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  1. Findmypast Help
  2. Your Findmypast account
  3. Privacy Policy

2. Information we collect

Information we collect about you

When you register on our website or place an order we collect:

  • Your name
  • Your email address

This allows us to process your registration, fulfil your order and send you important service messages.

It is optional to provide

  • Your date of birth
  • Your postcode

Knowing your date of birth and postcode allows Findmypast to see how people of different ages and locations use our site. It also allows us to give you more relevant content.

Payments

Payments are completed through our payment providers. Findmypast does not have access to your credit card or payment details. We will receive from our payment providers information regarding your purchase; such as, but not limited to, the date of the transaction and the amount, payment cancellations and a failed payment attempt. This allows us to keep your subscriptions up to date. We are obliged to retain financial records for a minimum of 6 years.

Surveys

If you participate in a survey, we may ask you to provide other contact details, such as your phone number or postal address. You will always be given the option to withhold these contact details at the time you complete the survey.

Cookies and similar technology

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.

Analytics

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.

Findmypast App

Data collected
  • Email for account authentication
  • IP address for connection to the site
  • Unique Installation IDs for crash reporting and tracking push notifications
  • Universally Unique identifier (UUID) with Apple if you purchased a subscription through Apple subscriptions
  • We capture interacts within Findmypast such as clicks, views, searches and downloads
  • The information that you add for your ancestors in your family tree
Use of photos and the camera in the Findmypast app

You can upload photo media by taking a photo with the camera on your phone or adding from your camera roll depending on the permissions you accept. Depending on the image uploaded you will have the option of the following features:

  • You can upload a photo to your tree or make a photo you profile picture. Photographs and media will ONLY be shared if the additional ‘Share photos attached to deceased ancestors’ permission is switched on. Findmypast recommends if you use this feature, you do not have images of living people on deceased ancestor profiles.
  • Face detection
    • When you take a photo with our app, we can detect the location of a face within the image. This allows you to tag a person from your tree by selecting on a face. The actual face image data itself is not collected or stored.
    • This data is not shared with third parties
  • Colourisation
    • You have the option to colourise the photo
    • When you colourise, three copies are stored and then deleted after 24 hours in order to provide the analysis.
    • This data is not shared with third parties
  • Text detection
    • Our app can detect text within a photo to help you create a description of the photo. In some cases, this text my include personal data. You choose to save this text into the description of the image. If you do not save the text it will be deleted.
    • This data is not shared with third parties
  • Geolocation - To add a location to a photo you can opt into sharing your geolocation, here the app will display a map where you can identify the location of the photo, which geocodes that location to a street address which is stored against the photo.
  • You can choose to download or share the image you have take or uploaded. This option with use your device share settings.

We do collect unique identifiers; for iOS users, the identifier is unique for the installation rather than the device and for Android users it is a package id. The identifiers are regenerated when you clear app from cache or reinstall the app, so it isn't a device identifier. They are used for crash reporting and for tracking push notifications.

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" under UK GDPR) about you except when you specifically knowingly provide it and have consented to this. Examples are adding your religious belief to a family tree.

More details about your family tree privacy settings is available below in Section Six.

Personal Photograph Submissions

Some Findmypast members may choose to submit a personal photograph to the Findmypast Photo Collection. During the submission process, we will ask you to provide:

  • Description of the photograph
  • Names of people who appear in the photo
  • Date and location of the event
  • Your name and email address

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 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 Findmypast’s Photo Collection, you understand that the photograph and all provided contextual information will be available to all registered Findmypast members. Members will be able to view, download and save the image to the device they use to access Findmypast. They can also copy the information found in the transcript. The information provided within the transcripts is intended to be used by individuals for research but Findmypast is under no obligation to ensure that it is used for this purpose.

We may also use the photo and accompany details for the following:

  • to add it to Findmypast and make it available to all website users
  • to make it available on other websites owned or operated by Findmypast;
  • to allow other users to download, print and save copies of your content for their private and non-commercial use;
  • for promotional purposes, such as marketing and advertising;
  • to help us improve our product and service offerings;
  • to form part of the Findmypast database that we build linking user content to records and datasets we hold;
  • to make it available to internet search engines;
  • for other services provided by Findmypast companies.

Removal of photos

If you feel at any time that you no longer want your image and contextual information to appear on Findmypast, please contact us at support@findmypast.com 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 13.

We also reserve the right to remove a photograph if we receive a complaint or a person challenges the ownership of the photograph.

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