Privacy Statement

Privacy Information for Ancestry.co.uk

Overview:
Ancestry.com Operations Inc., (“Ancestry.com”, ”Ancestry”, “we”, “us” or “our”) operator of this site, recognizes the confidentiality of information that may be disclosed by members in registering or making purchases from our Website and we are firmly committed to protecting your privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for this site. Ancestry.co.uk is owned and operated by Ancestry.com Operations Inc., incorporated in Delaware, USA and the sites are operated in the United States of America. Registration as a user of or subscriber to the ancestry.co.uk Internet service results in your customer information being stored and processed in the United States, and you, in registering or subscribing, specifically consent to that storage and processing.

The specifics of our Privacy Policy are best described in the answers to the following Frequently Asked Questions:

Does Ancestry ask for personal information?
Yes. Ancestry asks for your name and e-mail address when you sign up as a member and use features such as e-mail. In addition we will need to know your postal address and payment details when you choose to take out a subscription with us or make purchases at the Ancestry online shop. We may ask for similar information at other times, such as when you enter sweepstakes or other promotions sponsored by Ancestry and/or our many partners. Most of this information may be entered at your discretion. As a member of Ancestry, you can also choose to share further information about yourself, your background and interests with other members. The amount and type of the profile information you share in this way is entirely your choice. Information about some of your activity on the site, such as historical records you save, may also be shared with other members in order to help you connect with others researching similar ancestors. See 'Member Profiles' below for more information on how you can edit or control what you allow other members to see about you and your site activity in your public profile or other places on the site.

How Does Ancestry use my personal information?
Our goal is to provide you with the most personalized, relevant, user-friendly Web experience possible. The primary use of all your personal information is to efficiently provide you with relevant information.

Ancestry will also use registration information to let you know about new features or other offers of interest from Ancestry, or to address customer service needs and requests.

In distributing advertiser or sponsor messages, the advertiser never has access to individual account information. Ancestry does not sell, rent or otherwise distribute the personal information you provide us to these advertisers. Advertisers simply provide an insertion order for the advertising message and Ancestry then displays the ad to appropriate users based on the criteria specified in the order.

Does Ancestry request or require any personal financial information?
To facilitate payment and fulfillment for membership and purchases at the Ancestry Online Shop, Ancestry will request personal credit card or debit card information. In order to take advantage of other value-added family services that may be offered by Ancestry in the future, users may be required to supply financial information.

Will Ancestry disclose any of my personal information to third parties?
Ancestry will not disclose any of your personal information, except with your knowledge and consent as described a) in this policy, b) where personal information is collected through this site and c) as may be required by law, or to protect the rights or property of Ancestry. Circumstances where limited personal information may be disclosed are specifically described when the data is collected, such as in the User Agreement, or in the rules of sweepstakes or other promotions. So in all cases you control what, if any, information you disclose.

Demographic information collected through on-site user surveys may be used in aggregate statistical form to attract potential sponsors, partners and advertisers but these statistics will include no personally identifying information. We do reserve the right to disclose aggregated user statistics, such as "45 percent of our users are female" or "10,000 members indicate an interest in gardening" in order to describe our services to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties. Under protection of confidentiality agreements, we use third party processors in some cases to help us provide services and manage our sites and relationships with you. These may include purchase and order fulfillment, credit card processing, removing duplicate information from lists, providing marketing assistance and providing other customer services. Third-party processors and providers will be given access only to that information needed to perform their support functions, and are prohibited from using it for other purposes.

Additionally, if you click away from Ancestry.co.uk to visit the site of any third party advertiser or sponsor, you may be asked for your credit card or other personal information in order to purchase or use products and services offered. These companies have their own privacy and data collection practices. We have no responsibility or liability for these independent policies. You should therefore review their privacy policies carefully if you have concerns about how your information may be used.

As our business continues to grow, we might buy or sell subsidiaries or business units. In these transactions, customer information is often one of the transferred assets, remaining subject to promises made in existing privacy statements. Also, in the event that Ancestry, or substantially all of its assets are acquired, customer information will as a matter of course be one of the transferred assets.

Will my information be used for direct mailings?
With your agreement, Ancestry will send electronic mail to you, for the purpose of informing you of changes or additions to Ancestry, or of any Ancestry related products and services. You can also choose to receive promotional offers from trusted Ancestry partners. If you do not want to continue to receive such mailings, you may opt out at any time by using the unsubscribe link listed in the e-mail. or by amending your 'Newsletter and e-mail preferences' in the 'My Account' section of this site.

May I refuse to provide personal information to Ancestry or to accept advertising?
Visitors may access Ancestry's free services by providing a first name, last name, and e-mail address. To gain full access to the members-only areas, a username, e-mail address and appropriate billing information are required. Because the Ancestry site is partially advertiser supported, you may not "turn off" the advertising that appears on Ancestry pages, but you may opt to be excluded from any e-mail advertising.

Family information
Where you choose to invite other family members to view and edit your family tree, we will ask you for the family member's e-mail address. You must first make certain that you have obtained the consent of the family member to the passing of their details by you to Ancestry. Ancestry will only use this information for the purpose of contacting the relative with their access details and will not use the information for marketing purposes. In addition you should also make sure that information or material you wish to place on the site about your living relatives is only posted with their prior knowledge and consent.

Does Ancestry use "IP Addresses" and cookies?
IP Addresses: We do use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, and to administer our Web site. Your IP address is also used to gather broad demographic information such as geographic distribution of our members.

Ancestry Cookies:
Contrary to popular myth, cookies do not extract private or personal information from your computer's memory, but rather, record only information you volunteer to us upon registering or visiting the site. Cookies are tiny files placed onto the hard drive of your computer when you register at our Web site that enable our server to recognize or "remember" who you are each time you return. Ancestry may make limited use of cookies to deliver content specific to your interests. For instance they may be used to retain your personal preferences, hold session information for a "shopping basket," or save your password so it doesn't have to be re-entered each time you login.

You can erase or block cookies from your computer if you want to (your help screen or manual should tell you how to do this), but certain Ancestry services may not work correctly or at all if you set your browser not to accept cookies.

Advertiser Cookies:
We may use third-party advertising companies to serve ads on our behalf. These companies may employ cookies and action tags (also known as single pixel gifs or web beacons) to measure advertising effectiveness. Any information that these third parties collect via cookies and action tags is completely anonymous. If you would like more information about this practice and your choices, click here.

What else should I know about privacy?
The following encapsulates a few key issues mentioned in context above.

Member Profiles

Your Public Profile
When you sign-up as a member you are provided with a public member profile pre-populated with your chosen username. Your user name and location will be displayed on the site when you post, comment or interact with other ancestry members. If you want additional privacy you can edit your username within your public profile to one that does not include any personally identifiable information. You can also enhance your public profile to provide additional information about yourself. Any information including any sensitive personal information that is disclosed in this area becomes public and you should therefore exercise caution when deciding what personal information you choose to disclose. You can customize your settings about how other members can contact you as well as what displays on your Public Profile. If you do not do this then the default setting is that the information within your Public Profile and also certain elements of your recent activity on the site will be publicly accessible by other members. To edit your preferences click here.

Through the Community Preferences link in the Ancestry 'My Account' section of the site, you can choose either to display your e-mail address with other members or ensure that your e-mail is withheld so that you are only contacted anonymously through the Ancestry Connection Service. You can also control when you are contacted or block certain people from contacting you.

You can also customize what other members can learn about your Ancestry site activity. To help you connect with other members researching similar ancestors, by default new accounts are set up to allow other members to learn about things you publicly add or post to the site, as well as some personal research activities (such as saving historical records to your Shoebox or private member tree). To customize these settings, simply go to the “Activity Preferences” link on the Community Preferences page.

Anonymous demographic profiles
Demographic data is collected at our site at the users' option. This information may include age and gender and other personal preferences that can be viewed and tabulated for use in marketing Ancestry to advertisers and others. In no case is personal information given or sold to third parties. Ancestry controls the distribution of ALL information at the site.

Contests & Promotions
Ancestry may occasionally run contests or other special promotions on our site in which we ask members or visitors for contact information (like an e-mail address) or demographic information (like a zip code, age, or income level). We use this data to send users promotional material about our company or our partners. The customer's contact information is also used to contact the visitor when necessary and may be shared with other companies for promotional purposes, but only with your prior permission and under the terms and conditions specified when you take part in the promotion. At any time, users may opt-out of receiving future mailings of this kind, or simply decline to take part in the promotions.

Public forums – Ancestry Community
This site makes forums, message boards and/or newsgroups available to its members. Any information that is disclosed in these areas becomes public information and you should take care when deciding what personal information to disclose to others.

Security
Ancestry places great importance on the security of all personally identifiable information associated with our members. We have security measures in place to attempt to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of member data under our control. For example our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary and only authorized personnel have access to member information. We use secure server software to encrypt financial information you input before it is sent to us. While we cannot guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of data will not occur, we will use our best efforts to prevent this.

By using our website and the services you consent to the collection and use of your information by the Ancestry. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post these changes on this page (or send them to you via e-mail or postal mail) so that you will be aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances we disclose it in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. If you do not consent to any changes to our privacy policy and as a result you would like us not to use or hold your information in accordance with the revised terms, you may instruct us to delete your information by sending an e-mail to support@ancestry.co.uk.

Contacting the Website
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this Website, you can contact:

Ancestry.com
360 W 4800 N Provo, UT 84604
United States of America