This Privacy Policy explains how we use information that you provide us with when you use the website and how we make sure it is stored and managed safely and legally.
This Privacy Policy is part of the Terms & Conditions of using this website, so please read it carefully. We take your privacy extremely seriously, and will store all your personal information securely.
As we are an Irish company, you are protected by Irish and European data protection laws. We are registered as a Data Controller with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner's Office and we store your data in accordance with the Data Protection Acts 1998 – 2003. If you'd like to know more about data protection generally, there is information available from the Irish Data Protection Commissioner.
Whenever you visit the website, we gather information about what you do during your visit, including the searches that you perform and the information you view. We also gather some statistics about your computer, such as the browser you use and how big your screen is. We gather personal information (e.g. name, address, phone number, email address, postal address) about you when you register, pay for a service or get in contact with us, or sometimes if you reply to a survey.
If you create a family tree or create content on the website, we also manage that information, which may include personal information about you and other people (for example, names and birthdays of people in your family). We always aim to gather only the information that we need in order to provide the information and services which you have subscribed to.We won't keep your personal information for longer than is necessary and will only use the personal information that we gather to:
We keep your details safe when you sign in or pay by using encryption (this guide will tell you more about encryption and how it works). We always use up-to-date technology security standards and make every effort to keep our systems as secure as they can reasonably be. Please be aware that although our systems are secure, your information might be intercepted on its way to us via the internet, although it is extremely uncommon for this to happen. Keep your sign in details private at all times, do not share them with anybody.
When we take a payment from you, we use a secure third party service to process the payment and do not keep a record of your credit or debit card details in our systems. This means that even if (heaven forbid) someone broke into our systems, your payment details would not be available for them to steal.
We won't ever sell your information to third parties, full stop. If we run a promotion or competition where your information would be shared with a third party for marketing purposes, we will make that very clear and will ask your permission first.
Only specific people within our company (meaning Eneclann Limited) have access to your information, and we restrict this as much as we can. In general, we try to make sure that people only have as much access to your information as they need to carry out their job in providing you with services and records.
We occasionally use third party companies to manage information that you provide us with. When we do, we keep the amount of personal information they hold to an absolute minimum, have contracts in place to stop them using your information except on our behalf and obviously use reasonable efforts to make sure they are as careful with your information as we are.
Your information is stored securely on our servers in Ireland.
If your account is inactive for two or more years and you are not paying for a service, we reserve the right to delete your information (including information in your account or family tree), although we'll try to contact you first. Of course, if you have an active subscription, we won't do this.
Information stored in your family tree will, in almost all cases, include personal information about other people that are still alive. As with all information in your family tree, your information may be searchable by findmypast users (together with users of other websites) and may appear on internet searches, but all of the information will not be viewable unless you explicitly give them permission to view your tree.
You should always seek permission from people who are living before you make their personal information available in your tree, or anywhere else online. We have provided you with privacy controls to manage your family tree and control who can see the information in it. You should familiarise yourself with how they work as you're responsible for using them to protect the information you have provided. We reserve the right (at our own discretion) to remove any personal data which you have included in your family tree about people who are living if we are alerted to the fact that this personal data was used without that person's permission. If you become aware that your personal information has been included in somebody else's tree without your permission or is being misused in any other way on the Irishfamilyhistorycentre site, please send an email to our Customer Support team with details and we will investigate and, if necessary, remove this information.We try only to send you emails which are relevant and help you with your family history or tell you important things about the website. There are some emails which we send you only if we have your permission (marketing emails) and you can notify us at any time if you no longer wish to receive these marketing emails (see below). There are some emails which we send you even if we don't have your permission (service emails) - we send these to administer the service. Each is explained below.
These emails include our regular newsletter, emails which help you with your family history, special offers and market research emails. They also include product updates, announcements of new features or information on the website. Very occasionally, we might tell you about a service offered by another company, but this is rare.
You can do this in a number of ways and we make it easy for you to do this. The easiest way is to change the settings in the “my account” area of the website. There are also instructions on every email we send and you can usually unsubscribe directly from the email without visiting the website.
We need to send these to administer the service. Service emails include registration and payment confirmations, warnings that we are about to charge you or that your subscription or credits are about to expire, and welcome emails that provide useful information about how to use a service or feature when you sign up or start using it. Also, if we make a fundamental change to the website or our Terms & Conditions that we think we need to make you aware of (for legal or simply for courtesy reasons), we will send you a service email.
Because of the nature of these emails, we don't allow you to unsubscribe, but we can switch off your account if you are no longer interested in using the website. Contact our Customer Support team to do this.
We use cookies (small information files that are stored on your computer) to help us provide many features on the website. You can choose not to accept cookies from us (by changing your browser's security settings) but if you do, the website might not work as intended and some features may not work at all. Cookies are safe: please read this short guide if you want to know more about them.
If you want to know what personal information we hold on you, get in contact and we'll be happy to supply you with it
there is a €5.50 administration charge to cover the cost of pulling it together.
If the information we hold about you is no longer correct, please update your details in the ‘my account' area or alternatively, let us know and we will update our records.
We will only disclose your information to somebody outside our company (or who is processing your information on our behalf under contract) if we are required to by law.
If Eneclann's business transfers to anyone else, you agree that we can pass your information to that person, so they can continue to provide you with the service.
We might make changes to this policy from time to time – check back here to stay up to date. If we make a major change to it, we'll send you a service email describing the change and what it means for you.
We hope that's clear. If it isn't or you have another question that isn't covered, please contact us.
This document was last updated on 21 January 2016.