.uk by calling +44 (0)7852836554
4. What if I don’t provide some or all of the information requested?
The impact of this will depend on what information you withhold, but the main impacts may be:
- We will not be able to process or fully process your order;
- We will not be able to contact you to let you know of problems regarding your order or the goods/services provided;
- We will not be able to respond fully to requests and queries you may have;
- We cannot personalise the service you receive. So, if you are online you will have to search more for the content type you normally view or for similar/related products; and/or
- We won’t be able to limit online adverts to products or services you have shown interest in and so you may receive adverts that are not related to your interests.
5. What grounds (legal basis) are we processing the data under?
There are a number of grounds under which we process your personal information. These are:
• Contractual – we need the information to perform the contract for goods or services you have requested/ordered including payment, delivery etc;
• Legal – should we be legally required to contact you concerning a purchase or service;
• Legitimate interest – this means the processing is in YOUR ANCESTORS’s interest. It allows us to manage the customer relationship effectively and efficiently and improve the goods and/or services we provide by better understanding how our online provisions are used and which goods are popular with which groups of individuals; and/or
• Consent – where you have given us consent to market to you.
6. Family Tree
As we build your family tree from the initial information required, we will give you regular updates as to our progress
A. Privacy. One of the most valuable resources for a community of users researching and building their family trees is access to the historical research of others. Many people, often unknown to each other, share common ancestors within a few generations, and those people know different parts of the family tree. By joining forces and connecting this knowledge, we can all discover new parts of our family history – parts we never had access to before.
B. Features YOUR ANCESTORS offers features to improve your family tree and with your permission, to share your family history with other users. We provide you with privacy controls to manage your family tree and control who can see the information in it within the Tree Settings page. You are in charge of your family tree privacy and should familiarise yourself with how these controls work.
- Sharing your tree gives others the right to view your entire tree. By inviting others to your tree, they will be able to view all the living and deceased people in the tree. You’re invited friends and family will be able to view all the information in your family tree including dates, events, and media. No one will be able to delete or rename your tree.
- The person or persons you invite to read your tree, must register with YOUR ANCESTORS before they can view your tree. The tree sharing link will expire after 30 days. It can only be used by one person and it is a one-time use link.
You are responsible for any information you add or share within your family tree. Anyone with access to your family tree can copy and share the details they read. You should have permission of the living people in your tree to share their information.
- If you wish to remove an individual’s access to your tree, please contact our customer support team at admin@yourancestors.co.uk.
C. Your tree can be deleted at anytime. Just send an e-mail to admin@yourancestors.co.uk
D. We reserve the right not to include any information which pertains to a living person in order to prtect their personal privacy. Any living person on your family tree will be indicated by the words Male or Female. The information added about deceased persons is not considered personal data under this policy.
7. Sharing your information with third parties
We may from time to time provide your personal information to third parties for the purposes of providing you with our services. These third-party providers include payment processors, providers of card validation services, and credit referencing providers. This is necessary for the performance of the contract. We do not keep a record of your credit or debit card details in our systems. Our payment processors do not decide what is done with your data and only process it on our behalf. These third parties may be located outside the European Economic Area; however, we only use providers that provide adequate protection for your personal information at all times.
We also share your details with service providers who assist us with hosting our marketing campaigns and surveys but only in cases where you have consented to marketing or surveys. We will not provide your personal information to other third parties for marketing purposes unless you have specifically consented to this when you first provided your information to us. You are entitled to decline to receive such third-party communications by not selecting the appropriate box on the web form that collects your details or at any subsequent time by logging into your account and adjusting your preferences, by contacting us by email at admin@yourancestors.co.uk
8. Sale of the Business
In the event that we undergo re-organisation or are sold to a third party, any personal information we hold about you may be transferred to that re-organised entity or third party.
9. Cookies
This website uses cookies. For more information about what cookies are, what we use them for and how you can delete them.
We do collect some information from cookies and similar software that allows us to understand how you arrive on our websites and use and navigate around them so we can improve the sites. We obtain some information from Google Analytics and Facebook. The Facebook information provided is limited to your email address and only that which you have previously agreed with Facebook that they can share.
10. How we protect your information
YOUR ANCESTORS follows strict security procedures in the storage and disclosure of personal information and genetic data which we receive and that you have given us, to prevent unauthorised access to, and loss, misuse or alteration of your information in accordance with UK data protection legislation. We are committed to international security standards.
You are responsible for keeping secret any confidential passwords or other login or access details that you select or which we allocate to you. While we take steps to ensure the security of your information, there is a risk that any information transmitted over the Internet and stored on a computer may be intercepted or accessed by an unauthorised party. If you think that someone has accessed your information held by us without your permission or gained unauthorised access to your login details, you must notify us at admin@yourancestors.co.uk
We also recommend that if you use a shared computer or a computer in a public place such as a library that you close your browser when you have finished your session.
11. Your rights regarding your Personal Information
Under the Data Protection law, you have a number of rights with respect to your personal information, which are:
• Correcting your Information
You are entitled to have your personal information updated to ensure it is up to date and accurate. In order to maintain the accuracy of the information we hold, you can update your personal details through your ‘My Account’ page or by sending us an email to admin@yourancestors.co.uk
• Withdrawing Consent
You have the right to withdraw your consent to any processing that is currently being done under your consent, such as marketing. Consent can be withdrawn by updating your preferences in the email preference centre or through ‘My Account’. You can also email to admin@yourancestors.co.uk.
• Obtaining a copy of your Information
You have the right to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you. You can do this by contacting admin@yourancestors.co.uk from the email address attached to your account, providing the full name attached to your account.
• Deleting your information
You can request that we delete personal information in certain circumstances. These will be specific to each case. You can do this by contacting admin@yourancestors.co.uk from the email address attached to your account, providing the full name attached to your account.
• Data Portability
You have the right to ask us to transfer the personal information that you have given us to another controller.
• Restricting Processing
You can request a restriction on the processing of your data in some limited circumstances. Examples are concerns over data accuracy or we no longer need to hold your data but you have requested its retention by us to aid you in a legal matter. You can do this by contacting admin@yourancestors.co.uk from the email address attached to your account, providing the full name attached to your account.
• Right to object to Processing
You have the right to request that we stop processing your data for marketing purposes and in other limited circumstances such as asking us not to process your data by wholly automated means or not to analyse your information for targeted content etc. (also known as profiling).
You can action any of these rights by contacting our Customer Support Team or by contacting us by email at admin@yourancestors.co.uk
12. How long we hold your data for
Some of the information you provide to us will be necessary to carry out repeated tasks, such as verifying your identity or payment details when signing in to use an account, providing our services to you or when you are using an online checkout. We will keep this information for as long as you remain a registered user of any of our sites and for so long as reasonably necessary. After this time, we may need to hold your personal data in order to meet our financial obligations or identify or resolve issues or causes of action. If your account is inactive for more than ten years and you are no longer paying for a service, we reserve the right to delete any information you have provided to us, including all information in your family tree.
13. Updates to this policy
We may update this policy at any time without notice. We may tell you that we have updated the policy by emailing you at the email address you have provided to us and/or by posting an announcement on the website. By continuing to use the website after we have emailed you or posted a notice informing you of an update, you accept the changes to this Policy.
Privacy statement last updated 06/10/2020.
16. Contacting us
If you have any questions about privacy or wish to update your details or have them removed from our mailing list at any time, please contact us at:
Email: admin@yourancestors.co.uk
Phone: +44 (0)7852836554
