Family Researcher Privacy Policy / Privacy Notice
Last updated August 2023
This page explains how www.familyresearcher.co.uk, which is owned by Jane Hewitt Family Tree Researcher (the data controller), uses any information you give to us, and the ways in which we protect your privacy.
What information do we collect?
We collect two kinds of information from visitors to www.familyresearcher.co.uk: information you provide to us when you commission research, and logs of activity on our website.
Customer information
At www.familyresearcher.co.uk we value your privacy very highly. When you commission a research project, you provide information to us.
1. Personal data about yourself. This will typically be:
- Your name and contact details, which we use to communicate with you about your project. Email is our preferred method of communication throughout the project. If you wish us to post one or more physical Presentation Packs of your family tree to you, then you will need to supply the postal address you wish us to use
- Details of the payment you made to us, for billing purposes
- For the purpose of building your family tree, details of your family links eg to a grandparent, great-grandparent etc. and any wording you would like us to put onto your family tree.
2. Personal data about your family members.
As genealogists, we research information about ancestors dating back as many centuries as possible. Our understanding is that researching historical information on your ancestors from centuries long ago is compatible with GDPR, and we are free to provide such data to you in the form of a family tree research project.
We rely upon the data you provide being correct, although if, before the completion of your project, you realise there was an error in the data you gave us, just let us know what the correct wording should be and we will amend your tree accordingly.
Lawful Basis for processing
The lawful basis for processing the personal data you choose to give us is that it is necessary to fulfil the contract we begin when you commission a family tree research project with us, and we agree to undertake the project for you.
Data Sharing
When you commission a project with us, it is standard practice that we only send the family tree project data back to yourself, and no one else. However, we do allow you to buy a project on behalf of a friend or relative (for example, if you buy a gift certificate for a grandparent as a birthday or Christmas present), in which case they become the individual we communicate with.
We never sell your private information to other companies. We do not engage in bulk email, postal, telephone or text messaging activities such as marketing.
We will not publish any information about living individuals on our website (with the exception of usually pseudo-anonymous acknowledgements for contributions made or if we publish a notice at the request of an individual or organisation). If we agree to publish a notice on our site at your request, we do so with your consent and you can change your mind and withdraw consent at a later date if you wish, Just drop us an email and ask.
We will not publish your family tree anywhere unless you ask us to. For example, sometimes a customer who has an Ancestry membership will grant us access permission and ask us to add information to their family tree on the Ancestry site. We will be happy to oblige. You remain in control of who has access to your tree.
Data retention
If you want us to delete the files pertaining to your family tree project as soon as the project is completed, please ask and we will happily oblige.
Otherwise, as part of the project, upon completion of your family tree we will archive the files we worked with whilst researching your family tree, for as long as we are able but no more than five years. Experience tells us that customers come back a few years later and ask us to produce more Presentation Packs, or to add additional family members eg a newborn baby. In rare cases customers have accidentally deleted their copy of the family tree and contacted us years later hoping we can provide them with a new copy. Customer satisfaction is important to us, so we try to include a grace period at the end of project as part of the service.
Specific technical stuff relating to the website only
Log files recorded by our ISP allow us to understand visitor’s use of the site. We could analyse log file information from visitors, to make changes to the layout of the site and to the information in it, based on the way that visitors move around it. Log files do not contain any personal information and they are not used to identify any individual patterns of use of the site.
The Family Researcher website provides, free of charge, an assortment of research findings, transcripts and other information such as the Blitz Resource Centre, The Dictionary Of Old Occupations etc. We do this to help preserve local history and to help people who are conducting their own family tree research. It costs money to run a website, because we have to pay our internet hosting company. For this reason we show advertisements to help fund the Family Researcher website.
Here is some standard wording from Google which applies to websites showing their adverts. Third party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's previous visits to your website or other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and/or other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Ads Settings or opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies for personalised advertising by visiting www.aboutads.info.
Here is some standard wording from Amazon which applies to websites showing their adverts. Jane is a participant in the Amazon Europe S.à r.l. Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.co.uk.
If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers' respective websites.
What happens when I link to another site?
www.familyresearcher.co.uk contains links to other websites. This privacy policy applies only to our site. You should always read the privacy statement of any site which collects personal information. We do not pass on any personal information you have given us to any other site.
Contacting www.familyresearcher.co.uk
If you wish to contact us, email .
Changes to this privacy policy / privacy notice
If this privacy policy changes in any way, we will place an updated version on this page. Regularly reviewing this page ensures you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances, if any, we will share it with other parties.